Out of Love

I'm falling out of love with Fred.

Two summers ago, we spent a few weeks working through the Life of Fred elementary series books A to G.  I wasn't overly keen about it in general but Tiger was tickled by its humour so we decided to keep the last three books (H to J) for this summer.

We worked on Book H a few weeks ago but I am even less impressed with it now than I was two summer ago.  The format of the book is still the same as before, the humour is still the same, so my guess is that the change in my opinion of this series is due to a combination of my increased leaning towards a "living maths" approach and an increased understanding of how Tiger learns.

Two instances in the book stood out for me: the first was when we made a pile of multiplication quiz cards based on Book H's suggestion, to be used at the beginning of each lesson/chapter as a quick mental review.  Making index cards to be used as pop quiz is a fine idea but it doesn't work for us for a few reasons:

1. Tiger already knows his times tables so this step is redundant.
2. There is no clear derivation of how a x b = c.  It becomes another bunch of maths facts to memorise, although the book takes a longwinded way of storytelling to have you memorise those facts.  I hate memorisation, as does Tiger.
3. Tiger learned multiplication through understanding the relationships between quantities, rather than memorising sets of facts, so we are not thrilled about flashcards.

The second is how the book introduced long division.  While the reader gets a clear example of the steps to long division, the concept behind carrying and remainder isn't clearly explained.  I felt increasingly uncomfortable at teaching Tiger the steps to long division without having him understand why that is so.  The lesson became less of discovery and more about memorising a formula "first do this, then do that, followed by this".  Memorising yet again.  Sure, Tiger can now do long divisions on demand, but I am not happy that he is learning maths through memorising.

Some people might wonder why I am making a fuss here, given that Tiger has no problems doing long divisions whatsoever.  My objection is directed at the way it is being taught, that the method reminds me too much of rote learning, albeit a glamourised one.  I'm sure we can do better than this.

The remaining two books of the elementary series are being put to the back of the shelf.  We might use them next summer, or we might not.  We certainly aren't missing them.

Summer with Fred

There has been much interest in various homeschooling circles, both in the UK and in the USA, about the Life of Fred math series.  I decided to take a look at the sample pages and liked how the author has interwoven important math concepts into the story, while introducing broader philosophical and historical concepts in a conversational style.

We used the first book, Life of Fred: Apples, last summer and Tiger loved the quirky character, Fred.  We didn't pursue the series further in the year until we found time again this summer, so I ordered the rest of the elementary series , and Tiger read them several times by himself at the start of the summer.

There are rave reviews for the series.  While Tiger loves the series and I think it is an interesting and broad way to introduce some very complex maths concepts to children, I am not sure I would use it solely as our main math curriculum, even though I know of homeschoolers who swear by it.  I get the sense that this series is very successful with children who fear or hate maths, as the series is written in a humourous way to grab children's attention while exposing them to the applicability of mathematics in real life situations via the adventures of Fred.  For a child who already enjoys maths (e.g. Tiger) this series is useful to the extent of exposing him to concepts that he would otherwise come across much later, and to use them as jump-off points to investigate certain areas further.

Having said that, Tiger enjoyed the series so much that I decided to sit with him in August to work through all the end-of-chapter questions to make sure that he did not gloss over the parts that he did not understand.

Things began to become more interesting for us in the sixth book, Life of Fred: Farming, where concepts such as sets and factorials (amongst a host of many other non-mathematical concepts) are introduced in a straightforward way.  I like the way the author is commited to introducing seemingly complex mathematical ideas in a straightforward manner.  Nowadays, many subjects have been made confusing and complex to the learner due to poor quality teaching and/or unnecessarily complicated explanation.  Mathematics, when explained in a straightforward way, should not be an intimidating subject to anyone.

We have completed the series up to Life of Fred: Goldfish.  There are 3 more books in the elementary series, so it looks like we'll be seeing Fred again next summer!

**Note: I am not affliated with the publishing company or the author of this curriculum.  Neither am I paid in any way to say anything about it.  This review is done purely out of interest to share our experience with using this curriculum.


This post is linked up to:
1) Homeschool Mother's Journal: August 24, 2012
2) Collage Friday - All about the Haircut
3) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the First Week Off
4) Favourite Resources: August 24, 2012
5) Enchanted Thursday Blog Hop #28
6) Math Monday Blog Hop #64
7) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Summer