Math Mammoth -- anyone NOT a fan? What instead?

[macmom28]

DS melts down every once in a while and I started thinking today that it usually seems to be when doing Math Mammoth (he's working on 5A).  He completed 4A Beast Academy and did well, enjoying it.  He has also worked all the way through Life of Fred to Decimals & Percents.  But, Math Mammoth…. seems to be a struggle.  I thought it was him - thinking math wasn't "his thing."  Now, I'm thinking maybe it is MM and the way it explains (or doesn't) concepts.

 

Anyone else feel similarly?  Any math curriculum suggestions to replace MM?

 

BTW, MM works for DD just fine (finishing level 2A, no problems). 

 

Thanks!!!

[Crimson Wife]

Have you tried assigning only half the problems and then making him complete one from the other half for every problem that he gets incorrect?

 

I use MM to supplement certain chapters in Singapore, and while I really like Maria Miller's explanations, the sheer number of problems per page have caused issues for my kids.

[SeaConquest]

We're in the process of switching from MM to Singapore. MM has too many problems for my son, and the format is a bit cuter in Singapore. But, my son likes workbooks.

[AimeeM]

I'm not a fan, really. It felt... incomplete... and I do not buy that it's "independent" (as it's marketed). Definitely not enough review, imo, and as I'm not a fan of reinventing the wheel, I feel like there are better options out there, that do not require supplementing and pulling from this book or that book.

[OneStepAtATime]

I didn't have issues with MM at all, and actually really like having the whole system at my beck and call, whenever I need a worksheet printed for a particular topic.  I find it quite thorough when you look at the entire program.  ...But my kids did NOT like it when used as the primary source for math, for several reasons.  I now use it for targeting certain trouble areas with additional review or showing something from a different perspective, or even to give myself some review, but it is no longer our primary math curriculum.  As with anything, there are some kids and some parents that will thrive with MM and some that will not.  DS switched to Math in Focus (as well as continuing in BA and other materials just for fun) and is MUCH happier.

[SevenDaisies]

I'm not a fan. The pages are too busy for me. We were already using Singapore and were perfectly happy with it. I bought MM to supplement, but haven't really needed to do so. My kids whine about the amount of problems Singapore has, so MM is definitely too much for them. I'm one of those who needs to do all the problems, so skipping doesn't really work for me.

[boscopup]

When I used MM, it worked best to assign about half or even less of the problems. Also, my son didn't need the incremental instruction. It's not that the concepts were not explained - it's that they were explained in such itty bitty details. Some kids need that, and some don't. Since your son has done well with BA and LoF, he might also do well with Singapore or Math in Focus. Singapore doesn't break everything down into such itty bitty steps.

 

Also, MM worked best when I took the workbook in MY hand and taught from it at the white board, then assigned however many problems I thought my son needed to do to be fluent in that concept. That worked better and sparked some fun discussions for us. :)

 

We did do ALL the word problems, as a lot of review is built in there. We usually did the cumulative reviews as well. In earlier levels, we used chapter tests to skip some chapters, but by the grade 4 book, we were not skipping any sections. We still only did about half the problems, unless the topic was difficult to learn. The only time he had to do all problems was multi-digit multiplication (4A, I think?). We switched from MM4B to Singapore 4A, went through 5B, then jumped into AoPS Prealgebra, which is going well.

 

I'm still a fan of MM, but I do think it has to be tweaked for many kids. I think the explanations are good, and I found the review sufficient for my oldest son, but the presentation of the book is just not as interesting as many other curricula on the market. I'm still glad I have it. I used it to teach my middle son subtraction with regrouping before starting BA 3A, since he passed the pre-assessment test but had that glaring hole in his prerequisite knowledge. A few days running through MM subtraction with regrouping sections (I think there were 3 of them), and he knew how to do that and has remembered it even though he didn't use it for a few weeks. We also used it for money when that same child finished Singapore money section and still couldn't tell me the value of any of the coins. :lol: (he's now doing CLE with his BA so he gets coins every single week)

[macmom28]

Have you tried assigning only half the problems and then making him complete one from the other half for every problem that he gets incorrect?

 

I use MM to supplement certain chapters in Singapore, and while I really like Maria Miller's explanations, the sheer number of problems per page have caused issues for my kids.

Originally, we started with two pages each day.  When he would get behind, I would assign half the problems to help him get caught up.  I am definitely not a math person so it is hard for me to really assess the approach that is being taken by a curriculum (spiral v. mastery, too incremental progression, etc.)

 

It took from fall until now for me to realize that this wasn't a good "fit" and that maybe it wasn't my son!  :(

[alisoncooks]

We were not fans, for a few reasons.

 

- The pages are too busy for my DD.

- DD needed more explicit instruction from the teacher (and I was having a hard time winging that from the pages.)

- The cost of printing actually was quite higher than I had anticipated...

 

We use (and DD loves) BJU math.

[macmom28]

Thanks so much for all of your input!  I think I'm going to look at Singapore math.  Can anyone tell me if there levels are comparable?  Meaning if he is finishing Level 5B in MM, would he be on the 5th level of Singapore?

[Jess4879]

We started MM as a supplement with my oldest and the lightbulb went on, so we were very pleased and implemented it as a core the following year for our two oldest.  It didn't work as a core for us at all.  I find the instuction to be lacking and *I* needed something with more handholding to teach.  By the end of the year my oldest was crying through math and I knew we were done.  We switched her to TT and she is doing so much better.  It's been a great confidence boost for her. We still occassionally pull pages from MM to give her variety and she manages them so much better now because she's actually getting the concept and not just plugging away to get through the lesson.  For my other kiddo we switched to BJU Math and we both *love* it.  If my oldest wasn't so sold on TT, I'd put her in BJU too. LOL  I love the layout of the lessons, I love the color on the page, the manageable assignment lengths, I could go on and on. LOL

 

 

[linguistmama]

I love MM, but my oldest started to say she hated math even when I tried various things like assigning less problems etc.  We switched to Singapore because I wanted that style of math.  It is working much better to have fewer problems on each page even though she may do far more than the 2 pages we used to do with MM.  We switched this year in 3rd from 3A in MM to 3A in Singapore and that went just fine.  I'm not sure about switching in 5.  I would look at the table of contents for each program to see if it looks like anything would be missing.

[deerforest]

We aren't fans. I never used it as a primary curriculum, but I tried to use it to fill in gaps, and it was never successful for reasons others mentioned.

 

She didn't like Singapore in the early years. We did some Rightstart and mostly a lot of living math until BA. Then we transitioned well from BA 4A to Singapore 5A.

 

I haven't compared MM and Singapore 5a/b but I would imagine they would be similar, but perhaps not split the same.

[Azalea]

Random thoughts: Printing pages was a pain. Text was too small. Answer key text was tiny, so checking answers was a miserable task. There were many typos in the answer key. Maria Miller seems like a lovely person and her videos have occasionally been helpful. With three kids, I have used many math programs, I wouldn't recommend this one.

[rmtzc2009]

MM just ended up not being a good fit for my ds (10).  I was having to reduce the number of problems he did and it was still taking a LONG time for him to complete the assignments and he was very frustrated.  First we switched to doing it orally with me going over the problem and that helped a lot but of course was very time consuming.  A friend recommended we try CLE math.  I never thought my ds would want to do workbooks and yet he is loving CLE math.  He is doing it completely independently now and not complaining.  He also gets his math done rather quickly now.