Anyways, we've used Abeka these past two years. Saxon was our initial choice, but caused tears with great frequency so we decided to switch. I have looked at lots of Math programs and still am not totally convinced that Abeka is the best, but I haven't found another I like better. I like the spiral method of review, happy workbook pages, good teacher's guide, and a more advanced level. The kids still don't particularly like it, but I think a lot of that has to do with them not being super quick at their basic facts. That will be one of my focuses over the summer. I purchased a program called Mastering Math Facts about 2 months ago and have been using it to work with the kids. I liked the philosophy behind it...mainly that kids should have automatic recall of facts and learn them at a slower pace rather than be given tons of facts with little proficiency in them. Here is a neat article about it.
Pictures the kids drew around Christmas of our family
