Speaking of Life Of Fred..

[kolamum]

I was really enjoying using LOF Fractions. So was my son. My son still is. I'm peeved with the author of the book however & so tempted to write him a letter telling him so. :lol:

 

We hit Chapter Eleven & he pulled a fast one on the kids. He told them the #1 rule for fractions and then said because he told them they must use it now. Cool, I can handle that. They then do the work after the chapter.

 

Now if you have an honest child or are doing the work with your child you most likely cover the answer page up and have them do the problems, right? Yep, we do. So my child busies himself with his work & then we correct it. From problem problem 4 to 7 there is no possible way for the child to get any correct answers according to what's given on the answer page unless they... cheat. No, really.

 

Mr Schmitt decides to tell the kids that their answer for problem #4 is wrong because he didn't tell them about all important Rule #2. :glare: Just as I'm easing my disgust over that we move on and there's no way the child can get problem #7 correct either unless they cheated for problem #4 where he also decides to let them in on All Important Rule #3 as well.

 

I don't go with the mentality of "tricking" children by making them look like fools. That's not the same as saying "let's play a game" and the game turns out to teach them some educational item they desperately were struggling with and needed to know.

 

I feel that Chapter Eleven leaves a child feeling as though an adult, one who was teaching them, has left them feeling slighted. Now, maybe it's just me, but I have serious issues with curriculums like this. We ran into this problem a couple of times with TT 4 and it made me furious then too.

 

I know several families who choose to use LOF for children who struggle with math. We use it just for the fun factor & to change things up a bit, but boy howdy how! That just burned me, & it made me wonder how many parents don't do LOF with their kids and how frustrated the kids felt when they checked their answers. And, if a child felt frustrated when they checked their answers did they feel prone to peek at the answer page next time incase they were being "tricked" again..

 

Anyone else feel that Chapter Eleven questions, and lack of being honest with fractional rules, set their kids up for failure? :glare:

[Mommy22alyns]

I haven't used LOF, but when does this happen in TT4? My oldest is working through that now and I'd like to be forewarned.

[PhotoGal]

Honestly the "voice" of the LoF author that comes through in the book bothers me in general. (Kind of smug sounding). I borrowed the Fractions book from the library once due to all the praise from other homeschoolers, but didn't enjoy it or find it funny. The kids didn't like it either. Right away in the book it says something about how when you were a "baby" you did math like (insert some standard way of doing math - I can't remember. Maybe adding? It just felt like the author was calling the reader a baby).

 

Anyway, all I can say is that I'm not surprised and I agree it is kind of a mean way to handle it. I don't know why so many people love LoF so much. :confused:

[kolamum]

I don't remember, we used TT4 last year. Hold on, I wrote a review for The Curriculum Choice and mentioned it there, let me go read.. Ahh, here's my direct quote from the review:

 

I don’t like trick problems. My student was dutifully working away one day when I heard a problem come up that I felt was a bit too tricky and sneaky and would merely frustrate my student. The problem was down the lines of, “If it’s 2:00 and it’s dark outside is that am or pm.†For an 8 year old I’m pretty sure he’d associate dark with pm, thus I felt the problem was a tad too sneaky/tricky.

 

As I recall that wasn't the only "trick" type problem. But I found that to be trick because my child would associate dark with pm at that age, kwim? He would not think 2 in the morning was dark because it's morning. That could be me and a personal thing. ;)

 

BUT, I do NOT remember any of it being as extreme as what I mentioned in the LOF book. :)

[kolamum]

Honestly the "voice" of the LoF author that comes through in the book bothers me in general. (Kind of smug sounding). I borrowed the Fractions book from the library once due to all the praise from other homeschoolers, but didn't enjoy it or find it funny. The kids didn't like it either. Right away in the book it says something about how when you were a "baby" you did math like (insert some standard way of doing math - I can't remember. Maybe adding? It just felt like the author was calling the reader a baby).

 

Anyway, all I can say is that I'm not surprised and I agree it is kind of a mean way to handle it. I don't know why so many people love LoF so much. :confused:

 

Yes, I get that! One of my kids doesn't mind it at all because he considers everything under him or in his past "babyish". ;) It's the way he's wired.

[Mommy22alyns]

I don't remember, we used TT4 last year. Hold on, I wrote a review for The Curriculum Choice and mentioned it there, let me go read.. Ahh, here's my direct quote from the review:

 

I don’t like trick problems. My student was dutifully working away one day when I heard a problem come up that I felt was a bit too tricky and sneaky and would merely frustrate my student. The problem was down the lines of, “If it’s 2:00 and it’s dark outside is that am or pm.†For an 8 year old I’m pretty sure he’d associate dark with pm, thus I felt the problem was a tad too sneaky/tricky.

