Life of Fred Scheduling Question

[Gretchen in NO. CA]

Hi,

We will be using MUS Geometry this year with my 2 high school boys. I would like to have them do something different every Friday, kinda as a review day of the other math concepts. I was thinking of having them go through Life of Fred Algebra on Fridays for about an hour. This would help keep their Algebra skills up and just present it differently.

Can LOF be done just once a week? How much would you do? I haven't ordered it yet. I was planning to order it today if you all think it would work out only doing it once a week. Or maybe we just take a month (or more) mid year and do LOF? Would that be better?

Thanks,
Gretchen in NO. CA
:bigear:

[CynthiaOK]

My 7th grader is LOF Algebra this year. I purchased the Home companion book that schedules it all out. That was helpful. I think you could easily schedule it on Fridays esp. if you have the home companion. I had trouble figuring out how much to assign of the reading (which is usually rather lengthy compared to other texts) but the home companion helped. It lays out all the daily lessons so you could just tell them to do a lesson or two each Friday. Personally, I think a high schooler could easily do a couple of lessons per day.

I'm not sure, though, that it is what I'd use for review. I think it works best for a first exposure to the subject. If you just want to keep up their algebra skills, you might look at some of the SAT/ACT prep books.

HTH

[Katia]

Hi Gretchen,

I used Life of Fred Advanced Algebra as a fun supplement to keep up my dd's algebra skills while doing TT Geometry last year. This is what we found:

First of all, get the Home Companion. It is very, very helpful to have "lessons".

Second, my dd liked it so much that our plans to do it only once a week didn't work. She wanted to do it everyday!

Third, each lesson only took dd 20-30 mins MAX, so doing it every day instead of once a week was no problem.

I will advise you though, that using Life of Fred is addictive. My dd didn't want to quit, so we are now continuing on with the series....along with Teaching Textbooks! But, my dd loves it, and what sane mom would say, "No, I'm sorry. You can only do one math program, not two" when your dc has begged to do both, lol!

If you only wanted to do it once a week, I'm sure that could be done as well, but you'd need to schedule three-four lessons on that one day. Could be fun but could be overwhelming, too. Only you know if this would stress your dc or not.

Enjoy Fred. He's so much fun!