Summer math

Way back in kindergarten, our school held an assessment in math and determined if the kids should be placed in kindergarten math, or 1st grade math.  We use Saxon math and some kids come to school knowing many math concepts already.  Cloudburst was on the bubble, but we decided to have her do kindergarten math to make sure she had a solid foundation in math.

Skip forward 3 years, and she has noticed that many of her friends are in the upper-grade math.  And she wants to be there with them. After being inspired by some home-schooling friends, I thought we could do something about that.  I explained that it would take a lot of work and a lot of summer time, but she was up for it.

One of her biggest friends, T., also decided to fill her summer with math.

Her mom and I purchased Saxon Math 3 for homeschool, and started in June.  There were 140 lessons, and they each took about a 1/2 hour.  At first we did lessons at both of our houses, but it seemed to flow better at our house so we kept it here.  The girls really were dedicated.

T. would show up at 8:30 every morning and we would typically do math for 2-3 hours.  A DAY.  I didn't quite realize what we were signing up for!!

We did all the math from a normal school year in June and July.  We pushed it to be done by the end of July so the girls could have SOME time off!

We had 2-3 tests per week and lots of homework to be done later in the day.

Of course, they had their moments, but overall they stayed motivated and on task.  I was really impressed.  I certainly didn't want to do this at their age.

See that big fat book?  That is the instructor's manual.  They spell out everything, including every word you say.

Here is Cloudburst's stack of homework and tests by the end.  T. had one just like it. There are about 300 sheets in there.

The last day was one of rejoicing!

And we went to the water park that afternoon.  It was a TON of time and work for everyone involved, but hopefully it will be worth it this year!  The girls have a big assessment before school starts that will place them in their math class.  We're all crossing our fingers they make it to the upper level class.


And at the beginning of the summer, we did set a big reward for finishing.