"Math U See" or " Right Start " Math Curriculum

I know a few homeschooling families who love Math-U-See. We use Life of Fred for our homeschool. It teaches math using funny stories about a little boy math genius (Fred). My girls can't wait to have their math lessons and see what Fred is doing in his latest adventure. What I like about it as a parent is that the books demonstrate a need for the math before introducing the math - so kids can see the real-life application for something and don't have to wonder, "Why would I ever need to know this?"

You can check out some sample pages here: http://www.stanleyschmidt.com/FredGauss/31samplepages.html

I am a homeschooler and used MUS in the younger grades. The nice thing is that it has a DVD , and the instructor teaches the lesson. This curriculum is geared toward visual thinkers/learners. I am of that type....I cannot conceptualize big numbers unless I see them....this program does that. I also like the way it sets up the place value into "houses". On the downside.....it is important to let the child hear 'math language' while being taught, since math is a language. For example, instead of saying, "What does 2 plus 2 equal?" ...I should say, "Add up the two addends to find the sum." Without the use and understanding of proper math language, word problems become increasingly difficult to do. So that is all I would recommend,... make sure to allow the teacher on the DVD to teach it, or make sure to utilize the teacher's manual and don't teach in everyday language. Heck, if it doesn't work you can always resell it. I suggest you go to places like "homeschoolclassifieds.com, Ebay, and half.com....to find it used and save half. You can at least get the teachers manual and DVD half price that way, and then buy the student book new from the publisher.

I have used MUS for over 10 years. My daughter started with the curriculum and is now taking geometry with them online because I didn't do well in geometry (even with an engineer dad).

My close friend is a professor at DBU and teaches finance there. She recommended MUS to me. At one point her oldest daughter decided she wanted to try another math curriculum and after one year returned to
MUS and said she believes MUS is the best curriculum out there because it teaches to mastery.

I second the thought of buying used however you probably won't be able to find the student workbook and test booklet used. You can also go on their website and view a video of each course taught. I think you can also request a demo cd that explains the program more. If they don't offer it anymore pm me and I'll ship you mine.

Blessings as you teach your son.

L.

i don't know right start, but i really like math-u-see.
khairete
S.

From what I've heard about math you see is that it's active, like rolling dice to do addition or other activities that actually use math and make those connections.

Several of my acquaintances use it in their home school situations.

If you go online and have your kiddo in mind and do some learning styles questionnaires you'll be able to get a better idea of how he learns.

I'm split between being an audio learner and a visual learner. So I function pretty much in the mean schoolroom class. I do so much better if I get a story or something I can associate stuff with.

Knowing my learning style helped me to spend money on a tape recorder for my college classes. I could listen to those tapes and finish out my notes to study for a test. I made excellent grades doing this.

Finding how your son learns will help you decide if Math you see is a good investment.

I'd also suggest that any teacher buy it and use it in their own classrooms.

What does his teacher recommend? They are usually the ones to go to for this kind of information. S/he may even recommend a better program than either of these.
His teacher is his biggest support person and advisor so start there!

I homeschooled my daughter through end of second grade and we used Math U See for kinder, 1st, and 2nd. It's EXCELLENT. She is now in public school 3rd and the work they are giving her there in math is much more simple and sporadic and hard to follow. They're speed drilling her in simple addition when she was adding long columns of long numbers and carrying tens last year already with Math U See. I'll describe it to you a bit so you can see if it seems good for your son. Some homeschoolers I know prefer Singapore Math or another one...I forget the name of it...but I'm not familiar with Right Start.

Anyway, the beauty of MathUSee is that it thoroughly teaches every step of what the child is learning before moving to the next concept. You don't progress until the child gets it, so they DO GET IT. The manipulative blocks represent the numbers from units through tens and hundreds in earliest grades so not only do they learn their written numbers from 1 thru 9 and then tens and hundreds, they know what those quantities look like before they move on to adding, subtracting, multiplying them etc. So they don't jump right to memorizing "7+8=15", they actually know what 7 and 8 and 15 look and feel like, and different ways to build them.

Toward the end of second grade we weren't using the manipulatives much because she had moved on to understanding written numbers without them. You could absolutely use MathUSee at home in addition to school work (I am now), but school jumps around so much to different concepts, it would be hard to start from scratch and walk him through the last few years. But since he has learned in school, it may be much easier to go back and review basic foundation than teaching a child from scratch. You get lessons for each chapter in the year on DVD and in a tacher's manual which you watch and then teach, and then each workbook chapter lasts for about a week of doing a few pages per day.

You don't have to do ALL the pages if the child "gets it" but for the troublesome concepts sometimes we spent a couple weeks doing every page in the chapter...there is also a test book and fun math activities book for every chapter. So there still is a lot of written work and "worksheets" (book pages). It's not like some free-form building with blocks thing like some people think. It's very mastery oriented based in Classical style education.

I highly recommend, but some kids don't do well with manipulatives and go for one of the other styles. I find it was an excellent foundation for my daughter though and she's easily grasping what they throw at her in school even though her dad and I are HORRIBLE at math! I wash I had learned with MathUSee and then maybe I would not have been horrible.