Is Life of Fred a *Complete* Curriculum

[Surprise Symphony]

or is it just supplemental. Are there enough problems to use it exclusively? Do you need alternative texts to learn how to arithmatically solve?

I'm looking at this for Pre-Algebra (decimals and fractions) and beyond.

Thanks,
Lisa

[Stacy in NJ]

I would say it's a supplement. There aren't enough problems or built in review for me to view this as a complete curriculum.

[Dani n Monies Mom]

Here's a former discussion that prompted me to give this a try, so far the style of teaching is working well for my dd12.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...ead.php?t=8830

Ava

[Deece in MN]

Originally Posted by Stacy in NJ

I would say it's a supplement. There aren't enough problems or built in review for me to view this as a complete curriculum.

I partly agree.

I do agree that there are not a lot of practice problems and if your child needs that, you will have to add in more problems.

I disagree with not enough built in review. My ds has used Fractions, Decimals & Percents and is about 1/3 of the way through Beginning Algebra. Every lesson reviews concepts learned in previous lessons, so there is a constant review throughout the book. The concepts also build on each other throughout the book, so it is important that a student has some understanding of the concept before moving on though they don't have to have it mastered because it will continue to be reviewed in future lessons.

I have heard the author of Videotext speak on the topic of review and his product and L of F are similar in that they don't have a lot of practice problems or chapter/lesson reviews, but the concepts build on each other so there is built-in review because of that.

He talks about the learner understanding the concept and if they do, they don't needs lots of practice of the same types of problems. He explains it much better than I do, but that is somewhat the gyst of it.

Anyway, it can be used as a complete program (the author intended it that way, you may want to email him with questions), but it can also be used as a great supplement. I guess it depends on what you want and need in a math curriculum.

[Linda in NE]

that comes with Algebra I and some of the other texts in the series. The thing I object to is the fact that the solutions to many of the problem sets in the text appear immediately below the problems. My son (13) reads these and parrots them back to me. With the Home Companion, I have extra problems to which he does not have the answers and all the answers to questions on the chapter tests which are not in the text.

In answer to your basic question, I would not consider it a complete program without the Home Companion. With it, it's close to complete, if not totally so, so long as the work is done by the student without reference to the answers given in the text. That's just my opinion.

With me, Fred was the difference in getting math done at all. My son needed a breather from traditional math programs. Fred seems to be meeting that purpose very well. We may continue with Fred or not, depending upon how my son understands Algebra I when he's finished with the book.

[Deece in MN]

Originally Posted by Linda in NE

that comes with Algebra I and some of the other texts in the series. The thing I object to is the fact that the solutions to many of the problem sets in the text appear immediately below the problems. My son (13) reads these and parrots them back to me. With the Home Companion, I have extra problems to which he does not have the answers and all the answers to questions on the chapter tests which are not in the text.

In answer to your basic question, I would not consider it a complete program without the Home Companion. With it, it's close to complete, if not totally so, so long as the work is done by the student without reference to the answers given in the text. That's just my opinion.

With me, Fred was the difference in getting math done at all. My son needed a breather from traditional math programs. Fred seems to be meeting that purpose very well. We may continue with Fred or not, depending upon how my son understands Algebra I when he's finished with the book.

I agree that the way the answers follow the problems is not the ideal set up. When we first started with LofF, my ds would just write the answers so I would have him explain to me how he figured out the problems so that I knew he wasn't just copying the answers.

I also worked on having him show his work. This was tough for him because he does a lot of the work in his head and doesn't always know how he got the answer. It has helped him to write out the steps so that if he gets something wrong, he can easily find where he made a mistake.

The other thing I don't like is that the book gives only the final answer on many of the problems and doesn't show the work. It hasn't been a big deal to this point, but I could see it possibly being an issue in the more advanced math books (though I haven't seen them yet so maybe the answers are laid out step by step?). The other thing with that is that the author wrote the books to be self teaching and I think if that were the case the answers should be more detailed so the student can see where a mistake was made when comparing his work to the answer key.

I actually am still on the fence about using LofF as our main math. My ds loves these books, but I am not 100% convinced that these alone are enough even though the author claims it is so. But for now we will continue using them as they seem to be doing the job.

[Surprise Symphony]

I have a lot of thinking to do.

~Lisa

[GailV]

Originally Posted by Deece in MN

I have heard the author of Videotext speak on the topic of review and his product and L of F are similar in that they don't have a lot of practice problems or chapter/lesson reviews, but the concepts build on each other so there is built-in review because of that.

He talks about the learner understanding the concept and if they do, they don't needs lots of practice of the same types of problems. He explains it much better than I do, but that is somewhat the gyst of it.

That's really food for thought for me. We've used RightStart for several years, and one of the key points of RightStart is that it favors a few well-thought-out problems over a large quantity of problems -- the author claims that that's the way math is taught overseas. The author is also a big fan of VideoText. So, I just had an Aha! moment while reading your answer.

FWIW, I have Fred on hand to use next. I'd rather put my eyeballs out than use a math program on DVD, so no VideoText here. (Okay, check back in a year when I'm preaching the wonders of VideoText to everyone here, and y'all can laugh at me.)