The Truth About Teaching Textbooks | How to Homeschool Math (Even If You Hate It)

If you’ve been struggling with teaching math you have come to the right place! I’m sharing a discovery I made for how to homeschool math even if you HATE it! This discovery is something I’ve been successfully using for several years now, and the test results have proven that what I found works! We are going to talk about Teaching Textbooks today, in case you’ve read some controversial comments about it I’d like to share The Truth About Teaching Textbooks plus a chapter from our math journey.

Who This Article Is for

If you

• struggle with teaching math
• don’t have time for it
• have advanced or struggling math students
• have a bigger family and need help teaching some subjects
• just plain hate teaching math

OR if you are like me and fit ALL of these descriptions, then this article is for you.

Introduction to The Truth About Teaching Textbooks

If you’re new here, Hello! I’m Shayla, a mom of six, with kids’ adult down to kindergarten age. My husband, John and I are second generation homeschoolers, and I’ve been a mentor helping new homeschool parents get started and navigate curriculum since 2017 (so I’ve tried and seen a lot of curriculums).

In addition to this, as a homeschool mentor and influencer I’ve read long forums regarding Teaching Textbooks because like most parents who care about their children’s education, I’ve questioned whether or not what I’m using is “enough”.

As I write this we are wrapping up our 14th homeschool year and I’m thrilled to announce that half of my kids are even getting a little head start on the upcoming year-which is a FIRST! We’ve never gotten a HEAD start before but wait for it…….you guys, this year we are getting a head start in MATH of all the subjects! After you’ve read this article (or watched the video) you’ll see why this is such a major big deal.

Speaking of the video you can listen to or watch this article in video form if you prefer!

DISCLAIMER; this article is sponsored, however I would NOT have accepted this partnership unless I was truly in favor of the Teaching Textbooks. Read on to hear how we’ve successfully used this program for many years.

A Chapter from Our Math Journey

Allow me to share a couple chapters from our homeschool math story.

I am a second-generation homeschooler as is my husband. Neither of us had an easy math journey growing up and I think this is largely because the curriculums we were brought up on did not click with our more artistic brains. I won’t mention which curriculums here because I don’t like speaking ill of other curriculums since what doesn’t work for one child/family might be a saving grace for another. I will say, however, that when my mother started homeschooling me homeschooling had just barely become legal in many states and curriculum companies were very few and far between. One of the first major homeschool companies wasn’t even selling to homeschoolers the year my mom started homeschooling!

So both of us gurgled through math with what was available. Fast forward to when my husband and I met and started our family and people heard we were planning to homeschool. Some people even made fun of us knowing we both struggled in math growing up!

In 2009 I started on my homeschool mom journey. We didn’t use the curriculum my parents used on me because of how badly my math journey went, but we went with something similar that I didn’t realize was similar at the time. The curriculum went over horribly for my oldest. Everything from the layout to the instructions were messy and confusing to both of us.

So we switched to another curriculum. It was better, but still not great. The new curriculum was way too colorful for an ADHD kid, moved far too quickly, and had pages packed from top to bottom with problems that overwhelmed my oldest.

On top of this there was too much jumping around for me with the teacher manual. You see, in addition to our oldest I had a two year old and a newborn, I needed something open and go since I didn’t have the time or a quiet opportunity to focus and read the teacher training material and lengthy instructions. There were times I tried and even began reading the teacher material over a month before starting but it still was difficult with all the jumping around in the manual that was required.

Eventually I had two kids I was teaching and so we tried something on CD Rom, which was another bad fit, my kids kept getting straight F’s. At that point I had a toddler, and another newborn, and was desperate, in tears crying and praying for a solution.
Some homeschool veterans I met online encouraged me by telling me it was going to be fine, but my confidence was waning. I had just learned my oldest had inattentive ADHD, possible auditory processing issues (both of which ran very strong in my family), that we both had dyscalculia and by the way, we had all grown to hate math lessons! BTW, for those unfamiliar with dyscalculia, it’s basically like dyslexia only with numbers.

Enter Teaching Textbooks. I was so nervous to try something on the computer because of our previous experience, but I was desperate.

I don’t remember the year this was, I’d have to dig into my records, but I know it was after 2014 and I remember my oldest child was falling more and more behind, so after finding Teaching Textbooks and consulting with the staff we started that child in Teaching Textbooks Math 3. Again, I don’t remember the year, that child is about to graduate now and has worked through most the levels and is taking the Geometry course now if that’s helpful to you to know.

