Math-U-See

by Nicole Carmichael
(Bloomington, IN)

After years of tears of frustration with my oldest child over math, a friend shared Math-u-See with me. Words cannot express how much this curriculum has blessed us!

My daughter would literally struggle through her math lessons for two or three hours each day, never finishing the work by the end of the school year. With Math-u-See, she finished her entire math book by Christmas, and asked for the next book as a gift!

This sounds too good to be true, but it's not.

The key is the system stays with one concept until there is mastery. For instance multiplication is the topic for an entire year, then division, then fractions. This system is marvelous!

There is a student workbook that is consumable, a teacher's edition, and a DVD that has a brief teaching session for each lesson. There are colored blocks to purchase for the younger grades which I would highly recommend. They often make reference to the colors of their blocks, and I like to make things as simple for my kids as possible.

The fraction year has a set of overlays you can obtain. The lessons are numbered 1-30 with six pages for each lesson. They are marked a-f. My daughter would often do 3-6 pages per day!

The teaching lessons are just a few minutes long, yet thorough. I have rarely had to reteach anything. Another bonus is the CD they offer with skip counting. Highly recommend it as well! Even a three year old can learn to skip count with these songs.

There are biblical versions of the songs on the cd, which we love, and there are regular songs you can choose.

The only possible drawback to this curriculum may be its lack of color. There are no distracting pictures and everything is in black and white. My daughter found this very helpful, but others may miss the clowns and balloons on the sides of the page. You could always invite them to decorate the margins in the early grades for fun!

Great review with helpful tips, Nicole. Cute, cute picture too! :)