Episode 26 Math Curriculum We Loved, Quit, and Learned From

Next week on Homeschooling and Life Unfiltered with Court and Jess, we continue our four-part curriculum series with one of the biggest subjects of all: Math. We’re breaking down the math programs we’ve used over the years, sharing which ones were a great fit, which ones missed the mark, and what we learned through all the trial and error.

If math curriculum has ever left you overwhelmed, second-guessing, or wondering whether it’s your child or the program, you’re not alone. We’re talking honestly about what made certain curricula successful, why some were total flops, and how different learning styles can make all the difference.

This is real feedback, real experience, and real opinions from the homeschool trenches.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to homeschooling and life unfiltered with Court and Jess, where Real Talk meets real life. Court and Jess are two friends, fellow moms, and business partners who live in different time zones and juggle homeschooling alongside motherhood and entrepreneurship. Jess is a mom of eight and Court is a mom of seven, and together they're raising 15 kids and navigating the wild, wonderful world of homeschooling, each in completely different ways. Every week we invite you to pull up a chair for honest conversations, practical tips, and uplifting encouragement. You'll hear from moms across the country who are homeschooling in a way that works best for their families. Whether you're a veteran homeschool mom just getting started or somewhere in between, this is your space to feel seen, supported, and inspired. Because no matter how different our paths may look, we are all in this together. Hi, welcome back to homeschooling and life on filter with Court and Jess. We are gonna talk all about math this week, which honestly should be kind of short because it's probably my least favorite subject that I teach. I don't know, maybe not, maybe science. It is my least favorite. All right, so math. What my and honestly, mine is fairly simple. So, like in language arts, like I've changed a lot over the years, and my math I've stayed pretty consistent. Like, this is what we do when they're younger, and this is what we do when they're in the middle, and this is you know, so anyway, should we go first? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Um, my math has changed wildly over the years. Oh and and I hate math. I it that's probably too strong of a word, but it's it might be accurate, so we'll leave it. Um I yeah, long story short, I used to be really good at math. Um, really, really good. And then when I was a teenager, I had a really severe car wreck. Um, and followed by a severe head injury at soccer. And so uh two major, major, major head injuries. And I am no longer good at math. Like it's it's one of those, there's a few things that I never recovered, and that's one of the things. And so um, so I just I'm I just don't enjoy teaching it at all. Um, I don't have I out of my eight children, uh, so far, of course, the baby we don't know, I have one math-minded child. The rest of us were dragging each other across the finish line every year. And so I've tried a lot of different things because I really want to have kids who excel in math. All of my kids excel in language arts um and history and even science, but math is just not like it's just not our area. And my husband's really good at math. Um but uh so we've tried, I've tried a lot of things in this attempt to to find something that inspires us, but I think the reality is that nothing will inspire us when it comes to math. Um, but I've tried everything. I've tried um teaching textbooks, I've tried Math U C, Singapore Math, Wright Start Math, even Horizons, you know, Horizons Math. Um I mean you name it, we've tried it. Um what did you end up doing? What did you stick with? Oh, we didn't stick with anything. I think they changed every two years. They're doing a new math curriculum. I'm not gonna say and so they have had a very eclectic approach to math for sure. Um, but probably around the pen a year or two before the pandemic, um, we were introduced to mathnesium. That's that math tutoring service that we use. And so we've used that on again, off again. So, like my son this year for his 11th grade year, he's only doing mathasium. Like, there's no need to supplement. He just he goes there two to three times a week. Um actually, he's three times a week. He goes there three times a week, and that's that's his math. He goes for an hour and a half three times a week.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Send home like homework and things for him to do on that.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Nope, there's no need. It's a super comprehensive program. Like I I've asked multiple times, and he doesn't need to do any more math than this at home, right? Nope, this is all he needs to do. And right now he's doing all ACT prep. So, like, really, he's just preparing for the ACTs. He has all the math he needs to graduate high school already, so um, that could be also why he doesn't need to do anything more at home. Um, and we really love matnesium, it's just it's been amazing. It's interesting because my one really math-minded kiddo, I put her in mathnasium when she was as young as they go, I think she was kindergarten. Um, and so I also wonder if her love for math stems from like their approach, like being her first exposure to math. Um, or if maybe she was just gonna be math-minded. I don't know. Um, we've done Life of Fred, that's another one we've done. Um that one's a fun one. Yeah, I feel like we've I just I want I would be surprised if there's a math we haven't tried. Um the only math we haven't really tried, I guess, is like any boxed math. So we haven't done like My Father's, I don't even know if My Father's World has math, but we haven't done like Good and the Beautiful Math, or we haven't done um any of the math that sometimes comes in those bigger curriculum sets. Um but anyways, what I did bring though is something that we do enjoy, um, and that's these circumference books. Have you ever heard of these? Yeah, they have a lot of math like literature books. Yeah. Um so these are like these are story books, and like this one is circumference and the fraction fair. And then we've got, I mean, there's I have a ton of oops, sorry, that was way loud. Um, but I have a ton of them. Um, circumference uh and the great night and angle land. So you're talking all about different angles and stuff. Uh there's a couple other ones, like about like there's a factory and they create zero, and then there's like a million book and a billion book, and so just like a lot of story-based books about math. So we do that, and then in our classical conversations, of course, we do our memory work and math. So they're memorizing you know, the area of a circle and things like that, since they're very little. So um, yeah, that's that's the long and short of it. I would say the two math curriculums we've used the longest are teaching tech teaching textbooks. Um and then yeah, probably teaching textbooks and and math UC. Those are the two that we've used the longest.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Okay, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Okay, so um and then card games. I guess I'll add that. We do a lot of card games for math to um just to reinforce and we do some flashcards and and also I'm a huge fan of time tests. So we do also do time tests like from when we were in grade school.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Um you put the little piece of paper and it has all the little bubbles, the circles you have to fill in. Oh it's like a it's like a oh, I love those. Yeah, it's like a one-minute time test. I there was a point with my oldest group of kids that we um, if they could beat me in a times test, yeah, I would give them 20 bucks.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Oh, yeah, I couldn't do that because I would be poor.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

