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How do you use elem. LoF as a primary curriculum?


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We use MM for math, but for summer practice, I bought the first 4 LoF books. Dd has worked through all 4 and ds is working through Apples. They are fun stories, but I just do not see how you would use it as a full curriculum. I know they say you have to supplement learning addition, subtraction and multiplication. However, if I was going to use it as a full curriculum, I would have to add in much more that basic math facts, to the point that I would nearly be writing my own full curriculum. What am I missing? :confused1:

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You might be missing the later books. The further you go, the more he packs in. it's a good approach for someone who can let go of the "formal" notion of math instruction and supplement with games, life learning activities/Living Math approach, etc. OR, you can do what we're doing, and use Fred as a jumping-off point with follow-ups using MM and Key to books. We used the early books to remediate, so did them pretty much stand alone with just some math fact drilling. Once we shifted into new territory for DD, I found she needed supplements and reinforcement of things introduced. I mean, he does reinforce himself, but not enough that every kid is going to get it right away.

 

We also doubled back when we got to Ice Cream and re-read Goldfish and Honey, because DD needed more time for some things to "sink in" before proceeding at Ice Cream's level.

 

What we presently do is start with a chapter of Fred, then work in a workbook that ties to a concept discussed in the Fred chapter (i.e., if Fred was going on about geometry, we work in the geometry Key to book). If a particular topic doesn't jump out, I just have DD pick a Key To book to work in, or we do something to practice math facts (flashcards, a game, drill sheet, whatever).

 

I think it makes a flexible spine, but isn't going to stand alone for a lot of kids.

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Thanks for the reply. I wish the LoF people would make a workbook or something to go along with each book/chapter. It would then have the potential to be a really great all-around math curriculum. I think for now, we will continue to use it as a summer supplement.

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We use MM for math, but for summer practice, I bought the first 4 LoF books. Dd has worked through all 4 and ds is working through Apples. They are fun stories, but I just do not see how you would use it as a full curriculum. I know they say you have to supplement learning addition, subtraction and multiplication. However, if I was going to use it as a full curriculum, I would have to add in much more that basic math facts, to the point that I would nearly be writing my own full curriculum. What am I missing? :confused1:

 

I think you'd have to let go of the idea of math instruction being a discrete parts-to-whole series.

 

I had my kid doing lots of worksheets of all different kinds (singapore, "standard," etc.) as well as online videos (like Khan) and math systems (like MobyMath), and it just never really got through to him. They just made him p.o.'ed. So I dumped them nearly completely.

 

Right now we're just doing Fred, with Vocabulary Adventure as a supplement (which we do largely orally, because he took up trying to do math only in his head). And sometimes a practice sheet from MEP to work on his reasoning skills (because if he doesn't know something right away he tends to shut down). His biggest problem is regrouping, so when we come to the practice problems I use old connect-4 pieces and some styrofoam pie plates and we play around with those for a bit. If we were doing a different program we would still be using those things, and with Fred I don't feel the stress of having to do 30 equations, which would just make my kid mad.

 

My kid is quite an abstract-thinker, though, so while I see how Fred's approach wouldn't work for every kid, for my kid it's a Godsend right now. But it's scary, even so. I sometimes wonder if I should try something else. But right now I'm resting comfortable on the fact that his math facts are ahead of schedule (except for his issues regrouping) and it's summer, for goodness sake. If he really stops being able to "play" along I'll reevaluate.

 

Oh, and it probably helps that both dh and I are also abstract thinkers. Sometimes I'll stop in the middle of reading Fred and restate a point in a different way. I don't really think about it, it's more that my mind is processing the information itself and restating is my way of ordering it out (and I pretty much flunked standard math curriculum on a few occasions). So if my kid gets stuck on something I can usually jump in and say, "well, what if we look at it like this? or this?" I suppose I would try to do the same for any math curriculum, but with Fred I feel that I actually understand the lesson.

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We're only in E and my kids have just finished 1st and K, so that is where I am coming from.

 

I don't see what we are missing using Fred as our main math. Math comes up in life plenty, and we have met the expected learning outcomes for our province when it comes to math, so we're not behind. We don't do more than 2 chapters a day - well, I think we did 3 once. I can see how if you blow through a bunch, you could miss things more. I don't know if LoF will be enough in the coming years, but it's more than K and 1st grade math I've seen through other sources.

 

It isn't sequentially spelled out. It is systematic, but that is sort of hidden. It teaches children to love and play with numbers. Which makes math fun, which keeps it from being intimidating. My kids were having fun and proud of themselves "doing algebra" the other day - randomly asking one another addition problems with a letter in one place instead of the # (like 4 +y=5, what's y? That's ALGEBRA! Ha ha ha...).