(I just want to take a second to break and encourage those of you teaching neurodivergent children, We have used Teaching Textbooks on both math advanced kiddos and ones that struggled, because of how the program is designed it truly is amazing for both!)

After beginning the Teaching Textbooks my neurodivergent child still struggled for a while because of the learning issues they had, but not like before. It took some time but here’s the best part, something truly amazing happened, eventually and very slowly that child started enjoying math. That right there is HUGE. Isn’t that one of the biggest reasons we homeschool? To find curriculum that will help our kids ENJOY learning?

It does get better though. Because of my child’s individual neurodivergence, they had been behind in math, but eventually they caught up thanks to Teaching Textbooks. They’ve been getting A’s and B+’s ever since.

We’ve been using the program on all our children ever since, starting in 3rd grade. Some kids move through it quickly, some slowly, sometimes they move through some levels more slowly and other levels quickly.

Side note here; How often do we say the phrase “my kid is not a math kid, but they are great at language arts, or my kids brain isn’t wired for language arts, they are more mathy”. Friends I just want to say this to that, in my research I’ve learned there really isn’t such a thing. If you find the curriculum that your kid resonates with, they can be good at both.

Little Known Fun Facts & Features + 28 Things We Love About Teaching Textbooks

These are things I learned from years of using the program and things I learned while talking with the staff at TT, and these are things we love about the program.

1. Teaching Textbooks comes with math tutors you can call. If your child is stumped (hello algebra) all you need to do is call Teaching Textbooks and they will put in a help ticket. Within a short amount of time a math teacher calls to help your child. All the math tutors we have had have been exceptional, extremely patient and kind. We’ve only had to call in 3 or 4 times in all the years we’ve used Teaching Textbooks so that’s a testimony to how thorough the program is.
2. Teaching Textbooks is one of Cathy Duffy’s top 102 AND 103 picks which is pretty serious business (you don’t get that award easily)!
3. For those of you with kids headed to college, the high school portion of this program even has SAT and ACT prep built in.
4. Since Teaching Textbooks is NOT common core aligned if you are starting with it, you definitely want to start with the placement test. Don’t jump in without that because remember, the levels don’t necessarily align with grades.
5. Teaching Textbooks is independent, you can make breakfast or lunch while your child is doing math!
6. Teaching Textbooks is a spiral program, so if your child doesn’t quite fully grasp a concept now you can rest a little knowing it will be presented again later.
7. Something exciting I learned about Teaching Textbooks is that it began as a private school for accelerated students.
8. Teaching Textbooks works well for both neurodivergent and accelerated kids.
9. It’s possible, especially for math advanced kids, to complete levels in less than a year. If you want your child to graduate math early, you can do it with this program.
10. The lessons with Teaching Texbooks are interactive. This is HUGE and helps kids so much! Math is so abstract and having interactive lessons and examples makes a missing key difference for some kids that wouldn’t be able to grasp some concepts otherwise.
11. Students can re watch or listen to the lectures as they need. All they need to do if they are struggling in an area is click on the “Lecture & Problems” button and re watch the lecture, (some of my kids use this feature constantly, some not at all).
12. The program provides “safety nets” to help students, and one of them is hints! This is something my kids love and find helpful. Hints are strategically placed throughout the assignments. These hints make it so my kids seldom need my help! You can turn hints off though if you prefer. The hints do have sounds effects that can be turned off if they are distracting.
13. Something we appreciate about the app is that you can pause the program for up to 3 months. This is great if you need the program longer than a year for breaks. This is nice if you have a child that has learning disabilities and needs more time, or if you have a family vacation or emergency-or for whatever reason.
14. Teaching Textboos works very well for both auditory and visual learners because of it’s design and interactive, well presented lessons.
15. Teaching Textbooks provides a second chance feature which can be turned off if you choose. My kids absolutely loathe getting problems wrong, and I do mean LOATHE, and one of the boys with ADHD often hits a wrong number that he didn’t mean to and then the enter button so quickly, so I leave this feature on!
16. If your child needs extra practice on pre-algebra and algebra you can go into the Parent Portal and find printable extra problems, the answers are provided in the eBook and answer key.
17. The lessons start with five practice problems, and are examples of the five hardest problem types in the lesson, and if you look in the upper right-hand corner of the practice problem, you’ll find a reference number showing when the concept was first introduced. This is helpful if your child forgot a concept and needs to go back. By the way, I want to insert here that if your child forgets a concept they were taught, this is normal! I see parents get really freaked out when this happens sometimes, and they worry that there is something wrong with the child or the curriculum. Usually there is nothing wrong with either, this is perfectly normal and why we review! Speaking of which, Teaching Textbooks uses a spiral method so if they don’t completely grasp something now it will be brought back around to them later.
18. One neat thing Teaching Textbooks does is provide practice problems but sometimes they give a new twist on problems and concepts they’ve had for a while so the child can see it in different examples.
19. Some problems in a lesson have a letter in front of them, these refer to the practice problem at the beginning of the lesson for the student to refer back to. This is nice because the student can review an example problem to help them solve the harder ones they are working on.
20. Teaching Textbooks has a gradebook that is super handy. The kids can peek at it if they want, some kids will be motivated to do better after looking at it. They cannot change their grades or delete lessons though (there is a parent dashboard that only you should have the password to).
21. The program has fun attributes, like reward stickers, stickers that unlock as problems are completed, animated Buddies for younger learners, and Wallpapers which I think might be my kid’s favorite fun feature!
22. There’s a printable eBook, you can print out the lecture, quizzes, tests, problems, as a hardcopy for your student to do their work on if you need to provide those for an evaluator.
23. There’s an interactive scratchpad as well that your kids can use-mine prefer to use a pencil and scratch paper and I don’t think they’ve ever used this feature, but it is there for kids that do prefer it.
24. When your child does math, you’ll get an email the next morning telling your where your child is at, which is super helpful.
25. If you choose the app it’s all online and backed up; you don’t have to worry about computer failings and losing everything, or a CD getting scratched or lost-which previously was my only complaint with Teaching Textbooks.
26. Something we love about it as a big family with high school kids in the mix is that you can download it on all your devices and it’s available on any device, anywhere, including offline for up to six lessons.
27. It’s super simple to get started with, you just create the parent and child accounts, and there is a super helpful walk through they give explaining everything. It only took me 1.5 hours to set five of my kids up with the app. This is in contrast to other math programs that have a lot of teacher reading and training you must go through-some of the ones I’ve used you literally have to start reading the teacher manual at least a month prior before you even can start teaching your child from them. In addition to that some have teacher reading you must do throughout the curriculum. I love that Teaching Textbooks doesn’t have any of this.
28. All the Teaching Textbook levels do include real world problems.

