hi all

phew, just said goodbye to the last lot of new year's visitors and now i'm starting to think about my plan for the year. (thanks bella for the prompting)

I'm thinking about a more structured approach for k this year, who is turning 9 this month. as part of this, i think i want to get him a good maths curriculum. so i was wondering if anyone had any to reccomend.

I've heard a lot of h'schoolers use Singapore Maths - anyone had experience with this? Or any others?

cheers!

Can't say we've tried it but according to all the "classical homeschoolers" its the go! I must admit after pulling my boys out of school after working in the system for over 15 years we went all gung ho at first. The boys had several different books to work with and a choice. These days they "choose" not to! LOL They absolutely loved Rainforest Maths which was set up by an Australian teacher online but seems to be offline now.

My favourite books to work with were NSW Targeting Maths (I think you can get them in each state) The books are colourful and cover whatever they would be up to in school. Having said that my boys now find them boring and have lost interest. But they were good at the time! (From a teachers point of view they are fantastic! I am still de-schooling myself! LOL) However Im coming around quickly. We prefer the hands on approach to everything these days. GB would rather do his math while conquering the world online. (I have to admit he is far better at math than me!)

If you really want books though I would go with variety! Give him a choice and let him go from there. There is so much out there to choose from! And it really does not matter if he finishes a single book as opposed to learning from many!

thanks karisma. i think i'll have to get myself to a good educational bookshop and do some browsing. i'm not sure he'd respond so well to a workbook approach either, but i'm feeling like he needs a bit of challenging. Online stuff would probably be more appealing to him, but I haven't come across anything really good in the maths area....

We use workbooks mainly. RIC's Maths Mentals from ricpublications.com.au I think. They're cheap, quick and cover all the bases. I love the Childcraft Mathemagic books, have you seen them? You can often get them in op shops for $1 or so and even the old ones are fun. I like the kids to learn about the history of numbers, mathematicians, number tricks and puzzles, amazing geometry and more... I also love some of the early Steiner stuff for Maths - using the gnomes to talk about the four processes, for example.

Brit is 15 this coming year. She did the Maths Mentals books till she was about 11 with all the other stuff mentioned above (and computer games galore!), then she moved on to a basic text book for awhile. Then she did a junior high school Maths in Society type course - 2 books of practical maths from insurance to interest rates to postage by weight to travel and budgeting. She loves a book-approach, but she also has her own bank account and does shopping and errands for/with me too. Now she's moving onto a more thorough maths text book. It's not the dry type of text book but an older one we found that has heaps of explanation (and a nice yellow cloth cover). She was worried that it was old. I told her that when it comes to algebra and algorithms and whatever else, these things don't date! Anything to do with computers, accounting etc she can access very easily, anytime.

Sorry, no suggestions for your 9 year old K. Just thought I'd share!

We use Singapore Maths and have been happy with it so far.
IMO the pros are that it's cheap, it's not repetitive and it's interesting. I'd say the cons are that it's a workbook and the concepts progress quickly which means it won't suit everybody. I have children who devour maths so have found it great. We don't follow it religiously, just when they feel like it so we don't get through the recommended scheduled of one workbook a term but that's not my purpose. We also use R.I.C New wave mentals which is quick and fun and covers everything. My daughter asks for it and does one week in one sitting. The format is 10 questions per day for Monday to Friday.
Yan

Thanks Yan.

Where do you get your SM from? I looked online and could only find the American version.

We ordered ours from http://www.chariotpress.com.au/. The website is not detailed so I just rang the toll free number 1800706548 and talked to Ray. He was helpful. The versions we have are Singaporean which means some of the names used in word problems are unusual and they use Singapore currency but this hasn't been problematic.
HTH, Yan

I know we did Singapore for part of a year way back when, and our trouble was that it didn't explain things very well, so basically if you weren't a math teacher you might have a hard time.

After much searching, we settled on Teaching Textbooks, which is designed for h'schoolers, and I really enjoyed. It has a textbook, as well as CDs to watch on the computer, and step by step answers, etc. I also liked how colourful the book covers were, as well as how colourful the CD tutorials were. Very systematic. They now have it for 'grade' 4 through pre-calculus and are planning on creating the same system right down to Math 1.

Good luck! Finding the right maths curriculum was always something we struggled with!

A number of natural learning families I know use this Australian online maths programme:

http://www.mathematics.com.au/

My DD-now-15 used it for about six months a year or so ago and enjoyed it, but not enough to financially justify renewing the subscription. I may look at purchasing the CDroms down the line if any others show any interest...(but this is only financially viable with a number of children IMO).

Look out or ask for a special deal if you do join: I think we paid for four months and got two extra for free. It worked out about $15 per week, and she probably did an average of 5 hours per week.

It's very schooly but then so are a lot of the workbooks etc

Thanks Freespiritme and TABSP. I've decided not to go with Singapore for now, so I'll check those resources out.

No problem. Let us know how it goes!

have you looked into Maths u see its more hands on maths programme than some.i have ordered it this year but it hasn't arrived yet.i was recommended it by a few perth homelearners.
if you go on the website they will send you out a free dvd of the programme so you can see it in action.

thanks 4@learning. wow i forgot about this thread from last year. you know after all that, i didn't end up getting ANY maths books last year

yeah i've heard about Maths-U-See and Gilda was saying good things about it on another thread...but i think i'll wait till K is a bit older...

it's online maths games for us at the mo...and ummm, paper plane and boat making - that's geometry, right?

If you want something really formal but free I found this last night:
http://www.khanacademy.org/
He starts right at the beginning with basic addition and goes right through to university stuff.