We found one (only one) at our local library (Edgewood) and DS4 loves it so far - we were thinking about getting more but a couple of things:
1. There seems to be hints of religious stuff sprinkled in there - does that happen a lot? How strenuously does the author push it?
2. They are SO expensive. Does anyone have any suggestions for finding any of the books on the cheap? We already looked on ebay, half.com and the like. I just want to magically discover a set someone isn't using at a garage sale or something...
I believe I have seen references to the Life of Fred books on this forum before. To the people who use them - do you like them? Do they work well for your DCs? Is there anything comparable (and cheaper? lol). To me, they remind a bit of Penrose, which DS loves as well.
Thanks so much!
DD11s learning center (like a school, but for homeschoolers) uses this curriculum. They specifically state in their class descriptions that while there is minimal religious content, they feel like the strength of the curriculum outweighs that concern (they are very secular and inclusive).
However, having had a couple of years of Life of Fred classes there, DD doesn't like it. Now, math is not her strongest subject, and at first the friendly narrative based nature of the curriculum appealed to her. But after a while it got old. She says she feels like it's hard to find the actual math in all the story and she doesn't feel like the books actually teach the math so much as how to apply it to real world situations. I guess she felt that there was a gap.
I think the teachers did too though. One teacher supplemented with some very detailed worksheets that demonstrated the problem solving step by step. She reviewed this with the class in addition to using the book and this worked well for DD. The other instructor supplemented with IXL (because in her view the weakness was a lack of practice problems). This worked less well because IXL's smart scoring fed DD's perfectionism and just drove her nuts.
I should also say having watched her do the practice problems that the books are not very well laid out if you want to go back and refresh a skill for yourself or double check an answer. It's like finding a quote in a novel as opposed to a section in a text book or user's guide.
She's currently doing her math at Mathnasium (not as tutoring, but as a complete curriculum) and it's been pretty good. They identified some basic problem solving gaps that DD is now working on (we noticed this as well). She also generally enjoys the tutoring sessions and feels like she's really learning math.
We have been working through the elementary (10 books) set off and on for a while now. I think we are maybe on book 5 or 6. We just read them every once in a while and DD8 seems to enjoy them much more than DD10. We've come across some religious content, but not much and it seems to be (to us) just a hint of something mentioned now and then. I don't know about the other elementary books we haven't made it to yet or the upper level books.
Thanks, guys. We will see what happens when we finish Edgewood. If DS is itching for more, maybe we'll just suck it up and buy the next one. But DH was commenting that Fred really seems just...unhappy. Kind of odd. So we'll just have to feel it out.
I appreciate the feedback
We just got the first four books from the library. Our local library district didn't have it but we did a search on the broader system which allows us access to stuff from the whole Front Range (Ft. Collins to Colorado Springs) including everything from municipal libraries to university libraries. We've had good luck tracking down some pretty obscure stuff. Have you tried looking beyond your local library system?
DS loved the Murderous Maths series so someone suggested these. So far, DS has given them barely a passing glance. "Mom, it's SUMMER." Next week his older sisters are away at camp so maybe he'll be bored enough to sit down and take a look. I'll let you know if we have any luck.
My girls (9 and 10) love Fred. The author suggests that you start at the beginning so we did, but the first ones were too simple so we jumped up to mid level and are having fun (a lot of this math is simple as well but mixed in with some items that are new to my girls). We have run across one item in the lower level books that kind of surprised me - Fred finds out that animals are put to death in animal shelters if no one adopts them. My girls didn't know that so we ended up with a big discussion about that topic. It might be a bit much if you have a younger child who is sensitive.
PS - we found Life of Fred books via an interlibrary loan.
There's also some other stuff that is not in the physics book but is in the later books about dating, boy girl relationships, and kissing, etc. And it's not so much in a healthy sort of way IMO. Stuff about the girl fantasizing about the wedding while the boy is writing a geometry proof. I don't know if you'd call it sexist.
