UPDATE from 2024: My kiddo who used Saxon Calculus, First Edition her junior year of high school achieved a very good CLEP score on calculus. (She used the CLEP booklet to prepare for the CLEP test, and she had a few gaps that she filled in with self-study that we either had not gotten to at the end of the Saxon book or that were weakly covered by the book.) She enrolled in Calculus II as a dual credit at our local university her senior year and is doing excellently thus far. So her calculus journey was paved well using Saxon Calculus, First Edition.

POST: I wrote a post in 2022 regarding homeschooling with Saxon calculus, using the second edition of Saxon Calculus. I wasn’t happy with the progression of that second edition textbook for us. For my next round of teaching homeschool calculus, I changed and used the FIRST edition of Calculus by Saxon and Wang. We have used it this year for calculus. I am very, very satisfied with it. Very glad we changed. Very. It has been smooth.

It is weak on graphing calculator material, so that needs taught if your student has not learned that for another class.

Another minor concern is that because it is the first edition, some typos exist. HOWEVER, I learned this was easily remedied by pulling out the second edition text and solution manual that I’d already invested in. Although the lessons in the first edition and second edition do not match up by problem set number, in general, the lessons have been moved around “en bloc,” keeping the problem set together, just moved.

It has been helpful to have the second edition because it sometimes works out problems in the solution manual better or explains things a bit better than the first edition. So as a supplemental text the second text has been valuable.

BUT the sequence of calculus topics in the first edition is much more conducive to homeschooling by someone like me than the second edition.

Note: I think the second edition is geared for AP takers. We will not take the AP tests. I am not a fan of them. Too “box-like.” However, I have learned that it is a good idea to have your homeschooled students CLEP subjects that you feel they have mastered if they plan to go to college. So I do make sure that we cover everything in our book that is on the CLEP.

That’s just a quick update and blurb on our experience for those seekers out there. Here is that post I wrote before on the first edition:

Homeschooling with Saxon Calculus

And lastly, all in life is well. We are having fun.

Terri F