The Saxon Review

Ok, so it's time to review the Saxon curriculum.  I know, you're very excited :)

I got the Saxon Phonics for grade K and the Saxon Math for grade 3.  Let's start with phonics.

The book whole Saxon phonics program comes with workbook, flash cards and letter strips the help reinforce the daily lesson, which is basically A Letter A Day program.  The lessons consist for saying a word that starts with the letter, having the student repeat the word, write the letter, and even map the word to identify short or long sounds.  As the lessons progress, you build on previous sounds.  So one day you do the short o, and the next you do t and then on the t lesson, the words you learn incorporate the short o sound.

It's a bit tedious, especially for my child who cannot sit still.  It does have some ideas about going on letter hunts, where the child searches for objects that start with a certain letter.  But most of it is taught while the child is sitting at a desk, listening to you and working on a worksheet.  If your child can sit still, I would recommend this.  If you're kid is more hands on and out of their seat, I recommend using this as a guide and adding various activities on your own.

For my kid, I follow the basics of the Saxon program.  I do a letter a day, we write it and say it out loud, but we don't map letter sounds or do the worksheets.  We do the letter hunts, or hangman, or I write of words on the board and we figure out which have short or long vowel sounds. 

Overall, I do like the Saxon phonics program, but it needs to fit your kid and for mine, it's a bit too formatted.

Now for the Saxon Math grade 3.  I don't know if all Saxon math programs are like the grade 3, but it's a different way to approach math than I'd been doing previously.  Instead of working one concept for many days then moving to another, the program does mini lessons on various subjects everyday.  So for example, one day we learned about clocks and reading time.  The next day we did doubles additions then reviewed our clocks by doing some simple "what time is this?" sort of problems.  The next day we did greater than, less than, equal then and we also reviewed our doubles.  See the pattern?

I'm truly interested to see how this program effects my kids math skills.  He's pretty good with numbers and really enjoys this subject.  Before starting the Saxon program, we already did addition, subtraction and multiplication up to the 3s table, plus we did money and clock work.  So for us, this is review, but it gets into more complicated material a bit later.  Still, I wonder if this sort of approach will prove more effective than just sticking with one subject until he masters it completely, then moving on.

It seems a bit scattered, but on the positive side it does keep math more interesting because we're doing something different everyday.  But is he learning it in these little bursts?  I know Saxon has been around for a while so it must work.  I'm going to keep with the program and see how it goes.  I've been supplementing a bit here and there, just to make sure he doesn't forget what he's already learned.

Overall, I'd say give the Saxon math a try.  It's worth a go.  I'll do another review when we get into more difficult material.

I hope you found this a little helpful.  Feel free to leave reviews of the programs you like!