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Mom21
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| Posted: Dec 03 2013 at 7:21am | IP Logged
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For those of you who have used or currently use Life of Fred, would you mind sharing what you think of it? My son is a 7th grader, Seton-enrolled, TT math-using kid who does okay but not great in math. I looked at the LOF website and it looks like I would start with the Fractions book. Is that correct?
LOF looks like it would be a helpful supplement to what we're doing.
Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated!
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Betsy
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| Posted: Dec 03 2013 at 7:27am | IP Logged
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We used it as a supplement after my boys had finished Right Start, fractions and decimals. They weren't ready to go on to more advanced Math at the time.
The LOVED it! Because they had *learned* the material before I can't comment on how much they learned from LOF. Nevertheless, it was a great review and enjoyable for them.
It was also a double bonus as one of my math loving kids was very week in reading. This was my sneaky little way to making him read on his own without enduring the tantrum of how he doesn't like to read. Kind of like sneeking vegetable into your diet without them knowing.  It was also reassuring to me that he *could* read for content and there wasn't any mechanical reading issues.
Sorry for a bit off topic post. But I would say go for it!
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pumpkinmom
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| Posted: Dec 03 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged
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My feelings are mixed on it.
I first bought the fraction book to teach fractions to my oldest. It was too hard for him and he couldn't learn from it. I decided that our current math program was better at teaching and I needed to use LOF for review.
I bought the elementary set last spring and my boys enjoy it, but I don't see any math learning going on. Of course, it's just too easy for them. They are really just reading it for the story at this point. I wish I hadn't bought the elementary set and started them in the intermediate set (many reviews advised starting at the beginning and that is why I made that decision).
I'm bother by the fact that the guy who wrote it claims that he wrote the books so that kids could see how math works in real life. The books are not real life and just a ridiculous story, so this doesn't meet his goals. I find that strange. Kids like it because it's silly though. Right now my kids are enjoying a silly story, not math. I really hope this changes in the upper level of the books.
So, I guess I would say go for it.  My oldest is going back to the fraction book this spring, so I will have better input at that point.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
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roomintheheart
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| Posted: Dec 03 2013 at 11:50am | IP Logged
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I use it as a supplement, too. We do it as read-aloud every morning (I have 4th, 2nd, & K). I do think it makes them think about things, and they enjoy it. I use TT for math, though, and don't think I would use LoF as a stand-alone. But we are in the early books, so I don't know about the older ones.
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Willa
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| Posted: Dec 03 2013 at 12:22pm | IP Logged
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I bought LoF Fractions for my 10 year old last year, but he wasn't ready for it -- he liked the story but resisted the problems.
I ended up getting the earlier books and reading through them with him last summer. It worked great for us. It was review, for sure, but the books showed him how to look at math a different way. I especially like the ventures into higher math -- like some set theory, symbolic logic and algebra concepts way back in the primary levels. He likes the puzzle elements, and the silly stories, and has become far more positive about math in general.
I don't think I would be able to use them as stand-alones. Presently, we read a couple of chapters several times a week and go through the problems together. Then he does Math Mammoth on his own later in the day.
I like the way the books include a bit of almost everything. They are not perfect (I've found some typos and I don't always agree with the author's opinions on everything, which is one reason why we read them together, along with the fact that some of the problems are difficult to figure out without some discussion).
So the books definitely fill a niche for us and are a positive interval in the homeschool day.
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Willa
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SallyT
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| Posted: Dec 04 2013 at 10:01pm | IP Logged
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It's our core math, but it's definitely not all we do. I find that once we got past the review stage (we ran through all but the last 3 books in the elementary series last year), the problems in the Your Turn to Play are very hard for my kids to do alone. We do them together, but then they need independent work, so I use various workbooks to supply practice problems daily. Not many -- truly, if LOF included five mixed practice problems at the end of every chapter as he does at the end of *some* chapters in *some* of the elementary books, then I might be more persuaded that it could stand alone.
We also read the chapters aloud with a whiteboard handy, and we stop and work whatever problems appear in the course of the story. I find that making the kids write out even the in-story problems really helps.
I do find that a good bit of *conceptual* learning goes on -- my kids have gotten good at thinking about patterns, rules, and other math-concept-y things. Still, I think we need more basic computational practice than LOF provides, particularly, this year, in long multiplication and division. So we do at least one of those kinds of problems daily. Not many, not overwhelming, but daily practice in doing those things independently . . .
I do have a hard time imagining just handing a kid one of these books and saying, "Go for it." And like Willa, I think the books lend themselves to discussion (like, how to spell X, how better to state Y, why Z might not really be the case . . . ) rather than independent study. But we've really enjoyed them. And, as I say, though it doesn't always look as though people are mastering things in the way I might expect people to master math, I have seen evidence of significant math learning.
Sally
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SeaStar
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| Posted: Dec 05 2013 at 6:19am | IP Logged
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We are big Fred fans here- like Willa mentioned, there is so much more than basic math in each book. My dd (9 yrs) has come to love algebra because of Fred.
Yes, some of the story lines are silly, but they do show how math is very useful in everyday life. My family enjoys the zany humor- that is a huge bonus for us.
We started at the very first book in the elementary level last year. I would absolutely do it that way again. Each book is packed with information. I find that I am learning quite a bit myself- and understanding some concepts that were always rather fuzzy in my mind.
If you go to the Life of Fred website, the author talks about some of the errors in the books. He also says that the very first elementary book should not be started until the student has a basic understanding of simple math, especially the addition facts. He says that it's easy to teach these and gives a coupe of resources to help out.
So, the LOF is not meant to teach math from square one, but to build on.
we find it delightful/
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4Real Forums : Living and Loving Numbers
Topic: Life of Fred