 

As I recall that wasn't the only "trick" type problem. But I found that to be trick because my child would associate dark with pm at that age, kwim? He would not think 2 in the morning was dark because it's morning. That could be me and a personal thing. ;)

 

BUT, I do NOT remember any of it being as extreme as what I mentioned in the LOF book. :)

 

 

Okay, thanks. I don't know if Becca has come across this yet or not.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Anyone else feel that Chapter Eleven questions, and lack of being honest with fractional rules, set their kids up for failure? :glare:

 

Actually, no. ;)

 

Look, if this bothered your ds, then I can totally understand your frustration. But, when I looked at this I didn't see what you described - I didn't see him one-upping the kid, I saw him introducing a rule in a hard-to-forget way . . . and I suppose that if this were a kid's very first introduction to fractions, ever, then maybe it could be confusing or frustrating to have a basic concept introduced in the answer section of a problem set. However, I don't think my dd would be crushed if she messed this up - I think she'd smack herself on the head, and go "oh yeah, 0/n = 0!"

 

I don't use LOF to introduce new computational concepts at this point - I think the quirky presentation could be confusing. I use it to reinforce mathematical, algebraic thinking and to show how math is linked to everything else. And because my dd loves it, and it makes math fun for her. So, to answer another poster's question, that's why we love it.

 

I think it is a truism that a curriculum is only good if it works for your kid. I think this is *more* true of some curricula than others . . . ;) and LOF is one for which it is indubitably true. Some kids (and parents) like the goofy playfulness, and the insertion of important information in the weirdest places - it keeps them on their toes and engaged. Some kids (and parents) hate this - they want something way more systematic. Or just different.

[Dmmetler]

It didn't bother my DD because she was able to turn it into a division problem and get the answer that way-and then generalize the rule. And I think she thinks of the narrator of Fred more as a fellow kid, who DOES sometimes play tricks and who it's OK and expected to laugh at, than as an adult in authority, while she sees the writer of most books as adults.

[Nicholas_mom]

Kolamum,

 

Thanks for letting us about this. We have LOF Apples and really love it. My ds is doing math in his head and trying out math in the everyday of life. BIG difference for us.

 

I was looking forward to LOF Fractions next year or so, but now I don't know. I will have to re-think when we get to fractions.

[Meriwether]

I don't remember, we used TT4 last year. Hold on, I wrote a review for The Curriculum Choice and mentioned it there, let me go read.. Ahh, here's my direct quote from the review:

 

I don’t like trick problems. My student was dutifully working away one day when I heard a problem come up that I felt was a bit too tricky and sneaky and would merely frustrate my student. The problem was down the lines of, “If it’s 2:00 and it’s dark outside is that am or pm.†For an 8 year old I’m pretty sure he’d associate dark with pm, thus I felt the problem was a tad too sneaky/tricky.

 

As I recall that wasn't the only "trick" type problem. But I found that to be trick because my child would associate dark with pm at that age, kwim? He would not think 2 in the morning was dark because it's morning. That could be me and a personal thing. ;)

 

BUT, I do NOT remember any of it being as extreme as what I mentioned in the LOF book. :)[/quote

 

I would not consider that tricky. Ds7 does things like that in Saxon 3. It promotes critical thinking about time.

[PhotoGal]

Some kids (and parents) like the goofy playfulness, and the insertion of important information in the weirdest places - it keeps them on their toes and engaged. Some kids (and parents) hate this - they want something way more systematic. Or just different.

 

But this is why I was so disappointed. My kids LOVE goofy playfulness. I would have loved it if the book was lighthearted and funny. But to me it seemed more snarky. My kids like to have fun, but they don't like to be made fun of, kwim?

 

Anyway, I know many people love it. I just admit that I don't get the appeal.

[NanceXToo]

I can understand why that might bother some people with regard to LOF. (And why it wouldn't bother other people at all and how they'd just consider it an effective way of remembering a lesson).

 

I do not consider the example you gave for TT to be even remotely the same thing or to be "tricking" a kid though.

[nmoira]

Anyone else feel that Chapter Eleven questions, and lack of being honest with fractional rules, set their kids up for failure? :glare:

Two points.

 

Ideally the child should be checking the solutions to the Your Turn to Play sets every time they are really stuck, before moving on to the next question. Teaching takes place in the answers as well as in the chapters. If this is a problem for you or your child, LOF is definitely not a good choice for your homeschool.

