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BOOK
REVIEW: Wow, my family loved this math program. Finally someone explains math so that it is visual and it makes sense. There is a teaching video to show your students, and a teacher manual. My children had lots of fun with the skip counting tape. This audio tape teaches counting by 2,3,4, and so on in a fun and catchy way. Multiplication is a snap when you already know how to skip count. This program uses tons of manipulatives and you can really enjoy and understand math. The whole series is reasonably priced and can be used for several years. Definitely a ten on my scale of one to ten. 
My kids really liked it. I've used it for two children and I am going to use it with my third child this year.
The strengths of this program are in the presentaion and concept building strategies. The manual and video help the teacher clearly present new concepts and manipulative blocks help to reinforce skills that are learned. The idea is that by "seeing" the concept you will then understand. I think this works well, but the weakness is the practice is too little and needs to be supplemented for learning basic facts of addition, subraction, multiplication and division.
Math-U-See is a program that uses videotapes to teach the lessons, hands on manipulatives, and workbooks. We found the lessons to be easy to follow, as well as practical, and stress is placed on repetition until foundations are solid. The program builds in a logical sequence, so the student never gets lost. The program doesn't (in my opinion) have enough "drilling", so we supplemented with Calculadder for drills we used daily. Together these programs worked great without much teacher preparation. I recommend this program for people who don't enjoy, or who are intimidated by teaching math. The teacher on the video "teaches" and the parent becomes more of an assistant to help students understand what is presented on tape and practicing with manipulatives. My two sons loved it!
We've tried just about every math program available, and not being overly thrilled with any of them, decided to try this for 3rd grade. It was just what the doctor ordered! An emphasis on skip counting was new to us, and so logical! Our daughter made an easy transition to Saxon 54. (We chose not to continue M-U-See because the next level covering 3 years presents all concepts in only 36 lessons. And, there are only 4 work pages per lesson, so it's almost essential to supplement for practice.)
You know it's a good program when your children want to bring it on vacation (for that matter, beg to!) and just by saying,"if you don't get finished in subject 'x' you won't have time for math" suddenly gets everyone focused and finished so as not to miss any time doing math. Funny, I can still remember when the word math was a 4-letter word around the house. Not anymore! Thanks Math-U-See! |
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