I have to admit that I was skeptical of this new math after reading so many negative reviews about it. I considered myself very good at math. My father was a high school math teacher, and he used to teach me math during the summers. I got a perfect score on the math portion when I took a college entrance test in Viet Nam and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in engineering. Following my family tradition, I want to teach my kids math during the summers too so that they are better prepared when coming back to school in the Fall. I was raised in Viet Nam, and math over there was and is still very much emphasized, and I learned math via the traditional approach. After searching and searching for some good elementary school math books, I decided to use Saxon books (the 7/6 and 8/7 books) to be on the safe side as these books teach skills well, and I have heard many good things about them. However, I kept wondering about this new math and wanted to see how bad it was. Since Connected Math used books were so cheap, I first ordered the 6th grade Connected Math book for about 3 dollars. After reading it, I was hooked. I knew how to do math well, but now I realized that I did not understand math that much. This book was a real eye opener for me. So, I bought other new math books as well: the rest of the Connected Math books, the whole series of the University of Chicago (UCSMP) middle school and high school math books, Interactive Mathematics (IMP) math books, Mathematics: Modeling Our World series, and the most-hated Investigations in Numbers, Space and Data workbooks. I like all of them. So, now, instead of Saxon books, which I think emphasize on memorizing algorithms without much understanding, I use the UCSMP books, Connected Math books and problems from other books to teach my older kid in upper elementary school, and I use the Investigations workbooks to teach the other kid, who just finished kindergarten. With these books, their understanding of math have grown tremendously. My son, who is ready for first grade, now could understand and tackle the types of word problem that my daughter found difficult in her second grade (at the time that my daughter was in second grade, I did not discover these new math books yet). My daughter, who will go to fifth grade this Fall, can now do fraction addition/subtraction in her head, can solve real-world problems, and can tackle increasing difficult word problems. In fact, she helped her mom the other day on a recipe. The recipe was for a party of ten people, and she converted the recipe formula to fit a family of four . All these results are possible because my kids now understand math and not just do math from rote memory. I realized that it is very time consuming to teach kids using these new math books, but the benefit is worth the effort. So, by spending a couple of dollars on these used books and by spending time with the kids, teaching them to understand math, maybe, they will qualify for some college scholarships in the future. So, if you are like me, someone who was skeptical of this new math, give it a try because these used books are very cheap, but the result can be very rewarding.