Math-U-See Alpha (a review)

We've been using Math-U-See for just shy of a year now. I wrote a bit about it back in April when we first got the stuff, but since then we've finished two full lesson books and I figured it was time to revisit the subject.

Overview:
I'm not a curriculum person, but we're very happy with the Math-U-See method. I love how it taps into the visual and tactile aspects of learning with the blocks. I also love that the lessons are presented cleanly (without colorful, cartoony, childish distractions) but are still interesting, especially in the word problems. Concepts are introduced in easily understood lessons that follow a sensible order, practice problems follow a smooth progression from simple to complex, and review problems are included regularly. It's a good method and I'd recommend it.

A quick rundown:
The books don't mention age or grade level for obvious reasons, but we started Calvin in the Primer book. It gives practice with number recognition, the writing of numbers, and with ordinal, nominal, and cardinal number concepts. I gave Calvin the freedom to decide when to work out of the book and how much to do at any given time, which worked well for us. The book and blocks are great together and were a great introduction to math, although looking back I'm not sure I'd buy it again (more below).

Calvin finshed the Primer book in about four months and moved into Alpha. He finished Alpha in about four months and moved into Beta. Curriculum after the Primer is broken into two books: a lesson book arranged in chapters, each with lesson and review pages, and a test book with tests and activty pages for each chapter. There are teacher guides for each level, too, but I never used the guide with the primer so I didn't buy it for the later levels.

Just two complaints:
First, I find the organization of the books annoying. Lessons are in one book, and tests and activity pages are in a second book, which would make sense if it provided purchase choices, but you can't buy them separately so what's the point? The test book, instead of being oragnized by chapter, is first broken down into two sections—activity pages in the front, test pages in the back—and then by chapter. That means that I can easily remove the activity page that coincides with the chapter we're on, but I have to flip through the book to find the coinciding test, and then, because it's halfway through the book, it's not easy to remove via the perforations. I'd find it easier to use if activity pages and test pages were at least together by chapter, and even more so if all pages (lesson, review, test, and activities) together by chapter.

Second, the flow from the Primer level to Alpha is poor. The progression of the Primer feels different than that in Alpha, so moving from one to the next was a bit shocking. Also, the first half of Alpha was mostly review of things that had been covered—obsessively and fully—in Primer, but new concepts and view points were introduced here and there as well, making it impossible to skip forward. So, having completed the Primer level we found the first half of Alpha tedious. Since Alpha flows nicely into Beta, and although I'm sure the Primer level is laid out to introduction of concepts to younger children, the overlap is annoying enough to negate the positives, and looking back I think the Primer level was a waste of time and money.

Overall, though, I'm very pleased with the method and the books and would recommend them to anyone looking for a math curriculum.