BJU Math Grade 1

I am trying to nail down a choice for math for next year. For K, we used Singapore, but I’m growing nervous about teaching math differently from how I learned. My son has done a wonderful job with K, no problems at all. I am leaning toward BJU for math. It is mastery based and I think he and I both prefer that style. My biggest concern is making sure he stays on track with public school kids as I suspect he will attend public school or private school later in his education. It seems the 4th ed. lines up nicely with my state standards (Virginia). My friend let me borrow her bju materials to look at. The work looks perfect for ds, he could do at least half of it right now I’d say though. The teacher’s manual looks busy (I understand this was written for a classroom). Any tips for teaching BJU math? I thought ds might get a lot out of the dvd course, but I think that might be a bit much for his age group. I just don’t think he’ll need that much instruction until we are halfway though the book or so. So, do you think bju might be a good fit for me or do you have another suggestion? He is really good at math, so I want him to be keeping up with public school at the very least, we don’t mind advanced, but I think the Singapore approach scares me too much.

I think BJU would be great if he did well in math for K. I do Abeka math for 1st and 2nd and that is very similar almost the same as BJU and my kids and I did great. I have also heard the BJU and Abeka are slightly more advanced than public schools but I think working one on one or w/ smaller class sizes tends to help too. I did not use the teacher manual. I’m more of a person that likes to make my own lesson plans and not told how to teach like the manuals script out. But that’s just my style. I bought the workbook and then I downloaded and printed some Free math centers and fun worksheets that go along with the chapters from TPT (teacherspayteachers). I looked at the table of contents re: the concepts that were covered in the workbook and then taught from and did centers around that. Using the centers works great BC it’s engaging and fun for the kids and you can use them over and over to continue the use and learning of that particular concept. Every morning I have the kids do some story problems to get their brains working in math or I have them go count out some change in the change bucket to keep the use of $ fluent since they aren’t really using that stuff on a daily basis. Sometimes I’ll change up things used in 1 center and use it in a different way so that I can use it later in the year or even for a diff grade level.

Thanks. Im really tempted not to get the teachers manual. Looking at the work, i dont think there is anything i couldnt explain to him. He doesnt seem to really need much instruction. He just really gets it. He often grew annoyed by my demonstrations and manipulatives with k. He just wanted to get to the work. He doesnt seem to be hands on learner at all like i would have predicted.