Life of Fred

I've been hearing about this one for a while, but since you have to buy it from the publisher I've never been able to get my hands on a copy... until now!  There are 8 books in the series, and I only happen to have the first two... but I love these books!

Dr. Stanley Schmidt has found a narrative way to teach math in Life of Fred.  They're engaging, they're funny, and they really, really explain math concepts in a real-life way.  The stories are about a boy named Fred (who also happens to be a math professor) and all his daily adventures.  It's very hard to describe without making it sound ridiculous, so please look at the samples here.

What I love most about these books is that the lessons are really short.  Dr. Schmidt has done a wonderful job of breaking the concepts down into bite-sized pieces, and breaking up the text with illustrations without making the pages too busy.   After every five chapters there is a Bridge, which is a set of 10 review questions.  You must get 9 out of the 10 questions correct before moving on to the next chapter.  The nice thing is, though, that there are 5 sets of bridge questions, so if the students botches the first set, they can go back, correct their work, and begin again on the second set.  So they have 5 tries at getting over the bridge!

There are 8 books in the series, ranging from pre-algebra to calculus.  The first two books in the series are Fractions then Decimals & Percents.  The subsequent books also have a teaching guide (Fred's Home Companion) to go along with them which includes a daily lesson schedule, all the solutions, plus more practice problems.  My understanding is that you probably wouldn't need to have Fred's Home Companion for the advanced books in order to gain understanding of the concepts, but if you choose Life of Fred as your main math program and need to show substantial amounts of scheduled work for high school credit, you might want the extra problems and schedules.

Life of Fred would also make a very, very good review program for test prep and college placement.  I wish I had had it before taking the math placement exam when I returned to college after an 18-year absence!  Here's a word problem to illustrate:

Susan forgot all her higher math skills!  When she decided to go back to school she had to take a math placement test.  Because she did poorly (she hadn't taken math in almost 20 years!) she had to take a college review math class that cost $450 and did not even give her a math credit!  The entire Life of Fred series (with Fred's Home Companion for 6 of the 8 books - 14 books in all) costs $302 (free shipping!).  Which is the better value?

Answer:  $302 < $450 (and much more fun) 

Highly recommended for 6th grade and up.

Math Doesn't Suck

Really.  It doesn't!  Especially with the help of Danica McKellar.

In Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail, mathematician and actress Danica McKellar shows 6th to 8th grade girls that math is fun, useful, and at times even glamorous!  She explains fractions, least common multiples, factoring, decimals and percents with style and humor, and with more quizzes than a Teen Beat magazine.  And it isn't fluff... I learned a few new tricks from Math Doesn't Suck, and I do math for fun sometimes.  =)

The good news is that once you've mastered middle school math, you can move on to Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss.  I can't wait!  

Here's a fun video of Danica McKellar talking about Kiss My Math. 

Defining Twilight

Am I excited to share this one!   Do you have a Twilight fan in your house?  Exploit the obsession... and turn it into a study session.

From the publisher:

This workbook contains 40 groups of vocabulary words selected from
Twilight. Many of these words will show up on your SAT, ACT, GED,
or SSAT. Beginning at Group 1, refer to the Twilight page where each
vocabulary word appears. Read the word in context and come up with
a definition. Then check your definitions against those provided in
this workbook and make corrections. I’ll also show you synonyms,
word parts, and memorization tools. Read these over a few times, and
then complete the drills. Do that for all 40 groups. There’s no easier or
more fun way to learn 600 vocabulary words! By the end of this book,
your vocabulary will be larger, your test scores will be higher, and
you’ll be a Twilight scholar!

I checked the book out at work, and it actually has a nice layout and decent vocabulary exercises for 40 word groups.  These are not the most demanding lists on the market (from List 1, "noble" isn't going to stretch too many vocabularies, but "ubiquitous" might), though the fact that they're lifted from a real book and can be studied in context - and with the book in hand - is a definite plus, especially for a student that doesn't feel under the SAT gun quite yet.

Click here for a link to a free chapter from the publisher.

The guide to New Moon will be available Oct 26, 2009 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.