Math Curriculum

I have been wanting to write about my math curriculum for a very long time, but life has been busy. When I first started homeschooling one of the first things someone told me was that I would end up buying materials that would not work for my family. She told me to just get used to the idea, because it was going to happen. We don't have a lot of money, and most of the time curriculum materials are not cheap. I became very paranoid that I would end up spending large amounts of money on worthless materials, and so I did not buy anything. I started reading all kinds of books about cheap ways to homeschool, and going back through all my college books (I was an Elementary Education major) and decided to just figure out everything on my own. It worked for some subjects, but I found I did much better with someone else telling me what to do.

We started our Math curriculum by buying the big workbooks from Wal-mart, and going through them. I found out that my kids hate sitting and doing workbooks, and that having a curriculum that has a focus on workbooks was not the answer for us. I tried getting a Scope and Sequence from a math curriculum and just following that, and Math was still very boring. I tried looking at the Disk the district gives you showing you all the objectives for the year and teaching that way, and the objectives were so obscure it turned out to be really pointless. Finally I stumbled on a curriculum on a message board. It is online, and it is free. The big pull for me was that I could try it out, and see if it worked for our family before committing tons of money. The mentality behind the curriculum took a while to get used to, but I really love it now.

Here is Makenzie playing the String Game with Attribute Blocks.

This is Allen playing the same game with numbers.

The curriculum is called the Comprehensive School Mathematics Program. It is also called Cemrel Math. I grew up believeing the motto "You get what you pay for," but in the case of this curriculum, it just isn't true. This is truly an amazing curriculum. My favorite things about it, is that it is fun, and it is hard!! My kids math skills have improved a ton, and they don't even realize it. They are having fun reading and making up stories, and solving spy puzzles, and at the same time they are learning about geometry, probability, all the math basics, string theory, and probably a ton of other things that all just seem like playing to them. My first grader has been exposed to multiplication, and negative numbers. My second grader is beginning to learn more about decimals, and my fifth grader is learning about binary, base 3, base 4 etc systems. I had a telemarketer call me trying to sell me her several hundred dollar math curriculum, and as she read through her list of all the different things her "state of the art" curriculum was covering (in her pompous voice, confident that she would blow me away with all they were offering) I told her I already had a curriculm that covered everything she was selling, and it was free!!

This is Allen working with the Minicomputer, it is a type of abacus that does a great job of visually introducing many concepts. The name minicomputer also sounds a lot cooler than "abacus."

My kids were not math whizzes when I pulled them out of school. My fourth grader did not even know his multiplication tables. His math class was working on long division, and he was still counting everything out on his fingers. He was so lost. Here a year and a half later, he smokes me on many problems. My third grader is a very "out of the box" thinker, and this curriculum gives him a chance to be creative in math. I have also learned that he is brilliant when it comes to math, but he needs to be able to look at things in a different way. My little first grader is really good at math, and she looks forward to learning about all the "fun things" her older brothers are learning. She was so excited to learn about "Eli the Elephant" (the curriculms story for negative numbers) because she had been hearing her brothers talk about it.

My favorite things about this curriculum is that fact that it is free, that it is fun, and there isn't a ton of writing involved. Most of our lessons are done at the kitchen table with our math manipulatives, and our whiteboard. Most of the lesson involves us interacting with each other for the entire lesson. Many of the lessons have worksheets with them, but they are fun. Often the kids are solving a puzzle, or being detectives as they finish their worksheets. Most of the manipulatives are printable things from the website, and many concepts are presented as a game. (My favorite is the String game. They also have the number line game, and minicomputer golf)

This is one of the string pictures we made with Michael's lesson. The curriculum uses string pictures quite often. I think they are great teaching tools.

There are a few challenges that come with this curriculum. You need to print out quite a bit of stuff. I print out all the teachers manuals, and workbooks. (You really need a color printer for many of the materials) The lessons are also time consuming for the teacher (me). My first graders lessons take between 15 minutes and a half an hour to teach, My third grader is about a half an hour to 45 min, and sometimes my 5th graders lessons will take about an hour to teach. This definitely isn't a curriculum where you give your child the book, and they do all the work on their own. The kids do have a workbook day each week, where the lesson with the teacher is about 5 minutes and the rest of the time is spent doing a workbook. The workbooks are the main assessment tool. There are no tests. There are some minor pieces of the curriculum missing (posters and things) but I haven't had a tough time creating them on the computer. The curriculum was created for a classroom setting, but it hasn't been difficult to adapt it for homeschooling. The way that they approach math is also very different. Starting the curriculum in any grade below the 5th grade seemed to work okay, but when I tried to start my son at the 5th grade level, the language and skills were too advanced, so we had to start at the 4th grade level. The curriculum also only goes through the 6th grade. I have been looking at different curriculum options for my son, and I think we will be able to jump to a different program.

In spite of the challenges, I love this curriculum. If I had to pay for it, I would, but I don't have to. I love teaching math. I get to teach it everyday. I am pretty lucky. :)

I started this blog over a month ago, and kept waiting to get it perfected so I could post it. I think it it time to give up on perfection, and let go of the guilt, and just post it!

Links
Here are a couple of links that have helped us with our Math curriculum- And best of all, most of them are free.

CSMP Site- This is the site for the curriculum

Learningthings.com- One of my favorite Math Manipulatives sites. They seem to have things at a better price than anywhere else. Many of the "Education" stores in the area get their items from Learning Things, and the jack up the prices.

internet4classrooms.com- This website is one of my favorite. It is so packed with stuff. It has a breakdown of each of the grade levels, each objective the students should learn, and then a plethora of websites to teach the objective. I love the games they have to practice math skills.

Timez Attack- (Free Download) One of my favorite Multiplication Games. I love the graphics, and the little alien guy is so cute. It is not a super difficult game, but my video gamers will play it for hours because it is so well made. It teaches multiplication facts 2-12. The full version of the game is $40, and I have heard it is awesome, but we have only played the free download, and we are very happy with it.