Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Life of Fred

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.

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).

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.