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Opinions on Math Mammoth (light blue)?
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I was researching math for my oldest math struggler yesterday and came across Math Mammoth. Now, I am not asking about her using Math Mammoth, but for my youngest who has a super math mind. She is 6 and is almost done with MUS Alpha, she gets the lessons super fast, but I think she is getting bored. I’m about to have to purchase Beta (she’s moved through Alpha in 4 months), so now would be the time to switch her if I am going to.
From what I’ve read and previewed, Math Mammoth seems to move more quickly than MUS and have more packed into a year than MUS. Have you found this to be true if you use MM? I think she needs something faster paced which won’t require me to buy 2 levels per year (MUS is costly also.)
Thanks for any help you can give!
I have used Math Mammoth in between MUS levels to reinforce and show the same concepts from a different perspective. It has been good extra practice for us. My son is young and breezes through the MUS levels, I don’t want to push him too far ahead to the point that he starts getting overwhelmed and frustrated at such a young age – but I don’t want to just take off months at a time of math. MM seems to help me keep the balance of challenging a bit (different perspective) but building confidence (just extra practice). I know that may not work for everyone, but for our experience it is good.
I only have experience with Math Mammoth & not MUS and I really like it for my son. We are justing finishing level 1 and will be starting level 2 in a few weeks. I ended up purchasing all the levels through homeschoolbuyerscoop.com in the fall beacause I liked the level 1 so well and figured we’d go with this for a few years until he’s ready for independent math of Teaching Textbooks like his olders siblings use. Just my 2 cents, but I haven’t anything to compare it to.
We used math mammoth grades 2 and 3 last year. It worked fine for my math minded younger son who completed the grade 2 program with nearly 100 percent in half a year. My older struggling learner appeared to get it, but there wasn’t enough review of earlier concepts for him. Also, the multiple ways of doing things could sometimes be confusing for him. I think now that if I were to have kept a regular drill schedule of basic facts it might have gone better. I found mus second hand, so bought gamma and delta and have seen better results with him. It’s cheaper to just reuse the same resources for younger, and the video is more engaging for them, otherwise I would have stuck with mm for the younger.
@4myboys: Do you think MM is geared more for a math minded student? That’s what we need. I think she is bored with MUS and I can’t afford to buy 2 MUS programs in one year. If she flies through MM it’s easier on the pocket book.
I’ve read many reviews that have said that mm was good for their math minded students. It worked fine for mine. He especially liked the puzzles that were thrown in every few pages. He is the type of kid who, even though you assign every second question on the pages, will do them all anyway just because he wants to. The cost is low enough that it is certainly worth a try. I think I paid $25 for the download.
Hey, for anyone interested, I noticed that homeschoolbuyerscoop.com will have MM on a group buy in march.
I do believe MM is for math minded students. If your child can read well, he/she could work independently on much of it. We have used it as a suppliment and switched over to using it as our main text this year (4th grade.) Unfortunately. we found that for 4th grade, the pages contain a lot of material and it somewhat intimidated my daughter (and me.) I suppose you don’t have to do everything on the page. Also, I noticed less games in the 4th grade edition. I think it’s possible that this is just typical of 4th grade work (4th grade is a trasition year.)
Feel free to ask other questions.
I would agree that MM is geared more for math-minded kids. One of the reasons that I tried it was that some of my kids weren’t math-minded and I thought it would help them to think more mathematically. It proved to be very confusing for them. Even in the early years of MM, I felt that things were taught in an abstract way — sometimes it was hard for me to follow the reasoning.
My “mathy” kid did ok with it. It was pretty frustrating for the others. It was frustrating for me because I was needed to do LOTS of teaching, and because we didn’t start with it from the beginning and I had multiple children, I had to spend a lot of effort learning the system myself. Even then, some of the kids just couldn’t wrap their minds around the abstract-ness of it.
Thank you all for your wonderfuk respones! I found grades 1-3 on CD at RR for $68 and I think it will be great for my very math minded dd. I’m also excited to be able to use parts of it (time, money, measuring) for my ds who is using Ray’s and will need supplements for those areas.
Thank you so much again!
One thing to remember is that is the lower levels of MathUSee are simpler and easier for some students to move through quickly. There is a good chance she may slow down a bit before long. It is unlikely you would require 2 MUS programs per year every year, although I could be wrong about that.
As to your original question, I would agree with the other posters that Math Mammoth is good for the math minded, not so good for the strugglers (we have both!). One thing to remember is that (at least the last time I looked) Math Mammoth does not go through all 12 grades, so you will be looking at another switch in the future.
We do something similar to mjemom with our children who move through the lower levels of MathUSee quickly – use Math Mammoth or something similar (I like CLE Math) in between levels.
I am sure you will figure out what is the best fit for your family!
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