SunnyDays Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 LOF has just come out with three new elementary level books... K, L, and M, whatever the titles were. :) I was wondering if anyone has been using these. We finished A-J last year, and once DS finished MM4 (one more unit), I was going to have him work through LOF Fractions and Decimals & Percents. Just wondering if it's worthwhile to get the K, L, and M books, or if there is enough new material in there even to justify, or if we should just go on to Fractions?? Thoughts appreciated. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grover Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 I don't know if it's "necessary" but we're enjoying them :-) Your son is a lot older than mine though, so if he meets the criteria set out on the website (long division, etc) then maybe you could move straight on? There is definitely plenty of new material in them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 Are you doing something else for Fractions, too? Or just LOF? I only ask because we did Fractions, and dd did great through chapter 29, then it all kind of feel apart - she said at the end of the book, it was too many new concepts too fast, with not enough practice. We're now doing parts of the MM5 Fractions chapter, and she's getting it fine - it gives plenty of practice, we're only doing part of the chapter. But I just wanted to mention that she thought LOF wasn't enough on its own for her to learn fractions (much as she loves LOF!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunnyDays Posted January 5, 2013 Author Share Posted January 5, 2013 Yes, we just went through the MM4 chapter on fractions, and we'll move on to MM5 as well. Would it be better to go through MM5 before doing F/D&P?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 Better? Who knows!! We started LOF Fractions at the beginning of the school year; she worked at it independently on Fridays, and like I said she did fine till Lesson 29. At that point, it all kinda fell apart. It's not that she didn't understand things, but with an explanation and one or two practice problems on multiplication, with a couple of adding & subtracting problems thrown in to confuse things, she just never could get it straight in her head when you need common denominators and when you don't. She understood fine when I went through it with her, but she couldn't keep it all straight long enough to do the last couple bridges. When I realized that it was just getting frustrating, and that it was compromising the "independent" part of Fred, which is one of the things I value about it, I decided to just shelve it till we got through the MM5 Fraction chapters. At that point, she'll finish Fractions and then start Decimals and Percents, which should all be review, as we already did the MM Decimals chapter. So I think it will work out fine - MM for the mastery teaching, and LOF for the spiral review. FWIW, I think we'll be able to skip at least 2/3 of the MM fractions exercises, as she does understand it conceptually - she just needs enough focused practice with each operation so that she can consolidate the skill. She is a mastery learner, for sure: she likes to focus on a skill till she gets it down, and then she has great retention. For that reason, I'm thinking that Fred will be more effective for us as a skill review/refresher, rather than as the main teaching program. YMMV, of course! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 I have the new books (they're actually called the "Intermediate series", so I guess separate from the "Elementary series", which stops at J), but we haven't used them yet, and honestly, I haven't even looked at them yet. :lol: DS1 started LoF with Fractions though, after he'd done fractions in MM4 and Singapore 4. He is towards the end... just a couple chapters left, I think, but he's taken a break from it for a while. He tends to do Fred in spurts. I think he could easily finish the book (he loves fractions and fully understands them, plus he's done the fractions section of Singapore 5, so he's had more practice and direct instruction in all the operations). Anyway, I don't think the Intermediate series is necessary to start Fractions. Afterall, everyone used to start at Fractions. ;) But if the child hasn't already done long division and multiplying/dividing fractions and things like that, then you'd probably want to wait on it. I imagine completing MM4 is probably sufficient, but I can't remember, as we switched curriculum right after learning long division in 4B (we skipped the double digit divisor part of that too... I prefer the SM method of estimation and just knew DS would also, so I taught him that way when we hit it in Fred). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunnyDays Posted January 6, 2013 Author Share Posted January 6, 2013 Hmm... thanks for all the thoughts. Still not sure. Maybe while he finishes MM4, I need to pull out LOF Fractions and go through it myself. I do think I'll skip the intermediate books though, as I'd rather move forward with MM and then the upper LOF books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 Hmm... thanks for all the thoughts. Still not sure. Maybe while he finishes MM4, I need to pull out LOF Fractions and go through it myself. I do think I'll skip the intermediate books though, as I'd rather move forward with MM and then the upper LOF books. I think that will work fine. That's exactly what we did. I may get the Intermediate series for Mo when she gets to that point, but after MM 4, they should be ready for LOF Fractions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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