For any Ray’s users… have you used the Parent-Teacher Guide by Beechick for a 6yo? I wanted to start Ray’s Primary with my daughter and heard good things about the guide but don’t know if it has info/suggestions for the first Primary book. We’ll be starting with addition as my daughter already knows counting and identifying numbers. For those who have used it, how did you like it? Thanks!
Ruth Beechick’s guide is really good and does have suggestions for the Primary book. It also has a progress report form and a test, along with practical advice on when to move on from a concept. This is an oral program and is about the closest I’ve seen to Charlotte Mason’s methods. There are a couple of things missing that I wish it had, the first is how to introduce writing of numbers and how often to use writing. Another example would be money problems and the use of coins as manipulatives. This was so important to CM as they made for interesting, attention grabbing problems which not only made the idea of place value easily understood when a child reaches that point but also makes notation easier, and what we call borrowing/carrying.
Not to be self-serving, but if you added Ruth Beechick’s guide along with the SCM math handbook, you would have a great CM-arithmetic program still at very little cost.
Thanks, Richele… I really appreciate your response! I’ve also been looking at First Lessons in Arithmetic found at Donpotter.net. I discovered it after reading your response and looking at a blog review of the SCM math handbook. I like the way it lays things out a little bit more than Ray’s. Are you familiar with it at all? Our budget is so that I’m not sure if I can get the SCM math handbook AND Ruth Beechick’s guide for Ray’s at least at this point. If I go with First Lessons in Arithmetic, I may still get the math handbook. I just have decisions to make I suppose!
Hi, lnosborn, now I remember that arithmetic book! I do like this book and I used with my youngest for his first year of math while I was researching CM’s methods. One thing we incorporated was rather than only looking at a static picture, utilizing manipulatives found in our home (beans, buttons, craft sticks) for my child to work with. No matter which book you choose, you may find the need to come up with more of your own interesting problems and have your child come up with problems of their own as well. I promise, once you start doing it, it is simple to do and your kids will have loads of fun being creative with their questions. I’m sure you will find that early arithmetic lessons become a special and enjoyable time with your child. As with Ray’s, you won’t have the same hands-on changing of money that Charlotte’s school’s utilized.
If you purchase a printing from a digital copy from Amazon, read the reviews as some of the reprints are missing parts of the pictures.
I hope you do explore more of CM’s living teaching for math. Her methods, from writing numerals, to oral work, to finding the beauty and truth, and making relations, follow so closely to the way other subjects were taught in a living way. I’ve been amazed at how learning pure number and writing are done in the same way as her early reading lessons. Oral problems and no worksheets correspond to oral narrations found in history and literature.
I’ll keep exploring Mr. Potter’s other math books as well. I see he does go on to Ray’s New Intellectual Arithmetic.
Thanks, Richele! This is very helpful to me. I really like CM’s way of learning arithmetic and the oral aspect as well as using simple manipulatives found in the home for the younger children. I do want to incorporate using coins and making change. I can see how that would be very useful with place value and so much more. Thanks for your suggestions!
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