Our homeschooling math curriculum is no ordinary math book, it's a story. Yes, we have broken every law in the universe saying the only way to teach is sitting a student in front of a boring textbook until brain death occurs, but we have been learning out of a book series about a five year old college math professor for three years and so far no SWAT team has tried to blow down our door. This book is called, Life of Fred. In the first book, Life of Fred: Fractions by Stanley F. Schmidt, Fred (the five year old math professor) is walking to his first class of the day when he sees a student heading to class on a bike. Fred then notices how much faster he could get to the math classroom if he owned a bike (Fred is only three feet tall and walks slowly) plus he could wear a cool helmet. So Fred finds an ad in the college newspaper and goes to buy a bike were the owner changes the price to the exact amount Fred has in his account (overcharging him for the bike), and then has it shipped to his office. Once back at his office, he finds the package and remembers that his scissors have rounded tips. Instead, he tries to use an 18" knife he bought for his friend Alexander's birthday. He drops the knife on his foot, his friend Betty takes him to the hospital, Alexander meets them, and the trio go out for pizza. There, Fred gets a job, lights fire to the place, sits on the roof of a car going through a car wash to clean all the soot off of him, finds there was a marshmallow in his pocket, wipes the gooey mess on a random cat, (this cat then ends up brushing up against a little girl and gets stuck to her leg) and finally remembers his bike. At home, he picks the tape off the box and finds that it was filled with junk. Not even parts of a bike. After a trip to the corner for some crying, he finds a forty-button remote, and decides to build a robot.
Every chapter has a "your turn to play" which is a set of math questions about the chapter. After every 4-6 chapters there is "The Bridge," which is ten questions about the past six chapters. After 32 chapters (One book) you come to "The Final Bridge," with questions about every thing you learned. Before we found this book, I was using an ordinary school math book and would work from 10AM-6:30PM trying to do a single 40 problem page until my mom found a math book series that was just like a book. I found it a lot easier to stay on task when I realized that instead of 40 problems on decimals or 40 division problems, it was ten or so word problems that use all different types of math. Flipping through it, I noticed that instead of just showing you wordless "examples" of one way to do it, it actually told you how to do the problem, and "The Easy Way" to finish it. I tried it out and found that instead of eight hours a day it was taking me less than one. We are currently at the third book (beginning algebra) and have set deadlines for each book so we can finish them before I start going to high-school. Thanks Stan!
