Our Favorite Frugal Homeschool Curriculum Choices for Math - PreK through High School

Summary:  Are your kids struggling with their chosen math curriculum? Are you looking for another way to go that might fit their learning style better? How we dealt with math through the years when we needed to make changes in our curriculum. #homeschoolmath

Are you kids struggling with their chosen math curriculum?  Are you looking for another way to go that might fit their learning style better?

We switched out our math curriculum more than once in our homeschool, once in elementary, and then again in high school.

Sometimes our original choice in homeschool math curriculum just didn't make the grade, so to speak.  

So we did search around for other options again, and each time we found a math curriculum that worked better than the original one. 

It was hard to let go of our initial homeschool curriculum choice, and it did impact our budget, but each time it made for a happy math student in our house.  

And success in her math studies.  Let's start with preschool, and go through our favorites for math, all the way through high school.

PRESCHOOL MATH

Math has actually always been something that my daughter looked forward in our homeschool.  

From playful learning approaches during preschool/K through elementary, we have always tried to take a hands-on approach.  

And each of our math curriculum favorites showed us just how to teach math to our child.  And it was not hard to do.

For preschool we recommend a play oriented approach.  Counting, adding, subtracting, making sets....all of that can be discovered through play.  

To see how we did that in our home, I invite you to click here for my article on:  HomeschoolingEarly Math - Making Your Manipulative Kit and More.  

KINDERGARTEN MATH

My friend, Amy has encouragement and information on a new kindergarten curriculum in her article here - Homeschool Math with Confidence.  It includes a video interview with the creator of this new option for kindergarten curriculum.

For kindergarten, another nice option is Saxon Math.  It has a nice hands-on approach, and Amy, of the Curriculum Choice, has a review on Saxon Math Kindergarten. 

ELEMENTARY MATH

Then in the primary grades, we chose Saxon Math.

Young learners often need to see, feel, and touch objects to learn the processes of basic math.  There are lots of used Saxon curriculum resources on the web, under homeschool used curriculum.

Saxon Math is available all the way through high school.

MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH

For Pre-Algebra, we chose Saxon Dive dvd's  I did not recall my pre-Algebra facts, who does really?  

I loved how they explained each problem, using a chalkboard.  The instructor wrote out each problem as he discussed them.

Saxon also has another product called video education. A sample 5th grade lesson, using that product is here.  

During these years, we enjoyed living math activites, too, such as:

• introducing checking accounts 
• how to balance a checkbook 
• our household bills

Seeing her math lessons being used in real life, made them more interesting.

HIGH SCHOOL MATH

Doing homeschool math in high school.....Many of us are leery of that.  I was at first.  But with a solid homeschool math curriculum, I found it to be more than doable.

We began Algebra 1 in 9th grade, and decided to try Teaching Textbooks.

I liked how TT offered even more help through their Teaching Textbook DVD's and we were happy having all their dvd's, 

especially the ones that explained errors in the practice problems.

photo credit - www.aop.com

Then in 10th grade we used Monarch (SOS)

  

We liked how thorough and more repetitive they were compared to Teaching Textbooks.   

That helped my daughter with retention.

I also loved how it was self-graded and included a video lectures for each lesson, plus lots 

of practice, and some hands-on math projects as well.

Living Math activities in high school centered on:

• getting and managing a savings account 
• learning about taxes while she watched us do that 
• car insurance 
• saving and compounding interest
• as well as family budgeting.

Doing these living math acitivites above were easy to teach, just by including my daughter in our family budgeting activities.  

Don't miss Amy's article, full of tips and encouragement for math for all ages here -Homeschool Math with Confidence.

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her now college grad, whom she homeschooled through high school.  She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, highschool, 
college, gifted/2e and wrote -Homeschooling High School with College in Mind, 2nd Edition,   She offers homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting,  and has had some of her articles picked up by the Huffington Post.

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