No one ever did it, but so I'm so I love math. Like I personally love math. I was good at math, and I think that's why I hate teaching it because I do not have mathy children. Oh, we it drives me a little bonkers that I'm like, I don't understand, but you don't understand. Like we've had that conversation before. Yeah, yeah. I do have like my son is very math, like he's he would sit with my older girls. So I mean, he's the sixth kiddo. So he would sit with like the older girls when they were doing math on their lap, like on the computer, and he would like help them with their math and like learn and he would like learn with them. And I have all these pictures of him sitting with like Audrey, who is you know, one like six grades older than him, right? Um, of doing and like learning things. So like he has that math brain. Um he's my easiest math kid, but so with my younger kids, so K3, we do Saxon math. I it's they're consumable workbooks. Saxon math. Um they're fantastic. And typically what I do is we skip kindergarten because this kindergarten Saxon is like preschool math. It's like sort the colors and like count to three, you know what I mean? There it's very simple. And so we would do start with first grade, and sometimes depending on upon the kid, we would just drag it out over two years. So they would do because there's like a part. So if Saxon is built for a classroom, right? Because it's actually what I use when I taught, and then tent is it like you do paid the front of it, which is A, like during class, and then you would go home and do B for homework. Got it in um in our school, so like for first grade or the level one, we would do during kindergarten math, and we would do A one day and do B the next. So then we would just drag it out so it would last. Um, and then when they got like in the second or level two, we would just do the A. And then if there was something they needed to practice, then we would do the B side, right? Just a little more if they needed a little more practice. Um, so that's what I did for all that. And then I would do with my older group, I we continued on with Saxon. Um, and it's a textbook, right? So it's like a math lesson that you do with them, and then they would do it. And there's a million problems. And so I would go through and like one day they would do even, and the next day they would do odd, and then even and odd so that it's not like it's a lot to do. Um, but then I got so when I had you know five or six kids, I couldn't teach an individual math lesson every day to everybody, it was just too much for me. And so that was one of the things I outsourced and we switched to teasing teaching textbooks. Um my oldest is probably in like eighth grade, which is go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

I was gonna ask you, Zach's math. Did you ever use Nicole the math lady?

SPEAKER_01 9:42

No. I found her, I mean, like I I found her later in life, like after I had already switched to teaching textbooks. Um I have used some of her stuff, like she has those um she has like a summer camp type thing, like a math summer camp thing with like fact like fact memorization or something. I can't remember that we've um we've kind of done in more recent years. Um but we switched to teaching textbooks, and that's pretty much what my kids have all done. Um yeah, I mean that's pretty much what we've done. So now they transition out of the Saxon like consumable workbooks into teaching textbooks, is what I've done um with this next batch of kids. Um this year, Rory and Audrey are both doing their math with power homeschool.

unknown 10:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Rory was really struggling with teaching textbooks. Um, and we tried everything, like we tried a bunch with her. We tried CTC math, we tried um trying to think one of the but we tried a few with her because she's my least mathy or like hates it the most, right? Um, but she really likes the way they teach it with power homeschool. So it works for her, and she's been able to pass math this whole year with very few tears. So I'm gonna call it a win. Yeah, but we also do a bunch of the story book math stories, like as part of family school, we have math as one of our subjects, and we would read, you know, like those picture book things. There's a million of them. The life of bread, which I forgot, I have all the life of bread. We should bring those back out and put it in there, especially now that we're getting into like the algebra ones, like to bring those back out. And those are the nice things is you can do that. You can read it, and like Macy, obviously, my younger kid isn't gonna be like she'll pay attention. I mean, she she they still learn something and they still gather out of it, even though they're not at that level of math. Yeah, um, it's just such a nice way to kind of sprinkle it in. Um a lot of math games though.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

