[ViolaMum]

I've used Miquon, Math-U-See, Singapore, and Beast Academy.

Beast Academy is for seriously math-y kids. It's awesome! But I wouldn't use it unless she really likes math. It goes into much more depth than any other elementary program. Except there's no graphing.

Singapore is okay. Too many books for me, though (Text book, workbook for student, Teacher guide. Plus the answer key is sold separately). It's a bit of a funky mix of spiral program vs mastery program. My dd who uses it hates the textbook. We have issues with her "losing" it regularly. The wording can sometimes be a problem in that word problems are often not phrased the way we speak in the US. I've had to work problems backwards a few times - find the solution in the manual first - to figure out how to explain just what they're asking in the workbook. Maybe it's just me, though.

Miquon is discovery-based math. The worksheets don't necessarily have to be done in order. You give the student Cuisenaire rods to play around with andto figure out the concepts, find patterns, that sort of thing. It's great for kids who are more intuitive and need hands-on learning or like the challenge of figuring things out themselves and really seeing the concepts take shape. The worksheets tend to be hand-drawn, mimeographed pages, very low-tech graphics.

Math-U-See is probably my favorite. Like Aerynne said, the video is about 5 minutes per day and is supposed to be for the parent. I let my kids watch the video, mostly because I've got four of them at different levels all clamoring for my attention. I'm there to explain anything that doesn't sink in. I don't use the Teacher's manual all that much, at least for the younger levels. (I had to keep it handy for Algebra this year though. He explains things a little differently than I learned them.)

I have friends who LOVE Saxon. It's pretty traditional. The one thing is that they say is that there are many, many more problems for each lesson than most kids need. One friend who used it with her four said that it was designed for classroom use; the first page for each lesson was to be done in class and the second done at home as homework. She just used the one page with her kids and found it to be sufficient; they were more than prepared for upper level math.