 

I would not frame looking at a solution to a problem after making a good faith effort to solve it as "cheating." I would instead congratulate my child for discovering they couldn't solve the problem with the tools available.

[boscopup]

My son isn't there yet (he's on chapter 7), but I don't think that problem would upset him. He may even figure out the right way without "cheating". He's seen enough gauges and rulers and such that I doubt it will phase him. And he already knows rules #2 and #3 (as will as #1, for that matter) because he's done fractions in his regular math curriculum first. The purpose of those problems is to teach, so I don't see how a child can cheat on them anyway. It's the bridges where they aren't supposed to look at the answers (that's why those answers are in the back of the book).

 

I'm don't see anything mean spirited about that problem, nor does it necessitate the child get it wrong. I think he's leaving some room for critical thinking.

 

I also don't see 2:00 and dark being a tricky problem either. Math Mammoth had those. The point is to get the child thinking about am vs pm logically, because it's not dark at 2 pm unless you live waaaaaaay up north in winter. :D PM doesn't equal nighttime.

[Spetzi]

I had to get out my Fractions book. I went through this with two kids and this didn't bother me so I put it under the lens you suggested: that the author is 'forcing' kids to cheat.

 

We only cover up the answers, so the footnote on the problems page would be visible. If it's not, the child shouldn't feel bad because it was covered. How could dc be responsible for something that s/he couldn't see? I don't see this as an author trying to trick anyone. It's on the page with the questions not with the answers. So I don't see that the student or author made any mistakes.

 

#7, the answer is 9/9. If dc got that, then it's correct. The book reads "8/9 + 1/9 = 9/9 which by General Rule #3 is equal to 1." There is no condemnation or "You should have known." attitude that I can perceive. Then dc gets to learn that 9/9 = 1.

 

 

I admit that I am not particularly concerned w/"right" and "wrong" answers. If a child puts the answer in an improper fraction, I would remind them to make it a mixed number, but neither of us sees the answer as "wrong." (After all, 9/9 and 1 are the same thing!) :)

 

If your dc is upset by this, I can see why Fred may not be the best choice.

 

I wanted to address your comments because some of us don't get the feeling we're being tricked, just that the author is relaying info in a more imaginative way.

[MissShelly]

We are just about finished with LOF Fractions and my dd didn't have any problem with that chapter. We really enjoyed it.

[Cindyg]

Wait a minute. Was the problem because you didn't check any of the answers until you completed all the problems? Because we checked each answer as soon as we finished each problem, one by one. So we didn't "cheat," but we did get the instructions that were included in the answer.

 

BTW, we do not consider it cheating if MOM looks ahead to see how the problem is set up.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I can understand why that might bother some people with regard to LOF. (And why it wouldn't bother other people at all and how they'd just consider it an effective way of remembering a lesson).

 

I do not consider the example you gave for TT to be even remotely the same thing or to be "tricking" a kid though.

 

:iagree: A question that determines whether a kid really gets am & pm and the 24 hour clock is not a trick question. It is determining whether they have a basic piece of world/mathematical knowledge. Sure, an 8 yo might still get confused about that, but don't you want to know that, so they can learn it correctly? I don't consider my dd missing a problem to be a bad thing - it shows what she doesn't get yet, so we can work on it more. If she never misses anything, then we are working at too low of a level.

Edited March 9, 2012 by rroberts707

[In2why]

My general rule #1 is on the same page as the questions, so they would know to reduce. I looked at it and I don't see it as asking a child to cheat. I look at it as another teaching tool. But we dont grade LOF, it is about playing with math.

[fourcatmom]

I haven't used LOF, but when does this happen in TT4? My oldest is working through that now and I'd like to be forewarned.

 

We are also working through TT 4 and we have not encountered this.

[TXBeth]

I also don't see 2:00 and dark being a tricky problem either. Math Mammoth had those. The point is to get the child thinking about am vs pm logically, because it's not dark at 2 pm unless you live waaaaaaay up north in winter. :D PM doesn't equal nighttime.

 

I agree. I actually see that as more of a "giveaway" question or something to see if you are paying attention, especially for a fourth grader.

[Laughingmommy]

LOF style is not for everyone. We love the answers. They are immensely entertaining. I view the "Your Turn to Play"s as just that, the student's turn to play with math. Not a test to pass. I find that some of the most interesting discussions happen in the "Answers" section. My oldest told me that she ended up doing all the Bridges (in LOF Fractions) instead of just the first one of each section 'cause she found that the problems were often more difficult and the explanations more meaningful in the later Bridges (that you were supposed to do only if you didn't pass the previous Bridge). LOF humor is rather dry and a little dark. And probably not funny to a lot of people.

 

Pei