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Life of Fred and Ray's Arithmetic?
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Hi! I’m just getting started with my homeschool journey, and after trying a boxed curriculum first (BJU), swung completely the other way and have decided I can’t stand having my lessons scripted for me, need a little more flexibility, and absolutely love Charlotte Mason’s way of teaching children. So I’ve been reading up on it, researching over the past year, and am using sort of an eclectic mix of stuff for very laid back kindergarten right now (my 5 year old was begging me to teach her to read, so I couldn’t put it off any longer). I am looking ahead to first grade now, and while I think I’ve got most of what I want to use figured out, I’m stumped on math. I wanted so badly to use RightStart, but we simply can’t afford it right now. I have been looking for it used, but have yet to have any success, and even the used kits are just too much right now. This brings me to my question. I have the complete boxed set of Ray’s New Arithmetic, and am intrigued by the idea of Life of Fred. But what I want to know is, has anyone used the two together? My only concern with Life of Fred is that it might not provide enough practice for my daughter to really “get” the concepts. We have just started using Ray’s here and there, not going beyond rote counting yet. But I know I’ll have to kick it up once she hits first grade in the fall. I’m thinking right now of using Life of Fred as my primary math curriculum and supplementing with Ray’s for additional practice. Or vice versa. Is Ray’s a good stand-alone math program? Would Life of Fred work as a stand-alone as well? How well would the two complement each other if I try to supplement one with the other? How much review does Life of Fred incorporate into the elementary books? Thank you!
Just to let you know the first year of Ray’s Arithmetic is all oral. Instructions can be found in Chapter 9 of Manual of Methods. The oral year builds the foundation for the rest.
I have a little bit of experience with both of these, just a little, so please take this with a grain of salt!
Life of Fred is great and many consider it stand alone. But, it can be pricey unless you find it used for a good price. I think it is around $16 a book and you need several books to fill up a year. As much as my ds loved it, I had to stop after book one due to the cost.
We are doing Rays right now. We are only in week 3, so I’m no expert, but I believe it is a wonderful, sweet, full program which is quite challenging while it makes it seem easy. I mean that because, while it is oral, and encourages mental arithmetic, ds is already doing division and multiplication without realizing it. Ex “How many 2’s are in 6? How much is one times 9?” I give him garbanzo beans and he uses them is he needs to, but usually just looks up and gives me the answer. This amazes me. This is the child I’ve had so many math tears with whom I thought was mathematically challenged, and little did I know, he just needs to do it in his head. I wish I had started out with Ray’s.
On a side note, if you think your dd needs, or would do better with worksheets, I’d definitely recommend MathUsee. It’s much cheaper than startwrite (which we tried also). My girls are using MUS with great success. They watch the DVD (with me) and then they do their worksheets. Sometimes they need all of the practice sheets, but sometimes they skip over them. It depends on how well they grasp the concept.
I sure hope this helps! I hope you can get started with a great program which works well for your dd and avoid math tears, for those are the worst kind IMO! The only one I’ve avoided math tears with is my youngest. I’m thankful MUS, the first thing she used, was exactly what she needed!
First, let me say that we LOVE Life of Fred. We love Fred. We love Kingie. It’s a great curriculum. We are using it almost exclusively for third grade. I would have to say it would have been hard, maybe not as rewarding for my dd (now 8) if we had started it in first grade, before she was a strong reader. Maybe it would have been fine then, but when we started in the second half of second grade, it was a huge hit. She now begs to work ahead and wants to do extra math every day. We had tried both Math in Focus (singapore) and Right Start before this, and both induced tears, tantrums and hair-pulling, not always just from the student if you catch my drift there. Anyway, before we found Fred I used Ruth Beechick’s easy-peasy intro stuff for math. I still supplement with lots of living math (games in the car where they do verbal or mental math; mental math at the grocery store; we talk about math during meals, etc) as well as with the Beechick ideas. I think Life of Fred is awesome because it got my dd to like math again, but we do a lot of practice stuff as well. Including Wrap-ups especially multiplication. And we also love SchoolHouse Rock.
To answer some of your specific questions:
—LOF offers very little to nothing in the way of review. That is something I like because my dd seems to ‘get it’ the first time and then can go on to build on that idea with the next concept instead of spending/wasting time on busywork problems that just make her dislike math again. Instead of review, there is a constant building on and gentle reminder of past concepts.
