Saxon or CLE

[Mom2agang]

I'm going to use Saxon from Algebra 1/2 and up. Im debating , CLE till Algebra 1/2 or start Saxon at 5/4. For 5/4 and 6/5 I would by Teaching Tapes and 7/6 on up Art Reed videos. Not that they will need video but independence with some interaction with mom when needed is my goal. What would be the better decision Saxon 5/4 or CLE.

[Bleacheddecay]

What is CLE?

[Mom2agang]

Christian Light Education

[Bleacheddecay]

I have no experience with CLE but my kids had Saxton in public school. They found it dull and too repetitive. They liked Math U See. I wanted to try Teaching Textbooks but they didn't want to switch. LOL

[lucsch]

I have not used Saxon, but I glanced at the books once at a homeschool expo. So here is my thoughts based upon very little!

I've heard that they both are incremental-spiral. However, I think I also heard that CLE spreads the balance of new/review across the year better than Saxon. That is, I was told that Saxon spends a good part of the first half of the book reviewing then shoots a bunch of new stuff rapidly at the end (not sure how that can be incremental-spiral, though). CLE has new concepts introduced at the beginning of each lesson, with lots of comprehensive review each time.

I'm just full of heresay. LOL

Take a look over at the homeschoolreviews site--there have been these same sort of discussions recently on the forum.

We use CLE. I plan on using through the 800 level, then switch to another curriculum. I do like that CLE has a workbook format.

[ApachePunk]

I teach Saxon Algebra 1-Advanced Math at our homeschool co-op (I have 8 students, formerly 9). I like it. The pp said it shoots a bunch of new stuff rapidly at the end...but it doesn't. We just got to chapter 70 or 80 something with Algebra 2 and several chapters were pretty much review of Algebra 1 topics but applied to the new concpets from previous chapters and my students were asking "why are we doing this?!? we learned this in 8th grade!!" and were all mad they had to do it. It is very much incremental-spiral, in my experiences. Each problem set includes questions from chapter 1 through where you are at, so doing the work means reviewing everything each time. Sometimes I think their explainations are poor and I have to come up with other ways to explain things, but other times I think their explainations are the best I've ever seen.