Skip to main content

Review: Math-U-See Primer

Math was always my favorite subject in cool; well until I took chemistry. I use Timberdoodle curriculum and they had a placement test for math. Even though our daughter placed for Alpha, in their 1st grade kit, I choose to stick with Math-U-See Primer. My reason for this is because I wanted to give her the extra confidence of know things and getting answers right. What I love is that this curriculum comes with the student booklet, teacher manual, instructional DVD and block manipulatives. A really nice thing is in the blocks there is a huge poster for teaching place values and how to read a clock.


The booklet is in black and white but offers a lot of coloring for the student. The book says to color the squares the same color as the blocks; eg: 5 is light blue so then when they show 5 squares together you’re supposed to color them light blue. Now I don’t have my daughter do this. I let her color the squares whatever color she wants because I don’t want her thinking if she sees light blue it means there are 5. So much is covered in Math-U-See Primer from numbers to writing to adding to place values and time. The booklet is mastery done which I like. Incase you don’t know what mastery is it means that they focus on a certain thing and once you master it then you move on. So there is a lot of repetition which I like. You can move on once you’re student has mastered the skill or give extra lessons until they have the skill down.  


Yes, those are swimming goggles. She wanted to wear them to school. 

The blocks and poster provided in this curriculum are phenomenal! It gets our daughter engaged and excited to learn math. I wanted to laminate the poster but then I wouldn’t be able to put it in the container I use for storing curriculum so instead one of the games that the book suggests has little cards with numbers on them. I laminated the numbers and we use that. I use the poster for games about place values and clockwork. I also use the blocks throughout the booklet. I let our daughter pick the blocks and make sure the numbers add up to what she says the answers are. It is great to have that extra reinforcement and then she can visually see the math. I definitely recommend Math-U-See to others because it’s such a wonderful curriculum and has amazing learning tools that go with it. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Sensory Tissue Box

We have been trying out a lot of new baby items this year and here is another one we did not have for our first daughter. It is called  Sensory Tissue Box . What makes this toy so much fun? Let's be honest babies love to get into things. We have tried before to let her play with a regular box of tissues. Big mess. The tissues were everywhere and they have like 250 tissues in a box, she torn them up to so an even bigger mess. Our daughter even went as far as to rip the box itself up. This sensory tissue box though is made of very soft fabric so she can not tear it up, it has 15 tissues so less to keep track of and the tissue can not be easily torn up either. This is the biggest positive of this sensory box in my opinion. Another positive to having this sensory tissue box instead of a regular one is that the tissues are different colors and sizes as well as having different textures to them. There are 6 see-through ones, 6 see-through ones that have dots on them and 3 crinkly ones. T

Tips & Tricks: Making a Review

 I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems. For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make questi

Review: 180 Days of Social Studies 1st

When I noticed that our history class did not have a lot for social studies I decided to look for something to add into our homeschool. I came across 180 Days of Social Studies  and decided to try it. So, we started with the kindergarten version and I thought it was quite well done so we have kept it for 1st grade as well. Just like with the kinder one the booklet is done in black and white and I wish it was done in color. It goes over so much but in an easy to understand way for the age group that would be using it. 180 Days goes over American things so if you are homeschooling in another country and not learning about American history then I would look for another curriculum to use. The 1st grade version goes over the systems of government, civics, economics, geography and history. The thing I like best about 180 Days is that you only do a page a day. If your school year is a 36 weeks then you are perfectly set up to do 1 page a day. Since we do a 47 week school year we only do a few