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!)
Kidneys, Liver and Mineshaft are considered the Intermediate Series and go between Jelly Beans and Fractions. They are not essential. When a student finishes Jelly Beans, they have all the arithmetic they need to start Fractions, but because of how quickly students can progress in the elementary books, a student might not be old enough to really be ready for Fractions (author recommends 5th grade). Kidneys, Liver and Mineshaft allow for more practice of arithmetic while the student gets older.
In Liver you’ll find: What to Pack for Camp, 1/4 + 1/4 +1/4 = 3/4, Why Blowing Your Nose and Wiping Your Eyes Is Not Commutative, I.e., E.g., Viz., Elapsed Time, the Two Rules of Survival, Passing the Sat Exam, Metaphors, the Three Angles of a Triangle Always Add to 180º, What Can Go Wrong with a Lifetime Guarantee, How To Be a Business Success, the Pythagorean Theorem, Finding Two-fifths of $400,000, Ordering Tjvjik, Ghapama and Satsivi at a Restaurant, Being a Hepatologist, Solving 2x - 7 = 11, What Livers Do, the Difference Between Saturnalia and Saturnine, Hypercholesterolemia, Pie Charts, Cirrhosis, the Drawbacks of Multitasking, Extradural Hemorrhage, Six-sevenths of 413, Four Drawbacks to Fred Living in a Castle in Germany, Verbs Often Used by People in Various Occupations, Treble and Bass Clefs, Electrical Use by U.S. Farms in 1925, How to Win at Bridge, Short Division, Quotients, Secant Lines, How to Have People like You, Changing Percents to Fractions—68 Completely Worked out Examples, Computing 2% of 550, Who Is Not Harmed by Watching Television All Day Long, the Difference Between Graffito and Graffiti, Pet Names Are Different than Names for Pets, How Not to Work Out in a Gym Weight Room, Functions, Domains, and Codomains, Brain Chatter and the Uses of Silence, Reducing Fractions, the First Step in Producing Great Art, What Three Units of a College Class Means, Reasonable Answers, the One Purpose of Great Universities, the Masthead of a Newspaper, Forming the Possessive of Words That End in S, Four Things That Are Important to Learn Earlier in Life, Finding an Average.
