CTC Math = SUCCESS!

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Disclosure: This post isn’t sponsored — I just genuinely love CTC Math and wanted to share our experience. I’ll happily talk about them even if they aren’t paying me (but hey, I’m open to it). When something works this well for our homeschool, I can’t help but tell other families about it!

I was really unhappy with our math curriculum from last year. It was a spiral curriculum, and felt really all over the place, not having any lessons that really built on each other. I often found myself printing worksheets or creating lessons to try to fill in the gaps, and by the end of the year, I knew we were in rough shape for transitioning to 7th-grade math.

I had a few requirements for our math curriculum for this year:

• Online so my son would work independently
• Reasonably Priced – I’m homeschooling 3 kids and don’t have money to throw at things
• Work towards mastery, not spiral
• Have a diagnostic tool so I can see exactly where the gaps are
• Allow us to move at our own pace
• Do not lock us into only one grade level for a given subscription price

Looking for a Unicorn

Over the summer, I read so many reviews of different online math programs. You have the usual suspects – Teaching Textbooks (only 1 level at a time) and Denison Algebra (not available before pre-algebra). You have the online options that aren’t a full curriculum – IXL (great supplement). Even resources like Khan Academy, which could be used as a full curriculum, didn’t quite fit my son’s learning style, and there wasn’t a diagnostic.

I felt like I was looking for a unicorn.

I asked my friends on Facebook for math suggestions, and my friend Elizabeth mentioned CTC Math. I read her review of it, and then bugged her with a few questions. This may just do the trick!

CTC Math Checks All the Boxes

CTC Math had all of the features that I was looking for and a few I didn’t know I wanted as well (like being able to hide the grade level we are working on).

The first hurdle was checking to see if my son liked the online lessons and could understand the accent. CTC Math is based in Australia, and we are in the States, so it’s not an accent he hears often. What I didn’t expect was for my son to pay closer attention to the lessons because the accent wasn’t familiar to him. BONUS!

Our second hurdle was deciding how much of a commitment we were going to make. Were we going all in for the full year, or only a few months? After crunching the numbers, reading more reviews, and chatting with other friends who use CTC Math, we decided to go all in and subscribe for a full year. Homeschool families get 50% off, so it was the right decision.

Homeschool Math Success

My plan for math this year is to start with 6th Grade lessons and work forward. We start each unit with the diagnostic so I can see which topics my son has a firm understanding of and what lessons we need to focus on.

If there is a topic that he scores a 90 or above on (my choice), we skip that section entirely. It has allowed us to complete three units in only a month’s time. That’s over 43 lessons in just about 18 class days because I know where our focus needs to be.

That’s the best part about homeschooling, meeting your child where they are and going at their pace, and it’s incredible when the curriculum you’re using understands that.

Tomorrow, we will begin our 4th unit of the school year with a diagnostic. Then, I will review his scores and set up our lessons for the next week with what needs to be taught. And we keep following this pattern with each unit. Once my son has successfully completed the lessons for 6th grade, we will move on to 7th grade math and keep on going.

My goal is for my son to become more independent with his math work and rely on me less. I want him to take ownership of his learning, and with CTC Math that seems to be a real possibility.