So um, you know, like Sky Joe when you're Sky Joe is like doing negative numbers and negative and positive numbers. So that's a really good one. Um, I don't know, there's a million, but I like we I like incorporate math games. So that's one of the things we do as part of family school is we'll play like a game, um, some kind of mathy game that's like silent, and then we listen to our audiobook. Um, and then one of the other things that I really like when they're in that transition of like memorizing the math facts, we do um, we have the old there, they remind me of their old fashioned because they're like from when we were kids, but the like wraparounds, you know, like the wraparounds.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yeah, we have tons of those. We love those.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Those are really great. Um, we've done like the Times Tales, the little stories. Have you ever done those where it's like love those? Yeah, the pictures of stories. So we've done those.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Um got about those times tales. I love those. Actually, I don't think I did those with Hannah on my youngest, but you know, a lot of our math exploration too came from her because I can't keep her filled enough with math. Like she does math these move, but she wants to do all this other math. She's done up to three math curriculums at one time, like just like at one time. She just loves it. But do you guys ever play Snake or or Number Knockout? Oh no, what's that one? Oh, they're super good. So they're team on a team base, so they're super fun. But Snake is really fun. Um like a board game you buy? No, it's all dice. Sorry, it's oh but look at number knockout. Um it is it's like a it's way bigger. Like it, there's like a uh it's a fast-paced like mental math game. And there's a grid, um, like a six by six grid counting 36 numbers, and you have to roll three dice, and you have 60 seconds to create some sort of mathematical equation using those three numbers, and you can use like exponents and all these different things, and so you have teams, so then you you don't have to have a team, but so then your kids race to fill all 36 blocks with the three dice, so you have to think really fast, and then you have to write out what yeah, it's really good, but there's you should YouTube it. There's like national uh competitions, it's insane. Uh I mean in a positive way. Um, really crazy how good some kids are at math, but it's really good for mental math. Um, what's the other one you said snake? It's a dice game, too. Yeah, and that one has it's I can't remember all the rules of that one, but my that's one of my kids' favorite one that they play at CC. We don't play that at home at all. Um, new games. Yeah, yeah. They have all the grids like on Pinterest for Snake or the rules and like fancy game boards and stuff, but um I forgot all about time sales. I wrote that down, so I'm gonna I'm gonna bring that one back out.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah. Well, that's why when you said the storybook things, I was like, oh, I haven't done that a long time. I should put that back in the rotation for next year. I'm working on next year's school, like I'm already starting to like plan, you know. I'm not even finished planning with this year. I kind of finished this year. I we're not done, but I'm over it. How's that for an answer?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah, well, I'm kind of in that one, like I need to do what we've just suggested people do, where they go and kind of really look at what all the things they've done for this year, because I'm in that mode of like panic of what we didn't get enough done. What should we do? You know, how do we get the rest done?

SPEAKER_01 14:43

I did my review last weekend when I went on that mom's retreat, and it's just so nice to like have it see it down, and so it was it made me think of like all the things like where are my holes? What do I want to do better at? So then now I'm now I feel like I'm in a brain space to start kind of thinking about what I want to do next year because I saw the holes of like where I wanted to be better at, and so now I'm anyways, but family school. I we did some things really good and some things that I didn't really put in good rotation, and so we bombed family school.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

We bombed it. Oh morning past yeah, yeah, we it didn't go that well for us this year, but um we still got a lot of other really good things. We did we would did such a good job in science this year, and I need to keep reminding myself of that, those kinds of things, right? As we end the end of the year, that there are gonna be years where you just bomb certain things, but you do other things really well, and you just gotta hold on to those things and push forward.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I got a solid C minus in uh history this year. And I will own it. But yeah, I I ordered something new for next year that I'm really excited about. It's literature based and like it's more of like what I think we're gonna love.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

So I know we're gonna do a separate science one, but you can't leave us hanging. What did you order?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Oh, oh, for history. Um, I ordered I'm going back to Beautiful Feet, which is the literature-based, yeah. Yes, and that is such a good that's such a good right, and I love to read like and I enjoy it because I love to read books, and so it makes me want to do it. And plus, when you're reading a book, you don't well, you want to keep going, like you want to know what's gonna happen, right? So it's not as easy to just like, oh we don't we didn't do story of the world today, like that's okay, but it's the because it's not, I mean, it is a continuation, but it's not like you're leaving off hanging in the middle, like because each chapter is so different in different places, so I just do better with that. So, anyways, all right, so there's math and apparently a little bit of science and social studies. Okay, all right. Um, next week we'll be back with science. All right, have a great week, everybody. Bye.