In Peanuts, Lucy is forever distracting and (unsuccessfully) wooing Schroeder while he is practicing the piano. She's even worse to Charlie Brown and is generally awful. I'm not going to stop my children, including my daughter, from reading Peanuts. I doubt that they are strongly influenced in the long term by the fictional characters they come across.
I don't get the point of structuring a textbook in this way. It seems like a huge waste of time if you just want to quickly learn some stuff.
If I were a child, I would absolutely detest having learning material wrapped up in a story like that (with the obvious exception of learning about literature itself).
I don't get the point of structuring a textbook in this way. It seems like a huge waste of time if you just want to quickly learn some stuff.
If I were a child, I would absolutely detest having learning material wrapped up in a story like that (with the obvious exception of learning about literature itself).
It's the spoonful of sugar idea. I don't use Life of Fred as a primary textbook for my children and certainly would not restrict them to such math books, but some children may enjoy the story so much that they read and reread the books and learn some math almost through osmosis. On occasion my eldest son mentions some mathematical concept, for example Cramer's Rule, that he read about in Life of Fred.
Another series of narrative math books is (Algebra/Geometry/Trigonometry) the Easy Way, by Douglas Downing. They are all available used for the price of shipping on Amazon. You can look at the reviews and see that many people who were surprised by the format have a reaction similar to yours regarding LoF, but a fair number of people like the books, too. I did, and my eldest son did read them at about age 8.
I don't get the point of structuring a textbook in this way. It seems like a huge waste of time if you just want to quickly learn some stuff.
If I were a child, I would absolutely detest having learning material wrapped up in a story like that (with the obvious exception of learning about literature itself).
But if you want to entertain yourself, and you enjoy both reading and maths? We haven't tried Fred, but DS loves Lucy and Stephen Hawking's George books, which do something similar with physics.
I tried looking up some information on "Life of Fred" last night and found some PDF's of the books. I am not impressed. Partly because my son would absolutely hate the format. Second because I see a LOT of religious content in the short amount I read. And most important because author doesn't seem to really understand higher level math or logic as illustrated by this passage. Mathematicians don't need to "believe" in infinite sets they use proofs, the proofs are just something you wouldn't normally see in an Algebra I text.
Some people like to argue that infinite sets don’t really exist. “After all,” they say, “they’re just a figment of your imagination. It’s all in your head.”
By that same argument I could prove that pain doesn’t exist.
When you cut your finger, the pain is experienced in your brain.
And the pleasure of a bite of warm pizza doesn’t exist.
And the number three doesn’t exist.
And truth doesn’t exist.
Just because it is happening inside your skull doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
- Life of Fred Algebra I by Stanley F. Schmidt
http://www.stanleyschmidt.com/FredGauss/sample%20pages%20BAX.pdf
Not to get too far off, but in the same vein of social math, has any one tried Danica McKellar's middle school math series for girls (styled like Cosmo/Seventeen)?
http://www.mathdoesntsuck.com/
I don't get the point of structuring a textbook in this way. It seems like a huge waste of time if you just want to quickly learn some stuff.
The series is written to incorporate situations which require math to arrive at a resolution, thereby helping a student to make connections so that math is relevant. The point of structuring the books this way is: as the children learn math they do not wonder, "When will we ever use this stuff?", a question which many teachers appear unable to answer.
Like any tool or curriculum, LoF works for many but may not be a good fit for all.
I tried looking up some information on "Life of Fred" last night and found some PDF's of the books. I am not impressed. Partly because my son would absolutely hate the format. Second because I see a LOT of religious content in the short amount I read. And most important because author doesn't seem to really understand higher level math or logic as illustrated by this passage. Mathematicians don't need to "believe" in infinite sets they use proofs, the proofs are just something you wouldn't normally see in an Algebra I text.
