I have a son who is in 5th grade and doing MUS. We are having no problem with it, but I thought about giving him a brake from this and doing this program from soyna.
If you have used it could you share your comments on it. Like how long did it take you to do (based on days a week), did your child enjoy it, what age did you do it, can you use it on multiple children, any other thoughts would be great. What was the greatest benefit to doing this program with your child.
My 4th grade ds was hating Saxon math so I tossed the book and finished the year with the Pet Store. He loved it! My 2nd grade ds also did a modified version of it. I changed some of the problems to make it simplier for him. We did a month per week and it took about 12 weeks. Since then both boys have asked to repeat the store process.
We used this in 5th grade as well. It was good for fact practice; which is why I purchased it. My son did not finish the book, because we got to the point where it had served it’s purpose and so we pretended that we sold the pet shop (for a profit, of course!). At first I thought it was going to be boring, doing the same thing every month, but once I realized that repitition was exactly what we were after, it was fine. Having the cycle go by months also made it easy to end it without feeling like we quit. Make sense? My new 5th grader will also use this on top of his other curriculum for the same reasons stated, plus he asked if he could.
You can use it a number of ways, Misty. Some moms do it every day as a break from their regular curriculum or as a summer project. Some moms save it for every Friday, doing their regular curriculum Monday through Thursday and the store at the end of the week. There are several potential schedules given in the front of the teacher book to offer some ideas.
I’m interested in the age recommendation (max) as well. We just pulled our kiddos from public school and will begin homeschool (for ages 10, 12 and 13) in the next few weeks. I felt it might be a good way to “ease” into our new venture! 🙂 But I’m not sure if the 13 yr old will enjoy it…thoughts?
The reason we did this was to solidy math facts. It’s not babyish at all, so if your purpose is to get the calculations speedier and/or help your child ‘get’ the facts, I’d say there is no max age. If your purpose is teaching one how to run a business, for an older child (8th and up) that already has these basics down, I’d go with a more indepth program. Having said that, perhaps Sonya or someone else can tell you how to beef it up.
Two ideas come to mind for adding more depth for older children:
One mom used the Book Store to teach her son how to use a spreadsheet. You can see more details and a link on the Your Business Math Links and Tips page.
You could probably add some employees to make things interesting. The child would need to learn how to do payroll, including all the taxes involved. You could get as elaborate as you wanted with this, I would think. You could write up profiles of various people to “interview” and choose from. Have your child come up with a work schedule that gives each person as many hours as he/she wants and still fits within the budget. You might even write some extra Chance cards that apply to the employees.