—We use LOF as a stand-alone but we do supplement almost constantly with verbal and mental stuff. My dd is a very strong reader, so I try hard to balance that with as much math as she will stand. Plus my dd5 loves math and begs for more problems to solve (mentally, since she’s not putting pen to paper just yet).
—I only know a little bit of Ray’s but I like it. It may be similar to Beechick’s common sense approach to math. I think LOF and Ray’s would be a great pairing if you felt you needed that extra practice and reinforcement.
Hope that helps a little-
Jenni
We’ve tried just about everything out there for math (we’ve been homeschooling since ’95) and I finally ordered Ray’s after reading the SCM book Mathematics: An Instrument for Living. AND taking a class last year on how to teach math without textbooks – very CM. I LOVE Ray’s. But, I would not use it until you have read SCM book, I would try Ray’s. At your child’s age, the more you can do math in everyday situations the better. If you are cutting an apple to eat, begin with “How many pieces of apple we have?” As you are eating them, you can ask questions like how many pieces have you eaten (1 out of four pieces of apple is the answer you are going for), how many pieces do you have left… now how many pieces have you eaten, etc. Then, sit down and have your child draw what you did. YOU right down in words (not symbols) what you did on that page as you are talking with them about it. My teachers motto was: Do, Write, Say. (But this is a slow progression not overwhelming them with symbols and tricks.) I use Ray’s orally and with everyday life situations. It is FANTASTIC.
Thank you so much for linking me to this resource, Hidden Jewel! I hadn’t seen it yet, and didn’t know it existed! I’m also using the McGuffey Primer with my daughter, so this will help me immensely. I already knew the first year of Ray’s is oral. That is how we are using it currently, and how we will continue to use it. We’re just moving forward with it at my daughter’s pace. I just wanted to know if Life of Fred and Ray’s would complement each other. But I will definitely use the Manual of Methods! I can hardly wait to dig in and see what tips it has to offer! Thank you!
I posted my last response, and then had three other responses to my original post! Thank you so much to all of you for your help and suggestions!
Heather, thank you for your input! I think you gave me the encouragement I need to keep pushing on with Ray’s! I can’t do mental math AT ALL, because I was taught to count on my fingers and then taught to use a calculator too early. Math has always been my weakest subject because I never understood it, and forget seeing the numbers in my head. I have no idea what that is like. I don’t want that for my kids at all, which is a huge part of my aversion to more traditional methods of teaching math. I will look into MathUSee as well. Thank you!
Jenni, I think you just sealed the deal for me! 🙂 I started out using some Singapore workbooks (before I learned about living math), and they just weren’t really working very well for DD. For instance, on the unit about patterns, there was plenty of review, but she never really understood the concept and is still having trouble with it. I’ve explained over and over what patterns are, but never saw the “lightbulb” turn on. That’s a big part of why I started looking at other options. First, I pulled out the Saxon Math curriculum someone gave me (first grade), and just flipping through I was about ready to pull my hair out because it’s all scripted and I can’t having lessons scripted for me . . . it’s just so unnatural. Then I learned about RightStart and the more I read about it the more I wanted to try it, but just couldn’t afford it and didn’t know if I could handle the preparation time that supposedly goes into it . . . I just couldn’t bring myself to bite the bullet and spring for it. I don’t think we could afford it now anyway. I looked into Singapore as well, since that’s what we were already using, but that didn’t really entice me either. Everything I looked at was either too expensive, too time consuming, or too boring/too much like how I was taught to do math (see above). Anyway, I think you hit the nail on the head. Ruth Beechick wrote the parent/teacher guide for Ray’s Arithmetic, so I have a feeling Ray’s is very similar to her easy peasy method. Thanks to your post, I think I have decided to go ahead and use Ray’s and Life of Fred together. I can handle $60 for a year of math as opposed to $200, and much prefer the idea of oral lessons, fun stories, and games to learn math as opposed to something stuffy that relies on worksheets. Thank you!
PollySoup, thank you for your input as well! I am sure I have seen the book you mentioned, but probably didn’t give it a second look. I have no idea why. I will go hunt it down now, add it to my wishlist, and make it a priority to buy and read it before we start first grade in the fall. Thank you!