Is Teaching Textbooks Behind?

Every time I come across a lengthy thread discussing Teaching Textbooks, someone pops on the thread arguing that Teaching Textbooks is behind. Is Teaching Textbooks behind? Let’s explore this. I’ll share my experience and some of the research I’ve done.

Since we started Teaching Textbooks I’ve successfully used it on neurodivergent kids as well as neurotypical kids and we do yearly testing through Christian Liberty; we purchase the California Achievement Test. All of our children above 3rd grade are in Teaching Textbooks, and their test results are always estimating their grade at or slightly above the level of Teaching Textbooks they are in.

Currently they are in the same level that corresponds with their grade and their CAT tests put them slightly above.

I’ll say that one more time in another way to make sure it’s understood, when they are in Math 5 for example, their CAT test results put them at Grade 5 OR slightly ABOVE, as an estimated grade level. So, for those claiming it’s behind, there’s that.

In addition to this, I’ve read lengthy threads in homeschool groups where parents were sharing their stories, many who graduated their kids on it and who’s kids got perfect GED or SAT scores in math.

I remember one that stood out the most was a mom sharing that her son went on to become a scientist and of course had to go through entrance exams (this was a few years ago). His scores in the math portions of his tests were the highest possible scores achievable, and she said they used Teaching Textbooks all the way through. To help others in the thread though, she contacted her son to ask him his thoughts on Teaching Textbooks and if he felt that it was adequate to prepare him for the rigors of college science. He said that it was.

I’ve also spoken with math teachers that love Teaching Textbooks, which I think is another credit to the program.

Important Things to Know About Teaching Textbooks

The first is that there are literally thousands of people that swear by Teaching Textbooks, but every now and then you get someone who says it’s not good, it’s the worst, so we are going to talk about some reasons someone might say that and I’ll share a couple things to watch out for.

