Life of Fred, mid-range books

[2smartones]

I have a gifted & accelerated child whose strength is not in math (he's accelerated in math too, but not by very much). We hopped around from one thing to another before completely starting over with LoF elementary. He loves it, he gets it, he craves it, and he flew through the first several books, only slowing down a little bit (to 2 lessons per day) when he got to I & J. He hasn't had any trouble at all memorizing facts, either. I've heard that there isn't enough repetition in these books, but I don't agree. He's doing great, and suddenly, he actually WANTS to do math first each day. So, I'm thinking about next year. If you're familiar with the new intermediate books K, L, & M and/or the Fractions & Decimals books, can you tell me approximately how long they should take? I'm guess-timating here when I think that K, L, and M can be the first semester and then Fractions would be second semester, but I don't know. Would Fractions & Decimals typically go into the same semester, or are they meant to be year-long courses? I will (obviously) allow him to work as slowly or quickly as he feels is necessary, but I'm asking this from a budgeting standpoint. I'm not sure how many books we'll be going through next year.

[lamppost]

:bigear:

[Black-eyed Suzan]

So, I'm thinking about next year. If you're familiar with the new intermediate books K, L, & M and/or the Fractions & Decimals books, can you tell me approximately how long they should take? I'm guess-timating here when I think that K, L, and M can be the first semester and then Fractions would be second semester, but I don't know. Would Fractions & Decimals typically go into the same semester, or are they meant to be year-long courses? I will (obviously) allow him to work as slowly or quickly as he feels is necessary, but I'm asking this from a budgeting standpoint. I'm not sure how many books we'll be going through next year.

 

 

My son usually does 1 chapter per day of the Intermediate series. He started mid-February, and has about a week left. So it doesn't sound like it would take an entire semester with a rate of 2 lessons/day. Each book has 19 chapters, although the last chapter doesn't always have a Your Turn to Play.

[kiwi mum]

The Intermediate books won't take you any longer than I and J, so you are only looking at about six weeks for those. Fractions may slow him down a bit as it does jump quite quickly after the basics. You may (or may not) need to supplement at this point, but if you do, there is plenty of free stuff available. I would budget on Intermediate plus Fractions plus Decimals & Percents for the year.

[MissKNG]

Also :bigear: , we are interested in trying LoF K for summer fun.

[Runningmom80]

So do you use these as your main curricula? Just curious, I've been too afraid to jump completely to this.

 

 

My DS loves LoF too, but he's going through the books so fast, I feel like they are going to be over and I won't know what to do next. He is only about to start F, we are waiting for it in the mail. But he's taking only 3 weeks per book, so we will be done with J by the end of the summer.

 

 

I'm glad to hear there is a slowdown coming. He also does at least 2 chapters a day.

[kiwi mum]

So do you use these as your main curricula? Just curious, I've been too afraid to jump completely to this.

I've never used the elementary books on their own but I have used the High School books (Beginning Algebra to Trig) as our only curricula. I have only used the Elementary books to fill in gaps for an older student. Logan started straight into Fractions at age 7 since that was the first book available at that time.

 

My DS loves LoF too, but he's going through the books so fast, I feel like they are going to be over and I won't know what to do next. He is only about to start F, we are waiting for it in the mail. But he's taking only 3 weeks per book, so we will be done with J by the end of the summer.

If you are using it as a supplement, he will have come across a lot of the concepts in his other program already. At some point you will pass your other program and he will naturally slow down in Fred. G will introduce multiplication and by the end of H they are expected to have all the times tables memorised. This will slow most kids down.

 

Even if you are done with J by the end of the summer you can go on to K, L and M. Then you have two options. You can either go back and start the series again, getting more out of it the second time through, or if your child is already solid on all the concepts up to that point you can move on to fractions.

 

I'm glad to hear there is a slowdown coming. He also does at least 2 chapters a day.

 

[2smartones]

Yes, we use Fred as our primary curriculum now. We've used a bazillion other things in the past. I'll plan on getting through all 5 books next year, then (K, L, M and the F&D books). Thanks for your insight!

[Runningmom80]

We are actually only doing LoF at the moment, because he hates everything else, so I was speaking to that. I was planning on starting something new, actually going back to Singapore once he finished J, but if I can just keep using Fred, he would definitely be happier. I'm just not sure there is enough content for him personally. He doesn't really intuit math, and we haven't gotten to multiplication yet so I'm not sure how that's going to go over. He's done a little here and there, but noting too indepth.

 

So I guess My question is how does one make this a full curricula? Are you supplementing with something else or your kids don't need much practice as far as math facts?

 

I actually just ordered Singapore yesterday, after convincing myself that LoF wasn't going to be enough, so now of course, I'm second (third?) guessing myself.

 

 

Srry for the thread hijack OP!

 

Eta: I was trying to quote kiwi mom, I have no idea what went wrong. Lol

[Black-eyed Suzan]

We are actually only doing LoF at the moment, because he hates everything else, so I was speaking to that. I was planning on starting something new, actually going back to Singapore once he finished J, but if I can just keep using Fred, he would definitely be happier. I'm just not sure there is enough content for him personally. He doesn't really intuit math, and we haven't gotten to multiplication yet so I'm not sure how that's going to go over. He's done a little here and there, but noting too indepth.