 

Learning math facts is not really learning how math works, it is important, but I understand why it is separate from the book. Fred is about learning how math works and loving it. Memorizing math facts being set aside from that and thrown into life in different ways (we play with things like sumdog online, a math fact press board from amazon, etc.) seems to be working well for us at keeping the interest and love alive.

 

HTH

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I am curious, what do you think is missing besides fact practice?

 

I guess it's the fact that it breezes over things so quickly. Like in Apples, ds has learned a little about telling time. Yes, it's an easy intro, but after 2 LoF chapters, he's not going to remember all we read/learned after doing 3 little problems. There's just no reinforcement. If there was a teacher's guide that had recommended games/worksheets/etc that would make it so much better.

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For your learning time example, I will agree It thought the same thing after reading Apples. Yet, my 6 yod son just finished Cats with me and is reading time fairly well. We practice when we can and I try to cover up the time in the book and ask him to read it to me.

 

The more I read Fred with my boys the more I am seeing how it can work as a stand alone, I just don't think I have the time or patience to make it work. We use Fred on Fridays. My boys do primarily Singapore during the rest of the week, but we have reserved Friday's math to be Fred time. This makes the boys happy as they think Fred is fun and a treat to get to read his books on Fridays. It has also served as good review and fun to learn new facts.

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Well, I have only ever used LOF as our main math curriculum. And I do agree that you have to let go of math as you know it. I didn't worry about math at all during k-2. We read math literature from the library, played lots of games, and just lived life. When my ds started 3rd grade we started LOF with Apples. Easy, yes, but there was so much fun extra math (and other stuff) hidden in there that he loved it. We went fairly quickly, doing about 3 chapters each day, and did all the problems orally. Once we hit multiplication we slowed down a bit so we could linger on the facts and learn them. I just focused on selected math games for multiplication to help him practice. Then we hit long division and I added in extra problems here and there to help him get it down. If he hits a wall with anything, telling time for example, I just give him a bit of practice just like I would with math facts. Since he uses a notebook to answer his Fred questions at the end of the chapter I'll just jot down 3-4 extra problems if I feel he needs them. Honestly, I feel my son has gotten an excellent math education from Fred alone and is progressing quite nicely through the books. I was curious a few months ago and had him do some pretests for other math curriculums to see where he stood and he was above average. Oh, and this son of mine is not good with numbers at all. Nope, not at all :D

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I guess it's the fact that it breezes over things so quickly. Like in Apples, ds has learned a little about telling time. Yes, it's an easy intro, but after 2 LoF chapters, he's not going to remember all we read/learned after doing 3 little problems. There's just no reinforcement. If there was a teacher's guide that had recommended games/worksheets/etc that would make it so much better.

 

 

Fred is spiral. Telling time from the hands on a clock will come up again. And again. And again.

 

I think in Apples it's there just to introduce skip counting by 5. In Dogs we're still recognizing simple times like 8:00 and 2:00 a lot.

 

If you have a kid who needs to do the drill-and-kill approach I don't think Fred will work.

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I guess it's the fact that it breezes over things so quickly. Like in Apples, ds has learned a little about telling time. Yes, it's an easy intro, but after 2 LoF chapters, he's not going to remember all we read/learned after doing 3 little problems. There's just no reinforcement. If there was a teacher's guide that had recommended games/worksheets/etc that would make it so much better.

 

Don't worry, the clocks show up again and again. My son is reading Jelly Beans and there's even a clock in there (and my son can definitely tell time, but there it is). Every time a clock shows up, just cover the time underneath and ask him what time it is. That's what I did. Somewhere...I think it's around Honey...there are math problems involving time - not just telling time. Ice Cream teaches some money and counting back change, too (money was a topic I didn't see a lot of). When you're reading these books together, you almost have to jump on opportunities to teach/reinforce something without the book telling you. That's the tricky part if you're used to scripted math. We read in front of a dry erase board and when I see something important, we'll try it on the board. Yesterday, my daughter went nuts after she realized that the midpoints of all 4-sided shapes create a parallelogram (in Edgewood). She had colorful shapes and their midpoints all over the dry erase board.

 

Since you guys are talking about Fred... Here's my thoughts. Like I said, my son is reading Jelly Beans. My son has learned things that my older daughter has not learned - domains/codomains, graphing, finding slopes, solving problems with graphs... When we were reading CS Lewis, he knew what a fortnight was (and my daughter did not). He's also better at measurements than my daughter. My son is a VSL and he absolutely loves LoF. He doesn't want to do anything else. I'm completely convinced that the author is also a VSL. If you look at his website, he also has poetry and stuff that he writes. Just looking at his "scope and sequence" (Lol) reminds me of how my son's mind works. They're messy and look very unorganized to us sequential thinkers. Also, I've noticed that my son does not need repetition. Once he learns something, it's there. And the LoF books do not have a lot of repetition.

 

My 8 yro is reading Edgewood. She is a math nut and is also doing Singapore Math and Hands-on Equations. She's also asking to do Beast Academy, but I told her 3 math programs is enough, Lady. She likes Fred so much that she has a Fred T-shirt and she drew the author a picture and wanted me to mail it to him. She also really relates to the character in the book (especially the not wanting to eat and being small). So, you can see her opinion on the series.

 

Here are my big complaints:

 

There isn't a "normal" scope and sequence. The author just needs to come out with a chart showing which math topics are covered in which book. (And I know that's not how that dude's brain works.) But, there seems to be more math as I flip through the book than what's listed in that paragraph showing topics covered. For example, I read the scope and sequence for Jellybeans and could not even figure out what math was covered. Jellybeans arrived in the mail, I flipped through it and said, "Oh, Good! There's a bunch of long division problems in there." I just wish his s&S was more clear.

 

There probably needed to be more subtraction problems and practice with money. There seemed to be big gaps in that department.

 

Some of the earlier books have topics that are extremely simple (like adding single-digit #s) and topics that my 8 yro had a hard time grasping. Trying to think of an example, but the one that comes to mind is the short intro to matrices...and she's constantly confused by "what is the cardinality of a set". I don't know why.

 

I do wish there was more mental math with addition/subtraction.

 

I have to say, though. I like the way he encourages the kids to do their multiplication flashcards (in Honey-Ice Cream).

 

Sorry for rambling! Remember, it's not going to be a good fit for everyone (or most people, for that matter). :tongue_smilie:

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If you want Fred to be a check off the checkbox, do only the problems written at the end of the chapter as the only "math problems" your child ever does, you will find Fred very frustrating and incomplete.

 

If you buzz through Fred at the rate of several chapters a day because that is how fast your kid reads, you will find Fred very "light" and lacking in content.

 

If you are willing to think about math in a whole different way, and stop and smell the roses the author tosses at you in each paragraph, Fred can be a very complete experience. The author is teaching the parent how to chat about math with the child throughout the day and how to play very interesting math games with the child that will illuminate math properties and really drill in the math facts right from the start in Apples; you just need to be paying attention and not looking for that checkbox to check off so you can be done. Make math a conversation between you, the author, your child, and Fred; that's how Fred can become a complete curriculum your child will beg you to do.

 

This approach will not work for everyone; some parents really do want that, "Give me a list of problems to do so that I can see what was accomplished" approach, and for them, Fred elementary will be really frustrating, or else just a fun supplement.

 

I have posted numerous times (just search for Fred threads throughout this message board or check my blog) for one example of all the things you can do with just the photograph of the pencils that add to 7 in the Apples book! We did not use Fred Elementary exclusively-- my son was already 8 or 9 by the time this series was released, and well on his way through Singapore-- but he has definitely greatly benefitted from it, and my older has been a Fred scholar from Fractions on upward, where the instruction is more explicit (but still different from the standard textbooky approach).

 

I think there is room to use Fred however it best fits your family-- if you are not comfortable using it as a complete curriculum, then go ahead and use it as a supplement. But I suggest slowing down, and trying to take time to not blast past some of the really cool stuff in there . . . the program really is loaded :).

 

In the upper books, he does tell the kids, "You may not start the next chapter until you know your 3X multiplication facts. You must EARN your way into this chapter. Make some flash cards, and use them until you know these facts!" Don't be one of the families who posts that their kid finished the series and never learned his facts because Fred doesn't bother to teach them. The author lays down a rule, and if you blast into the chapter without asking your kid (assuming no learning problems) to follow that rule first, then the fault is yours, not the book's. Most kids old enough to be that far along have the capacity to learn 50 Pokemon; they can certainly learn 10 number facts if they are motivated, before starting the next chapter of the book. I suspect those posts come from families who are not actually reading the books with their kids and didn't realize the kid broke the rules :). The kid probably didn't bother to sit down and learn most of the other math, either! The elementary series is a kid-in-your-lap-with-you series, definitely.

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