Okay, we have the month long free trial and Catherine loves it. Too excess. She'll spend and hour and a half to 2 hours a day on it between the site and the worksheets. She thinks exponents and geometry are cool, likes the variety and speeds along at a good clip. The problem? There's no time left for Singapore or the Key to Series.
To those using ALEKS (okay, to my one reader who uses it :)), do you think it's enough? Sure, I'll through in some CWP and Life of Fred as supplements but could ALEKS be the core of a decent pre-algebra program for a 10 year old?
2 comments:
I'm glad Catherine's liking ALEKS so much. That's certainly the good kind of addiction, isn't it?
While I believe many homeschoolers may use ALEKS as a stand alone, we only supplement with it. Singapore and Saxon still make up the core of math for my kids. That said, the first couple of months we did much more ALEKS than we do now. During that time we cut back on Singapore and Saxon quite a bit. The good news is that when we revved up the pace with the core again, everything seemed to click with Singapore and Saxon ended up being mostly review.
When my kids finally hit that place where it was less review and more new information, they weren't quite so obsessive about ALEKS. Perhaps that will be the case with Catherine as well.
My son used ALEKs independently for Geometry and Algebra 2. After algebra 2, he tested into several transferable level math classes at the community college (he was 16 and a sophomore at the time). He is just completing College Algebra with an A without any problems. So...yes, I think it is fine by itself however, if your student is young, I would move slower and layer in other math....but on the other hand, if they are a math wizz and love it, why not let them "fly"?
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