 

So I guess My question is how does one make this a full curricula? Are you supplementing with something else or your kids don't need much practice as far as math facts?

 

I actually just ordered Singapore yesterday, after convincing myself that LoF wasn't going to be enough, so now of course, I'm second (third?) guessing myself.

 

 

Srry for the thread hijack OP!

 

Eta: I was trying to quote kiwi mom, I have no idea what went wrong. Lol

 

We have been using LOF as a full curriculum (only doing BA occasionally), but I feel like DS1 needs more practice to really solidify multi-digit multiplication and subtraction. After we finish LOF M next week, I'll switch completely to BA until we finish that, then decide whether to add Singapore to LOF or get the single subject blue MM books to supplement LOF.

 

In other words, I think you did the right thing. :laugh:

[Runningmom80]

 

 

We have been using LOF as a full curriculum (only doing BA occasionally), but I feel like DS1 needs more practice to really solidify multi-digit multiplication and subtraction. After we finish LOF M next week, I'll switch completely to BA until we finish that, then decide whether to add Singapore to LOF or get the single subject blue MM books to supplement LOF.

 

In other words, I think you did the right thing. :laugh:

 

Thanks!

 

 

We actually did some Singapore yesterday, and it was much better this time around. I think he just needed to mature a little bit.

 

 

[Ravin]

DD hit a wall when we got to Ice Cream, so we backtracked and are re-reading from Goldfish on and trying out Saxon, which DD hates.

 

Going through this second time, what seems to make a difference is to provide further instruction and practice on anything in Fred that DD gets hung up on, and bringing up the rear with saxon so that it's review of what she's seen in Fred (for your son that much review may not be necessary). I just got the Key To books and am probably also going to get some MM blue books, so we can supplement. In the fall we're also going to do the process skills series to work on DD's problem solving.

[boscopup]

Fractions and D&P won't take a whole year each. My son did Fractions alongside Singapore,, though we took a break for a while, so I don't know how long it took him. He finished it early last week and started D&P, working for 30 minutes per day ( since we finished Singapore for the year), and he's been doing at least 2 chapters per day in that time. I think there are around 30ish chapters. Now you might go slower using Fred as your main intro to the concepts. My son is reviewing things he learned in Singapore already. But I'd probably assume that you'll work through them relatively quickly - a chapter per day seems reasonable, plus time to do the bridges (there are 5 tries, so you can either follow the recommendation of doing as many as you need to pass, or you could have him do all the bridges for more practice. I've seen people do it both ways).

 

I don't know how long the middle books take. I have them, but the child using the elementary series is only on Edgewood.

[dbmamaz]

I have never used any LOF below fractions (unless you could physics, but my teen did that one independently and quickly, so i didnt see much)

 

My 9 yo started fractions last year and finished it this year, then took a break for the first Elements of Math class, then we read a murderous maths books, and we will be done with LOF decimals in 3 more days. Next we'll do maybe 1 week of extra practice for multi-digit multiplication (because he insists on doing it in his head and si making too many errors with 3 digit numbers), then move on to Zaccaro challenge math. When we finish that, we'll probably move on to pre-algebra.

 

So, i guess the LOF books are too short to keep you busy doing math every day, but i think they do a good job of covering subjects (and reviewing the previous subjects) as long as you supplement where you need to

[mbuchanan77]

I have DD 12 and DS 9 both using LOF. We use it as our only math curriculum. Previously, we used Singapore. LOF is a breath of fresh air and my kids now LOVE math. DD did Fractions and Decimals in one semester which consisted of one lesson a day. She did the bridges until she got the required amount right to pass, sometimes 1, sometimes 3 tries :-) DS also does one chapter a day in the elementary series, and I believe we completed 4 books this year. He is going slower the farther we progress as the material gets harder. This was the 1st year we used Fred exclusively and his standardized test scores improved dramatically.

[Momof3littles]

This is our first time using Fred. DS1 is 9 yo and is wrapping up SM 5B right now. He seems to be burned out a bit with SM, so I rotated in some LoF as he likes that literature based approach in other subjects. He's been jumping into it daily and is excited by it. I think some of it is very easy for him, but he's enjoying it, and it is reinforcing some things from SM, and introducing a few new concepts for him (volume of a cone was one he did recently). He's simultaneously working through the Pre Algebra 1 book and the Decimals book. Mostly the pre-Alg. I have Jacobs here and AoPS pre-algebra for next year, but I'm not sure he's ready for AoPS. His frustration tolerance is improving but I"m not sure he's there yet ;)

[Oak Knoll Mom]

So do you use these as your main curricula? Just curious, I've been too afraid to jump completely to this.

 

 

My DS loves LoF too, but he's going through the books so fast, I feel like they are going to be over and I won't know what to do next. He is only about to start F, we are waiting for it in the mail. But he's taking only 3 weeks per book, so we will be done with J by the end of the summer.

 

 

I'm glad to hear there is a slowdown coming. He also does at least 2 chapters a day.

 

 

The author recommends taking a little break, then starting over back at Apples if your child is younger than 5th grade.