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MEP math? Need advice please!
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Hi all 🙂 We have bene doing math paces for 15 moths now…and we are needing a change.
I was directed to MUS but then I found MEP maths.
It seems very comprehensive..and it’s free which is a big plus for us. We are a homeschooling family on a tight budget.
MEP seems to require much preperation before each subject.I also have another math question. My 11 year old is struggling with maths…mostly with multiplication and division. I’m worried that by changing curriculum she may develop gaps in her learning.
Do you think it’s a good idea that I start her back a grade…just for revision and to make sure she does not miss anything?I have not used MEP myself, though I know others who have, and I’ve looked at it myself, but found it too teacher intensive for me where I work half days. We started homeschooling in September using Math Mammoth (very inexpensive compared to the majority of math programs out there, and it’s self taught). My son was entering grade 5 but after doing the placement we learned we had to start in the 3rd grade book. We came close to finishing out the year in MM thinking we’d move on to the grade 4 book this term, but he was having way to much trouble with division, partly becasue he was having trouble remembering some of his multiplication facts. I ended up finding MUS used, so we are fast tracking through Gamma so we can start Delta in September with a firmer grasp on multiplication. I like that MUS doesn’t use grades, so it’s not as obvious to him that it would be considered a 3rd grade curriculum.
I’m finding most math programs are about a year ahead of public school. The grade 3 MM covered most of the same material that my son struggled with in grade 4 at PS. You will probably find you need to drop your daughter down a level in MEP, even two depending on her grasp of the material.
MEP is more teacher-intensive, but if you have a struggling math learner, you are probably spending a fair amount of time with him or her already. Other than printing out the lesson plans and practice pages (and briefly looking through them), there’s not a lot of advance prep once you get used to it, and you can still keep the lessons short. Sometimes we spent more than just one day on a lesson. But you do have to do most of the lesson along with the child.
There are online interactive tutorials/practice pages for years 7 & 8, and my daughter mostly went through the lessons on her own, only asking for my input when she wasn’t quite getting something. With the younger grades, though, you have to do the activities with the child. It did cement the concepts nicely for my daughter who was going through year 3, but it did take up my time every day. It wasn’t too often that she did a lot of independent work.
I have to say that my younger daughter got rather bored with it. For some reason, she either loved the puzzles they occasionally threw in or she found them frustrating. We decided to switch to MUS so we wouldn’t kill her love of math, so we’ll see how that goes. Now if I can just get her past memorizing her multiplication facts!
Oh, and by the way, 4myboys is correct about the math levels. When my daughter was in 4th grade, she started MEP year 3, and my 8th grade daughter was going through MEP year 7.
I used MEP Years R (K), 1, and 2… so can speak to those.
MEP is pretty good. I didn’t find it too bad, if you as the teacher understand math. Each lesson has some activities, and a worksheet. (The lesson plans are in seperate pdf’s from the worksheets). The activities are important, as they provide teaching and review. At those levels, Cuisinaire rods are great to have (they do have paper strips you can use, but the rods work a lot better.)
We stopped using it partway through level 2 because my son was struggling with it. I could see what the lessons were doing to teach 2digit math – but he was lost, and I didn’t know how to help him get it. It is possible that more time would have helped – but I would have had to find more worksheets or something…. there is no way to slow it down otherwise.
It is a good program though, and the price is right.
There is a MEP Homeschoolers Yahoo group – if you decide to use MEP – JOIN!
Also you will want to read this blog post (and there are others on the same blog – look for them under mathematics) http://ohpeacefulday.blogspot.ca/2009/06/mep-101.html
Math has been a big subject for me lately and this is what I have found out…
I have looked into MEP as it is free and we are on a tight budget also, but I don’t have a lot of time to set up the lessons so I haven’t used it much. Just a page here or there.
We have been using Profesor B math which is concidered an accelerated math program. I would suggest it be used as a suplement with another math curriculum but it really teaches the basics well. We haven’t gotten very far into the multiplication tables yet (that is in the second book) but what they have learned they have learned really well.
I am going to look into Math Mammoth in the next couple of days and maybe I will look into MEP again this summer more diligently.
There is also the Khan academy that is free also that we use as a supplement: http://www.khanacademy.org/
We are using MEP right now and liking it. We are using year 1, year 3, and year 4. Yes, there are a few hiccups along the way (but I think we would have that with any math curriculum), but it seems pretty solid. The kids seem to like it too. There are places you can get extra drill pages if you like, such as Calculadder, or various worksheet websites. So far it is working for us.
-Tanya
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