Who is Fred? one answer
In one of the Life of Fred books, Fred Gauss was born on the western slopes of the Siberian mountains. By the end of the twenty-five books, he is six years old.
In his everyday life he first encounters the need for each new part of mathematics, and then comes the mathematics.
Never again will students have to ask their perennial question: “When are we ever gonna use this stuff?”
This summer, I started reading the elementary series Life of Fred books with Rose, who is going into 5th grade. This was easy light hearted reading and I expected her to be able to tackle all of the math found in the books. What I really wanted to see was if the Life of Fred series would capture her imagination and coax her into liking math.
You see, Rose is good at math. Very good at it. BUT she does not like math. She hates doing things over and over and always wants to know WHY she has to do something. So Life of Fred, seems like the perfect text for her. And to my surprise she loved the books and asked to read more and more of them. We started with Apples and she made her way through Butterflies, Cats, Dogs and Edgewood. ***spoiler alert*** Fred wants to travel to a city named Edgewood. A small city. Fred picks Edgewood, Kentucky, which coincidentally is the very same small city that I grew up in. So needless to say, the Edgewood book struck a personal note with me. ;)
So, this year Rose will continue on with the Elementary series and hopefully start Fractions for 5th Grade. She will read the Elementary books at her own fast pace, then start Fractions which she will be scheduled to study once a week. One thing that I LOVE about Life of Fred is that Stanley Schmidt recommends the course as an independent study. He even offers his own email to students to use if they have questions. It is not that I do not want to teach math, because I am good at math too, but my teaching methods with math have often ended up with both parties being frustrated and not understanding the other. So I love that these books are designed to be used independently.
I however will be reviewing the work and the books in my own time, because honestly I just love math and am looking forward to learning it all again!
Daisy (4th) and Magnolia (K) will be starting the elementary series once a week with Apples and we will just keep going until the year ends.
In reviewing the books, I thought they seemed like a perfect opportunity to do some notebooking in their portfolios of the concepts covered so I started creating some generic Life of Fred Notebooking Pages. These pages go along with each of the first four elementary books and include a space to draw a picture (or copy Fred's drawings) and write out the work from Your Turn to Play. I am sharing the sheets here on my blog.
More to come as they are completed.
This just made my day. We received the LOF elementary series yesterday and I thought how great a notebooking page would be to go along with it. And here you are! Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteJennifer,
DeleteStill working on more as we move through. Hope it is going well for you still! Thanks for following me, hopefully you got the updates. More to come!
Good luck! I always love your blog! So creative!!!
Blessings on your homeschool!
Thanks for sharing this Megan! I have been struggling for so long with my middle child and math.. I think I'll have to get a book and try it out!
ReplyDeleteHope it goes well for you Tanya! It is a little quirky, but so much less intense and intimidating for reluctant learners!!!
DeleteGood luck and let me know how it goes!
This is awesome...thank you so much! My boy is loving the LOF series. We have read through the first two books in one month because he does not want to put them down. I told him we should take a little break and do some notebooking pages to review what we have learned. I can't wait to show him how creative these pages are. Thanks again!!
ReplyDeleteAs Fred says, the notebooking part is key to cementing the learning in! Good luck and thanks for visiting!
DeleteFound your page via another blog and am SO thankful for the resources you shared!! We've read through 2 LOF books, but I am thinking of re-reading them over the summer and using the notebooking pages you made to go along! Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kristina!
DeleteGlad it could help you! We do fred on a very sporadic schedule.. Maybe once a week with as many chapters as we feel like that day...
Your blog is so cute and you are so creative.. Love your little one's lion handprint!
These are so cute!
ReplyDeleteI have been looking into doing LOF next year. I will have a 10 yr old girl (5th) and a 5 yr old boy (K). Do you think I should have them both start with apples and let them go at their own pace thru them? I was planning on buying the Elementary package of the books.
ReplyDelete