Life of Fred: Fractions

[SW in IL]

I just borrowed the Life of Fred: Fractions from the library and I read through it in 2 nights. I'm wondering if it might give my son the boost he needs to get back into working on math...

 

DS is 15 but is behind in math and English (writing not reading). We were supposed to use this summer to get him caught up and working on high school level material but instead he ended up spending quite a bit of time at his dad's and now we have out-of-state guests... and between that and everything else that went on this summer, very little work got done.

 

We left off at fractions back in June. My son watched The Teaching Company Basic Math lesson on fractions (the first one that introduces fractions) and was supposed to do Key To Fractions, Book 1 but lost the book (he claims to have completed the book but can't produce it). When we were working on fractions, he seemed to grasp the concepts but we only really went as far as things like what fractions are, how to turn them into mixed numbers, reducing fractions, etc. We touched briefly on adding and subtracting fractions but that was more to satisfy his curiosity (he was trying to figure out how to add something like 1/5 and 3/8).

 

The plan had been to restart our fractions unit and then go on to Decimals, Percents, etc., using both The Teaching Company Basic Math and the Key To... series books. I'm wondering if using LOF might ease him back into fractions.

 

But how to use it? One lesson per day? I really don't think he needs roughtly 1-1/2 months to go through the LOF book and then still do Key To Fractions. On the other hand, I don't want to rush him just to finish the book. Really, though, we need to get the basics done before he can go on to Pre-Algebra, Algebra and Geometry.

 

Any ideas? And are the other LOF books similar?

 

Thanks,

Sue

[SailorMom]

I think you could do two a day, but more than that he may not retain.

[Suzannah]

DS loves LOF and he definitely doesn't care for math in general. The year he began Fractions (mid-year) was the year we hit a brick wall with Saxon 7/6 and had to make some drastic changes in January. We did our standardized testing in March or April. I didn't have high hopes for math since there hadn't been much time for any of our remediation to take effect. But while his overall math scores were about what I expected, the subsection of Fractions was one of his highest. Definitely a direct result of LOF.

 

"Fractions" will go much more quickly than "Decimals and Percents" and subsequent books. You may find setting a time limit for math works better than saying "do 2 lessons a day."