Heaven Bound - Review: Math Mammoth

Mar. 1, 2009

Review: Math Mammoth

I received two products from Math Mammoth to review for the TOS Crew: Clock and Grade 4 Curriculum.

For grades 1-3, this curriculum covers telling time, reading the clock, telling time intervals, and also covers understanding the calendar. I chose this material for my daughter as she has a hard time reading analog clocks. Digital clocks are no problem, but analog clocks are very different (as we all know). This book is not necessarily meant to be covered from beginning to end as it is for grades 1-3 but you can pick and choose what your child needs help with.

With my daughter, who’s 7, we’ve done some basic time-telling exercises with a “pretend” clock we purchased at Target for $1.00. She’s able to move the hands and can definitely tell time by the hour. And, if you tell her to show you 6:30, she can do that (time by the half-hour). So, I thought this material would prove very helpful for her in explaining the “rest of the story”. The first few lessons were indeed helpful, but she had a hard time wrapping her head around the idea of “half-past 6:00” which is how the material is presented in Clock. Again, you could ask her for 5:30, 4:30, etc. but the “half past” knocked her off her little feet. So, I took it back a step and we continue to work through some of the pages a little at a time.

She tends to do things more hands-on and learns faster that way so I find that working with the physical clock rather than the worksheets works best. We take the worksheet problems and work through them on the actual clock and this has been really helpful. Some of the material she’s not ready for so we’ll wait until a little later to cover that. I do like the program and we’ll definitely continue to use it until she completely has analog time-telling down.

4th Grade A&B

For my son, we’re currently working with a separate math program, but as I mentioned in a previous post, he has problems understanding what to do with word problems. He can do basic addition and subtraction word problems, but when you throw in problems with multiple steps that incorporate more than one concept, it throws him for a loop. When I explained the situation to Maria (the author of Math Mammoth), she was kind enough to offer us the Grade 4 curriculum to review the word problems in it. So, we did. We would do my son’s normal math curriculum, but I would toss in extra word problems (maybe 1-2 a day) for him to work through from Math Mammoth. The explanations in the Math Mammoth material were very helpful and he seems to be getting a better understanding of what to do and when to do it. We’re going to continue with this method because I believe it’s helping him.

Plus, my son’s working through fractions right now and Maria’s section on fractions is very helpful. It helps to solidify the concepts that he’s been working through with the regular curriculum. Yeah!!! We’re going to take a break from his regular curriculum to focus on specific fraction issues until he gets those down and then we’ll move forward.

In General

Also, both curriculums offer additional websites to go to for games and “create your own” worksheets to help cement the concepts in each program. Very cool!

Aside from the programs that we reviewed, there are TONS more on the Math Mammoth website. You can choose material based on topic (i.e. clocks, measuring, metric, place value, money, etc.) or grade level. You can purchase grade levels by sections (A or B) and pay a fraction of the cost that you would with normal curriculums (which is very nice in today’s economy!).

And, I must add that Maria Miller was very helpful in helping us determine what would be best for our family. Every family is different and the needs within each family are as wide as the Grand Canyon is deep. I am truly grateful for her help!

In Summary:

Ø Clock Program

o Price: $3.50 (if you download it) and $9.25 (hard copy book)

o Free Clock Reading Worksheets

o 44 lessons in 56 pages

o For grades 1-3

o Overall: