WE TRIED FOUR DIFFERENT CIRRICULUMS

I really haven't been doing all that badly on Beginning Algebra. No, really, I haven't. I mean, compared to medieval people I'm doing quite well. Compared to three-year-olds I'm a genius! I really am.

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Anyway. Enough joking around - let's get real. I've tried four different cirriculums for Beginning Algebra. Pre-Algebra with Saxon math - never finished. Teaching Textbooks. Loathe at first sight. Tried an online course and actually got pretty far before finally crashing. It was always the same problem - started off a math book doing generally well and moving along quickly, while things were pretty easy. Then at some point hit a roadblock where it just got so hard and I kept making the same stupid mistakes. Math would begin to take hours every day to just finish one lesson, and I would try so hard to understand impossible concepts that I'd cry.

So! We switched to a book called Life of Fred. It's as serious as it needs to be. It's basically a math book for the creatively minded, for people whose brains can picture it but can't apply it. It got bad again - the good old cycle - and this time mom asked a friend, a math tutor, to help out. We went over and just sat with her and worked through a lesson of math together. It refreshed my mom and gave her a new perspective. Now she sits by me every day during math class and grades homework while I work. It's okay. I've survived thus far, and the book presents it in a story from which helps make at least some sense of the xy{setofallorderedpairs33y+77x=6pi).