Horizons Mathematics

We started in the K level with both of my children. At first it was great but by mid 1st grade my children were burned out with the worksheet load of this program. Math took so long every day, and my daughter, who never missed a math problem a day in her life was starting to say math was her worst subject by the start of her 3rd grade year. After changing her program mid-year, I saw my younger son heading in that same direction but I caught it earlier. I changed his as well and they both finally love math!

We love this curriculum. My children love the colors and the workbooks. It has a lot of repetition so the subjects can be mastered, and it spirals so things can be reviewed. We have used K through 4th so far, and are looking forward to 5th next year!

my son enjoys all the colorful pictures.

This curriculum is very colorful and thorough. It is easy to use and my kids love it.

I've used grade 1 through prealgebra with my kids so far. I love Horizons math! So simple to implement, builds up concepts on the stealth, short and effective lessons, keeps old concepts fresh, and my kids have quite easily taken their math skills elsewhere.

The small sets of several different types of problems/concepts keep the math interesting. My accelerated kids had no problem doubling lessons and just moving as fast as they like. The more average workers steadily plugged along at one lesson a day and did fabulous. Rather than one main concept at a time this has a few concepts that are steadily growing in little bites, and often stealthily in what looks like a review set. My kids have no idea how hard their math is ramping up while they work through it day after day.

A common con I hear is there isn't enough instruction in the teacher manual. The instruction in the student texts has been plenty for us. I only pick up the teacher manual to make grading completed lessons easier. The other common con is a complaint that it has too many problems or not enough review. Horizons has been right in the middle for us. My kids complete every problem of every exercise of every lesson. Their math skills are rock solid and unshakeable. The older two Horizons kids have since moved onto competition math and are thriving.

We have used this math for our 3 oldest kids and they all respond well to it. There is a lot of reviewing what you learned in the previous lesson so it is easier to understand.

I love Horizons math! The content is very advanced. The presentation is a colorful easy to follow workbook. There is plenty of practice problems for the new topic as well as past topics. Sometimes the teaching explanations are not very detailed and require you to work backwards to figure out how teach. Not a hugh problem if you have a pretty good math background. The major drawback I am facing now is they only go up to Algebra 1 and it is very difficult for me to find an appealing and equally challenging curriculum for the rest of high school math.

After trying multiple math curriculums, this is the one that has "clicked" for my daughter.

I have used this curriculum for several different grade levels and I really enjoy it. My son is using it for PreK and K. The activities include tracing, copying, matching, and coloring. I find that there is enough variety to keep him from getting bored and the lessons don't take long to complete.

My daughter is struggling in math so she's using Horizons math to refresh her skills. She also enjoys completing the worksheets. There is enough repetition that she is learning the concepts, but not so much that she gets bored with doing her work.

Switched my youngest son from Saxon to Horizon. Saxon was moving too slowly - both the Kindergarden and First Grade. I love that this moves at a good pace with the spiral method of teaching.

Lower grades have worked great for our family my kids breezed through the material. The upper grades have been a different story. There is not enough examples or explanation for my oldest child so we use khan academy to teach the subjects.

I am currently using Horizons Math 5 with my 5th grader. Among the available math programs for this age group, Horizons is pretty good. The pages are balanced and colorful, most of the problems have enough space for your child to work it out (occasionally this is not the case), lessons are of manageable length, there are extra worksheets in the teacher's manual if you need to target a skill, there's plenty of review, tests are included, and the scope and sequence shows a thorough coverage of 5th grade topics. The 5th grade workbooks teach directly to the student, but the teacher's manual provides additional teaching support and suggests activities.

However, there are some minuses:

Each lesson has a main teaching topic (which is also covered in the teacher's manual), followed by practice problems which will be a mix of the new topic and previous topics. We found that many of the practice problems had not been taught already in this level (they may have been taught in 4th?), and there is no teacher support for those problems other than the answers (the answer sheet does not show how to work out the problems). Interestingly, those topics are introduced LATER in the 5th grade book.

One example: somewhere around lesson 20 there is a practice problem for finding the volume of a solid. That topic had not yet been introduced in this book and is only even mentioned in the tm under the objectives (there's no teaching support for it at all). After checking the future topics, I found that it is going to introduced and fully explained in lesson 80-something. Huh? Why practice a problem that hasn't been taught, especially if it will be taught? The placement seemed totally random.

My solution is to either teach the topic at that point or have my daughter skip it, knowing it is going to be taught later in the book. It would be helpful if in the teacher's manual there was a note saying, "this topic will be taught in lesson x." If you start Horizons at an earlier grade, this may be less of an issue, as I would assume that volume must have been introduced in an earlier level.

Another issue: many geometric diagrams are not to scale, which may confuse your child. For instance, in a drawing of a polygon, the 20 cm side was only a fraction longer than the 10 cm side instead of twice as long.

My daughter finds some of the puzzles to be repetitive, which is a turn off for her.

Overall, Horizons 5 is the best comprehensive math program I've found for this child, so we will continue to use it, but it is requiring some modifications.