Edited Fall 2020 This post was originally published Fall 2012. Unfortunately, this product is no longer available to purchase; the author is no longer publishing it. If you find a copy, grab it up! This has seriously been one of the best, most effective things we have used for math fact memorization. Our favorite math curriculum is still CTC. The flexibility and small steps work well for all of our learners. You can read more of our posts on the topic of math.
With the exception of daughter #3, math is the least favorite subject here. The 2 eldest girls struggle to get the math facts “down”. Our regular curriculum is flexible enough that we can work around this a bit, but there comes a time when you just need to know the “facts”. We have used flashcards and games that cover all the tables together. The results have been very hit or miss. Once we started using Math Made Easy by Glenda Brown James, things have started changing.
Less facts to memorize
What makes this simple, supplemental curriculum so effective? First, you are not going to be memorizing all the tables. In many cases, some of them are already known. The few pages spent on these “obvious” ones were great confidence builders. Then, teaching the commutative property (you might be like me and know it best without its proper name) 4 x 3 = 3 x 4 reduces the “need to memorize” part of the chart. This leaves only 72 facts to learn/memorize. Spread this over six weeks (or really however long you need – tweak it for your family!) and you have manageable bits that won’t overwhelm – yay!! Math made easy!
One page per day
The pages are short, one per day and not just math problems to write out (boring!) but color by answer, a code to solve, story problems and more. By the end of a week, the six facts being worked on will be familiar and (hopefully) memorized. I appreciate how the “why” is shown (and reinforced) by writing out the “addition sentence” for the multiplication fact. 8 x 3 = 24 is written as 3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3=24 and 8+8+8=24 whew! Multiplication is so much shorter and quicker than addition.
No groans
Why would you need to use this specific curriculum for something so easy? Mrs. James has done all the work for you. There are pages for each day of the six weeks, games to reinforce and tests for the beginning and end to show the progress made. I love it when something is so easy to use all I have to do is open the book and go. There are no groans (from the learners or their teacher) when it is math time – that is huge around here!
Disclaimer: As a member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received this curriculum at no charge for the purpose of review. I was not required to write a positive review; all opinions expressed are my own.
Hello Hillary!
And good work!
We just became aware of you on Facebook. We liked and followed you right away and have found your posts to be very helpful and hope you will add us to your list.
We would like to introduce you to our work: we publish Alpha-Phonics, a phonics reading instruction program that has been used successfully by many homeschool families for over 37 years. You can quickly learn about it by going to our website: http://www.alpha-phonics.com and can see our Blog at: alpha-phonics/blog/.
Sincerely,
David Ryan
Alpha-Phonics.com