There is an area with Teaching Textbooks that many people misunderstand. It is that Math 3 isn’t necessarily Grade three, it’s level three. Level 4 is not Grade 4, and so on. This is the biggest reason a lot of people try to claim Teaching Textbooks is behind. They think the levels are grades. Please note that the levels are roughly on grade, however.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that Teaching Textbooks does not follow common core math. It also has its own scope and sequence which is a little different than other math curriculums.

If you stick with Teaching Textbooks through all the levels your child will have been presented a complete math education by graduation.

If you jump Teaching Textbooks then it might appear your child has some gaps and you will have some area’s you may need to fill in, but here’s the thing, this is how it is with any curriculum that isn’t common core aligned (and even some that are). That is why jumping any math curriculum can present gaps and challenges! Math curriculums are not designed to interlock with other programs.

I see all the time where people jump math curriculum and end up panicking because they find gaps, they end up thinking the previous math curriculum is the worst curriculum on the market- and this is part of why.

Teaching Textbooks is independent but please know that this is only within reason! This is one mistake some people make, thinking they can completely leave their child alone with the program, never check in, and rely on the email progress reports. You do need to check in on your kids and make sure they are doing the program and using it correctly.

One way to do so is to be sure to pay attention to the grade book, if you see that your child got a 97% you still need to look to make sure the Total Problems and Number Completed match. Just because the percentage score says 97% it does not mean the Number Completed were all done, making the lesson completed.

I suggest checking in once or twice a week at the least. Log in to the parent dashboard and see if your child is doing well, make sure they are completing all the problems, and actually doing the work! If you have the app don’t rely on the email that comes in, you still need to log in to the program and the parent dashboard and look things over. Note that an email will only be sent if all the problems (including practice problems) are completed within a lesson. There are times I told my children to skip certain problems because it was something they fully mastered and they did not need to spend time practicing it.

Also, make sure their scores are all to your expectations. In our home if I see too many 86%’s I know that there must be a concept a child isn’t getting, so if I see more than 3 or 4 we take a deeper look at that to see what’s happening.

Here’s the best part-if I can help them, I do, but as the levels get higher and I can’t help I love being able to rely on the tutors provided by Teaching Textbooks.

More Things We Love About Teaching Textbooks

Up until recently we used the CD’s. When I agreed to this sponsorship, we switched to the app. I honestly didn’t think the program could be improved because I thought it was good before, but the app is even better. I’m completely impressed by how well the program is thought out.

Teaching math takes a lot of time per student, if I were to teach math to all my children with other programs, I would be spending over half the day teaching just that subject alone, and I would not have time for teaching the other subjects that I’m actually good at teaching. I love having something to take the load and pressure off from teaching a subject I’m not great at and wouldn’t be able to do a very good job with (especially since I have dyscalculia and reverse numbers all the time).

Remember in the beginning of the video where I talked about how my kids are getting a head start on the year in math? This is in part due to the fact that it’s easy to complete levels in less than a year. It’s also because the program is spiral, and if I have a child that has fully mastered a concept I allow them to move on because I know that it will review again later.

I love that Teaching Textbooks does such a good job, as mentioned we are required to do yearly testing and my children’s scores are all perfect. Teaching Textbooks is designed to help the kids succeed, and provide support needed along the way. It doesn’t matter if your child is an auditory or a visual learner, has learning disabilities or is a math wiz, the program is so well created that it truly accommodates all.

This math curriculum is what has made it possible for me to homeschool math with babies and toddlers around, while working part time jobs, running the home and homestead, and it has completely removed the challenges and anxieties that used to revolve around math time for my children as well as myself.

Conclusion, The Truth About Teaching Textbooks

So, the truth about Teaching Textbooks is that it is a very solid math program. If you are looking for a solid, reputable math curriculum to teach your children math I highly, highly recommend this program. Like I said, we’ve been using it for years and it’s been a true math and sanity saver in our homeschool!

Friends I hope this article has been helpful, if anyone has questions I’ll keep the comments open for now. If you use Teaching Textbooks tell me what your favorite aspects of the program are in the comments below! Please share The Truth About Teaching Textbooks | How to Homeschool Math (Even If You Hate It) with your homeschool friends!