Horizons Mathematics

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.

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.

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.

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