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Monday, April 16, 2012

Math changes

I have been spending the last few weeks to make some final decisions on our curriculum choices for next school year (which will start now).  The kids are ready to move up in a lot of things, so I wanted to figure it all out.  Here's what I decided...I'm only going to change their science and math for the most part, and I'm not going to buy a big boxed curriculum this time since what I really want is pretty expensive.  I'm just going to make changes and add things as I see fit throughout the coming school year.

So, the first big change we have made is math.  Both April and Aaron are going to do Life of Fred.  April is going to continue with her current book, and then when she's through we'll get either the next level which is Decimals and percents, or we may skip over that one and go straight to pre-algebra.  We'll see.  I'm excited to add the first Life of Fred elementary series "Apples" into Aaron's school.  We haven't tried it yet, but I'm hoping to this week.
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They are also going to both be doing Singapore math as their main math work since Life of Fred is somewhat of a supplement.  I spent much time at our local homeschool bookstore last week poring through these books to make sure I liked them.  I was mostly sure I wanted to do Singapore math this year, but I had to see them first.  As soon as I looked inside them it confirmed my thoughts.  It's simple and to the point.  The exercises focus only on the new concept learned, and you don't have a lot of repititon.  We did the first lesson today, and both kids liked them.  I liked them.  I cannot believe how simple they are, and I like the pictures.  I'm glad that I looked at the books pretty thoroughly though too because I was able to determine that Aaron didn't need to start with Books 1A.  It was too easy, and he would have quickly gotten bored.  I think this will be the right level for him.
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April's is pretty awesome.  It starts with pre-algebra which is what she is totally ready for.  She has been asking to do it.  Our first lesson went great this morning, she got it for the most part.  But, having a letter replace a number is a somewhat new concept for her, and she made me laugh when she was trying to put letters in all kinds of places they didn't need to be.  She got it pretty quickly though.
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Just for fun...
Other math resources.  I'm hoping to include more hands on math fun with books like these.  I pulled this book out, and of course she was definitely willing to do fractions with chocolate!  This book is fun to read though.
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More hands on math is super fun.
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We have another one called Apple fractions.  That one is cool because it also talks about different varieties of apples as well as fractions.

Desiree

3 comments:

Angela said...

We are still on the fence about what Math to do for Christopher. He finished up the math we were doing so we moved on to Math Made Easy workbook. But once he's done with that i am just not sure. We are using Teaching Textbooks with Hailey.

Sea Star said...

We love Singapore and Life of Fred. My boys get so excited to read through the apples, butterflies, cats and dogs books. They are pretty easy and quick and a fun supplement to more formal math programs. Sophie is finishing up 5B of Singapore. I think we will be doing Decimals and Percents with Fred over the next few weeks and then she too will be jumping into 6A. Algebra (or even pre-algebra) should be interesting!

I really need to get my hands on that Hershey's fraction book. How much fun is that! Math mixed with Chocolate has to be fun!

Becca said...

We have 1 chapter left in Life of Fred Apples. The girls like it and are looking forward to starting the next book. Kaitlyn's brain tends to freeze with math, so LOF helps a lot because it doesn't feel like math.