You know what arithmetic books look like. They are all pretty much alike. Using very few words, they give a couple of examples and then have the students do a hundred identical problems. Then they give another couple of examples and another hundred problems. And for students, arithmetic becomes as much fun as cleaning up their rooms, eating yams, or going to the dentist.
The books in the Life of Fred series take a different approach. Veteran math teacher, Stan Schmidt, has brought to life a character who will make math fun, relevant, and understandable. Don’t be surprised if your child who dreads math asks to do more at the end of a lesson. Each of the books tells a story—a story of one day in the life of a five-and-a-half-year-old boy. All of the math arises out of Fred’s life. Never again will students have to ask their perennial question: “When are we ever gonna use this stuff?”
Don’t let the nontraditional method of teaching fool you. Each of these books contains more math than is normally taught in a traditional program. These are not skimpy, just effective. One of the reasons is that very few arithmetic books tell you the why of various math rules—they just say that “it’s a rule”. Fred will give you the reasoning behind the rules making the math much more meaningful and memorable.
These books are gloss-film laminated hardcovers with Smyth sewn binding. Fully indexed and illustrated. They are not workbooks to write in, and each book will be enjoyed by all your children (and grandchildren!)
The 10 books in the Life of Fred Elementary Series will teach everything your student need to know in order to move into the study of Fractions and beyond. They will generally fill your math needs from 1st through 4th grades and the titles are ordered alphabetically beginning with Apples to make it easy to keep track of what comes next.
In the Life of Fred: Dogs you’ll find:
One Million, Our Place in the Dance of Life, π, the Game of Doubles, Fortnight, Digits in a Number, Two Dimes = 20 Cents, New Words in English, Anachronism, Middle English, Old English, Doubling 1 ➔ 2 ➔ 4 ➔ up to 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 (which is 100 doubles), 7 - z = 4, Making Choices in Life, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Morse Code from A–Z, Functions, the Function Party Game, One Billion, Finding Patterns, What Can Cause Unclear Thinking, Rhyme Schemes, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Eyes Adjusting to Bright Light, Consecutive Even Numbers, ATM Cards, Numbers that Add to 15, Guessing Functions, Right Angles, Rectangles, Constant Functions, Buying Books, One Day Without Reading, Sheet Music for “Borrowed Books”, Beautiful Handwriting, Numbers that Add to 17, Macronutrients, the Eight Planets, Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Different Ways to Pick Out a Book to Read, Bar Graphs, Different Jobs You Might Choose, Adopting a Dog, Idioms, Spendthrifts, Adding two- and three-digit numbers, Art in Advertising, Carrying the One in Addition, Female and Male, Apartment Leases, Isotopes of Hydrogen, the Chemical Elements, Dog Games.
Don’t be fooled. This is real math. And you may learn a lot more than math along the way!
