Saxon ?

[2queens&1princenmyhouse]

I purchased Saxon 5/4 and 7/6 for my girls next year. As I'm looking through them and starting to make tentative plans, I see that there is a 100 problem drill at the beginning of every lesson. I'm all for learning basic math facts, but that seems excessive to me. Do you think I'd be ok to only do the drill once or twice a week? If they already know their facts, will they be missing something important?

[iris0110]

I use Saxon 6/5 with my oldest, this is our first year using it. Now I should say a couple of things first here, he is high functioning ASD, he is gifted in math, and he has a memory problem. Math has never been a problem for him. He is the type of child who will burn through math and ask for more. I have never had to do much to explain a concept to him because typically he just gets it and he doesn't mind doing math work for hours (he would probably love it actually). However he has this memory problem so that while he understands concepts very easily calculations are more difficult for him. He always gets the correct answer but it takes him longer than most people. Where you or I might know that 5+3 is always 8 every time he sees 5+3 it is a new problem for him and he can see 5+3 followed three problems later by 3+5 and have to work it again. That is how his memory is (this is even more problematic in spelling). Those 100 problem drill sheets are intended as speed drills to build your child's mental math ability. I have to say that they are working for Kearnan. I was skeptical at first but he is much faster now, 27 lessons in. Ultimately though it is up to you whether you would like to use them. I know some people don't. Ideally your child should take between 5 and 10 minutes to complete all of the problems. Saxon is a bit dull and rigid but Kearnan loves it. This is his speed for a curriculum.

[Candy Lee]

You don't have to do them everyday if you don't want to. My boys actually enjoy the speed drills quite a lot. They love to time themselves to see if they can beat their record. Plus, they learned their multiplication tables thoroughly that way. My boys are also advanced in math, though, so that might have something to do with their enjoyment of the speed drills, as well.

[4littlenorskes]

Nope, you don't need to...you do what you would feel best to fit your kids. My main focus has been the Lesson practice and the problem set and I'll throw in different sheets a few times a month as a quiz or just a fun break from the regular lessons.

[NYAmy]

I just started saxon 7/6 with my 11 yo ds. we skip the drills because he hates them. he knows all his math facts pretty quickly/accurately so right now I dont think he's losing anything by not doing it.

[dirtmagnets]

With Tyler, we did them once or twice a week until he had the facts pretty well mastered and only occasionally after that.

[Vivhop98]

We didn't do them a lot during the year (1 or 2x a week). We are using them in the summer though for review.

[2queens&1princenmyhouse]

Thanks for everyone's replies. I think I'm going to do them once or twice weekly unless I feel that they aren't as quick as they need to be on their fact recall--then I'll up the frequency if need be.

Since I'm starting our official hs experience only a few weeks after they get out of ps, I don't want to overload them on mundane tasks. I'm probably pushing my luck as it is.

[lisathib123]

We set the the timer For 5 minutes and dont always have the page finished. I use this as a warmup. I dont do the warm up in the book. You will be hitting some fractions pages that, i think, should be done.

[2queens&1princenmyhouse]

Originally Posted by lisathib123 We set the the timer For 5 minutes and dont always have the page finished. I use this as a warmup. I dont do the warm up in the book. You will be hitting some fractions pages that, i think, should be done.

Good to know. I just flipped through the first few and figured that they were all facts problems.

Each week I'll check the upcoming week's lessons and decide from there.