It was quite a surprise to me that the first Ray’s book was for the second year. But I was pleased with how the Manual of Methods lays out the first oral year in great detail.
HiddenJewel, I am working on reading through it now. I actually took a break after reading the first couple of pages of the Arithmetic chapter so I could play the math game suggested to help children visualize numbers. My daughter really enjoyed it, and I promised her we’d do more tomorrow! 🙂 I hope I’ll get a chance to finish reading it in the next couple of days! Thank you so much for pointing me that direction! I think it will prove a valuable resource.
Okay, okay I’m confused. I have yet to start math and was thinking of using MUS and Life of Fred. I’m new to hearing Ray’s and I’m not sure I understand if the Manual of Methods is part of that or something different. Where does that fit in?
What are you saying to start with? Stand-alone or together? I just need someone to say year 1 would use…year 2 would use…I need to see the flow of what you are saying.
Does that make sense? Thoughts?
I’m just figuring all of this out myself, but I *think* I can answer your question to some extent. Please, someone else jump in if you have wisdom to offer!
Ray’s New Arithmetic is one of the eclectic/classic curricula sets like the McGuffey readers or Spencerian penmanship or Harvey’s Grammar. It’s what the one-room school houses used in the US throughout the 1800’s and into the early 1900’s. Ray’s is very self-led once a child is reading on their own. One set of Ray’s math books should get you through 8th grade, and then there are other Ray’s books in the public domain for higher level math. In fact, all of the Ray’s books are in the public domain, so if you’re strapped for cash, it’s a valid option for teaching math virtually for free. Ray’s relies heavily on word problems, so you read the problems out loud to your student, or once the student is able, he/she reads the problems himself/herself, and then the student works through them at their own pace. Because it relies heavily on word problems, and there are no fancy manipulatives to buy to go along with it (you just use whatever you have around the house), it’s supposed to help your child develop an excellent ability to do math in his/her head. All of the problems are based on real-life situations, so instead of doing worksheet after worksheet of problems represented by numerals and symbols, your child is seeing how math would be applied in real life. In that aspect, I think it has something in common with Life of Fred, though I have not actually looked through a Life of Fred book myself yet.
I have JUST started looking through the Manual of Methods linked above. Basically, it looks like a teacher’s guide to all of the eclectic books (Ray’s, McGuffey’s, Spencerian, Harvey’s, etc.). I’m also using the McGuffey readers and was feeling a little lost as to how to teach phonics as opposed to just sight reading, but already, just glancing through the Manual of Methods has provided some great ideas for me. It takes it lesson by lesson and tells me how the lesson should be taught. I wish I’d known about this manual before I started working through McGuffey with DD! I also skimmed through a little of the chapter on Ray’s, and I’m still a little unclear on oral vs written. I *think* what this means is that when you introduce your child to math, you should do so without representing numbers with numerals and symbols so your child develops an intrinsic understanding of the value of numbers before being presented with abstract symbols. Does that make sense? For example, you would use math in everyday life . . . at the grocery store, count apples into a bag. “How many do we have? Oh! We have one too many, let’s take one out! How many do we have now? Hmm . . . you know, now that I think about it, we may want extra apples to share with Grandma and Grandpa when they visit this weekend. Let’s add two. How many do we have now?” I was actually inspired while skimming through the Manual of Methods and reading Ruth Beechick’s “An Easy Start In Arithmetic” last night. I’ve decided to take math outside. I’ve been trying to figure out how to incorporate nature study into our school days, and I think I’ve found my solution. Take school outside! We’ll count, add, and subtract birds, bugs, flowers, clouds, whatever strikes our fancy. Science will take care of itself, we can do our reading outside, which will cover most other subjects, and I can let the kids draw pictures of what they see. That mostly covers it there. 🙂 I’m excited to get started! It helps that we live in an area where this is possible right now too though.
I don’t know what you are already doing with regards to teaching your child to count, but if you haven’t yet, I guess just spend a year counting everything with them sort of like my example above. If you have already been playing counting games like that, then you could probably just jump right in to “year 2” and start introducing those abstract numerals and symbols starting next year. Like I said though, I’m still reading through all of this stuff, so I’m not absolutely positive that’s the way it works. I haven’t looked much into Math-U-See, but from what I hear, Life of Fred can either stand on its own or serve as a nice supplement to most anything.
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