As a mom of 7 children, I have had to teach a gamut of math levels at one time. One moment I might be doing preschool math and then the next Algebra 1. Oh my poor mom brain! It didn’t handle that transition between levels well. 🙂
Or another issue I ran in to was fitting in the actual teaching of each individual math lessons. While I try to group kids together when possible, I found myself teaching 3-4 different levels. And I felt that all my time was teaching one math level after another— and nothing else!
For our large family, we have found that Teaching Textbooks has been a great solution. We have used the cd curriculum and books over the years, and last year we switched to the online subscription service.
This post contains my referral link which helps support this site. Here’s my full disclosure policy.
Teaching Textbooks for Large Families
At the beginning of the school year, we set up a daily routine that allowed my 4 children using Teaching Textbooks to have time on the computer to complete their lesson. If you have a tablet, chromebook or even phone– you could use Teaching Textbooks on those devices too by downloading a special browser. Our goal was for each child to work on math for a minimum of 30 minutes a day. This allowed me to be working with other children while math was being completed. Yay for maximizing my time!
With Teaching Textbooks, the children go through a lecture, practice lessons and quizzes. The program walks them through problems they missed and is self-grading. This is a big perk for me! This doesn’t mean that I just leave them at the computer and don’t keep tabs on their work or understanding. Each child has a notebook where they work problems out on paper. I check their notebooks, and check the Teaching Textbooks Parent Gradebook to make sure they are understanding what they are learning. The nice thing is there is a “delete a lesson” option, where if my student doesn’t attain what I have set as a passing lesson percentage, I can delete the lesson and have them redo.
Parents also have the ability to print or read the lessons out. This is helpful if you need to see where your child might be getting stuck or to plan ahead.
Another big perk is that you can put your Teaching Textbook subscription on pause. As homeschool moms, we sometimes have other events, vacations, special projects that fill a week or two out of the year. Putting your subsciption on pause extends it out.
Check out my previous post, 5 Reasons Teaching Textbooks is Awesome for Large Families for even more math pointers.
Will Teaching Textbooks Work for You?
While I can’t really answer that question since every family and homeschool is different, I can let you try Teaching Textbooks out for free! You can sample as many courses as you like simultaneously (each up through Lesson 15), and there is no limit on how long each trial lasts.
Then, if Teaching Textbooks is a fit, you can transfer your trial over to the subscription without losing the work your child completed. If you use the same email and password you used to set up your free trial, your grades and progress will all be automatically transferred!
Large Family Discount
Oh, and I don’t want to forget to mention the special option for large families. This discount plan caps the total and allows you to have 4-8 students on the plan, each subscribing to their own math level. Depending on the levels of your children, this can be very helpful!
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