Some people like to argue that infinite sets don’t really exist. “After all,” they say, “they’re just a figment of your imagination. It’s all in your head.”
By that same argument I could prove that pain doesn’t exist.
When you cut your finger, the pain is experienced in your brain.
And the pleasure of a bite of warm pizza doesn’t exist.
And the number three doesn’t exist.
And truth doesn’t exist.
Just because it is happening inside your skull doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
- Life of Fred Algebra I by Stanley F. Schmidt
http://www.stanleyschmidt.com/FredGauss/sample%20pages%20BAX.pdfOn the contrary, the question of which, if any, infinite objects we should believe in in the sense of being prepared to adopt reasoning systems that imply and work with them is utterly mathematically respectable. Here's one starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinitismAdmittedly, the passage you quoted isn't all that illuminating!
Actually, in my Graduate Math Analysis class at a top 10 Engineering School, my world renowned professor, as we were moving to proving various infinite sets and aspects of the number line, answered a question the following way "In Math, there are many things we can prove, but at the foundations of Math we start with some assumptions and frankly you just have to take them by faith." Don't ask me the particulars because i was an Engineer taking Math Analysis simply to develop "proof" skills. As soon as I left that class, I proceeded to block out everything about Math Analysis.
Actually, in my Graduate Math Analysis class at a top 10 Engineering School, my world renowned professor, as we were moving to proving various infinite sets and aspects of the number line, answered a question the following way "In Math, there are many things we can prove, but at the foundations of Math we start with some assumptions and frankly you just have to take them by faith." Don't ask me the particulars because i was an Engineer taking Math Analysis simply to develop "proof" skills. As soon as I left that class, I proceeded to block out everything about Math Analysis.
22B
1) Thank you for reigniting that quarter long headache that I endured
2) I am impressed with myself for understanding that article. I guess, though I suppressed all thoughts related to that course, it is still buried in there somewhere.
I do appreciate the fun in trying to prove infinity and debating it's existence. There are people who debate the existence of "3" as well.
Speaking of infinity a few months ago Vi Hart put out a realativly new video about infinity that is fun.
http://vihart.com/how-many-kinds-of-infinity-are-there/
We used LoF for most of our math last summer/fall. We started with Apples, even though the first many books were too easy. DS8 enjoyed the story, he learned some new stuff (like sets), and it eased us both into homeschooling. We made it as far as Fractions before we stopped (DS found the Bridge sections to be too stressful, so we are on hiatus.)
Regarding religion, yes, the religion is throughout all the books I've read. But I don't think it's too overdone, and it does expose DS to an aspect of our culture that he wouldn't necessarily see (we are not religious at all).
As for price, we just bit the bullet and bought them. But we've got DD7 occasionally using them too, now, so that helped justify owning them. I have seen them for sale on some of the homeschooling-swap groups, but I bet they go quickly.
We have all the books through Beginning Algebra, although we stopped using them formally after Fractions. That being said, at least once a week I see him reading one of them on his own.
I think one reason DS likes Fred is because even though Fred is brilliant, he's pretty naive. Fred makes mistakes all the time, he's constantly learning, and he's non-threatening.
I do appreciate the fun in trying to prove infinity and debating it's existence. There are people who debate the existence of "3" as well.
Speaking of infinity a few months ago Vi Hart put out a realativly new video about infinity that is fun.
http://vihart.com/how-many-kinds-of-infinity-are-there/Thanks for the link to the video. The timing is quite handy. DS7 is struggling with finding an infinity which has numeric properties (adding, subtracting, etc.) for a proof he wants to solve. We have not delved into the different types of infinity. YET.
Basically, subtraction (and division etc) can't work for infinite cardinals.
update: we went through the whole book....DS liked enjoyed it, but it really doesn't seem worth the price to buy them new. We will continue to hunt for more library versions, because they are clearly fun, but for now, that's where we will stay (unless DS starts seriously bugging us, I guess....)