Life of Fred

As a mother homeschooling my children, I’m always on the hunt for new and exciting ways to teach the kids.  One of our many reasons in making the decision to home school was so that we could provide our children with some unique approaches to learning, along side of the more traditional methods.  The older I get the more I realize that “generally accepted” isn’t always the best way of doing things.

On one of my journey’s for a different approach to teaching math, I came across Life of Fred.  It’s a series of books written by Stanley F. Schmidt, who’s a retired high school and college math teacher.  He writes the story about Fred Gauss, a teacher at Kitten’s University.  In the first book, Fred is 5 years old and his companion is a doll named Kingie.  The story itself is amusing, but it also introduces math in a way that shows its use our daily lives by demonstrating it in Fred’s life.

The chapters are relatively short and in the first book the math is very basic but it makes sense.  Along with the math it also touches on other life lessons like “Why you shouldn’t be rude” and “Sugar rots teeth”.

So far the Little Professor is really enjoying our new approach to math.  I’d consider it more supplemental than a main curriculum, though I read the higher level texts are much more involved.  It has definitely given the Little Professor a more rounded view on math and has enforced it’s importance in our life.  He’s beginning to get a more tangible understanding, it’s not just about memorizing numbers and rules.

  

I wasn’t able to find the Elementary books in any of the stores around where we live but I did find them online.  The cheapest I found them was through Z-Twist Books.  I wasn’t sure about ordering through them even though they were recommended by the Publisher because the website looked amateurish but my cheapness overruled my doubt and I went ahead and bought the book it.  As it turns out they were very quick and professional.  I received an email instantly confirming my order and within the hour I had a shipping confirmation number.  Shipping was free through Media Mail…I like free!  It’s my favourite!

At the rate the Little Professor is going through the first book, we’ll be ordering the next one very soon at which point I will start the Princess on the first one.

If you want more information, the webiste for the books are:

Life of Fred

One thought on “Life of Fred

  • 29 August, 2012 at 10:23 am
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    Wow – I love that ! The real-world application of math is very important to kids, because drawing that link between the two make them understand why they are doing it! Great!

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