Combining Miquon and MEP

[Rivka]

I'm sure there must be people here who are combining Miquon and MEP, right?

 

My 5yo started with Miquon Orange when she was 4, just working when she felt like it. When we started K and expected a little math every day (either Miquon or games), she was working partly in Orange and partly in Red. She does really well with the math, but started balking and saying it was too hard, the pages had too many questions on them, etc.

 

So we switched to MEP for a while. My idea was that we could work back and forth between them. We started with MEP 1a and are sort of skipping quickly through the pages because it's so easy. She really loves the puzzle/logic elements in MEP. But I can't believe how slow it moves - like, more than a week of *just* sums and differences for the numbers 0-2. Today we went back to Miquon and the difference was just really striking.

 

How do you match up Miquon and MEP, or do you not try? In theory, Miquon Orange/Red and MEP 1a/b should both be first grade level work, but it seems as though they couldn't possibly be more different in level! Does anyone have any guidance?

[nmoira]

So we switched to MEP for a while. My idea was that we could work back and forth between them. We started with MEP 1a and are sort of skipping quickly through the pages because it's so easy. She really loves the puzzle/logic elements in MEP. But I can't believe how slow it moves - like, more than a week of *just* sums and differences for the numbers 0-2. Today we went back to Miquon and the difference was just really striking.

When you take a step back, there's a surprising amount covered very early in the program -- inequalities including "greater/less than or equal to", and setting up the different ways to represent numbers and look at addition/subtraction:

 

e.g. 2 (1>) 1 (i.e. "one greater than" I don't recall if MEP uses dots or numbers at that stage)

1 + 1 = 2

2 - 1 = 1

 

I'd be inclined to quickly take her through the inequality exercises (including the "scales"), the word problems, and puzzles until you find her level.

 

How do you match up Miquon and MEP, or do you not try? In theory, Miquon Orange/Red and MEP 1a/b should both be first grade level work, but it seems as though they couldn't possibly be more different in level! Does anyone have any guidance?

DD the Younger finished most of the Orange Book by Lesson 90, excluding the last few sheets of F, about half of G. I modified the clock exercises to use "quarter after," "half past," and "quarter to." I also omitted all of the length, area and volume section because I'm going to use Math Mammoth and MEP for this unit (and Miquon and Math Mammoth for money). She's now zipping her way through the Red Book as we take break here and there from MEP.

[Rivka]

Thanks for the advice. I don't know why I feel like I need permission to make big skips, given that that's supposedly one of the reasons why we're homeschooling.

 

Today I told her we would skip through, taking turns picking one question that looked like the most fun off each page. She took me at my word and went for lesson 66. So yeah, I guess we don't have to do the pages in order. And 1b looks like it will line up well with where we are in Miquon.

 

Thanks again.

[skueppers]

One thing I've done with parts of MEP that were covering math facts my daughter already had solidly down was to isolate just the problems that were about other things, like the word problems, puzzles, and inequalities. Then I used them at other times.

 

The other day, for example, we buzzed through a bunch of MEP word problems in the car, as I had loaded the lesson plans onto my iPhone just in case (I was not driving).