Some of you may already know that our main math curriculum is Miquon Math (Key Curriculum Press.) It’s a wonderful program - very easy to teach and the kids love it. Rather than telling the kids how to “do” math, we give them questions and situations to work with. They come around to the solutions themselves, by observing patterns that the questions are designed to highlight.
Miquon was developed by kids in early primary, with their teachers. It consists of 6 workbooks generally aimed at grades 1-3. So if you have slightly older primary students you will be wanting to find a program that can bring your kids along a little ways further. At least until they are ready for algebra and high school geometry.
I am currently investigating two options for math, and the really fun thing is they are free curricula! That’s right: no charge. Just download the necessary files, and off you go. Print what you need, and re-use the program for your younger kids as needed.
The first option is MEP math, which I found through Miss Maggie’s tremendous site, An Old-Fashioned Education. MEP stands for Mathematics Enhancement Programme. The program was created by the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching (CIMT.) This is a full curriculum for grades 1-12, complete with teaching guides, worksheets & copy master sheets. You can find all the materials here (scroll down to “school curriculum materials”.)
MEP curricula are intended for use in British schools, but are being used with success by home-schoolers as well. All materials are in PDF format, and can be easily located on the page for each specific grade level. Some of the files are password protected. If you are designated as a school you can obtain the password, but don’t despair if you are not! It’s mainly there to prevent kids in school kids from cheating. The password is available to home-schoolers through a couple of sources. For more information on passwords look here or here.
A second math curriculum that can be accessed free of charge is the Défi Mathématique. This is a French-language program, described here. The publishers offer books for use in schools, but their home-school version is available completely free of charge! Select one of the contact email addresses & submit a request, indicating your child(ren)’s age/grade level. It may take a few days, but you will soon receive an email with enough of the program to get you started. When you need more material, just let them know. The brothers Lyon are very generous, and quite interested in helping you help your kids with math.
Again, the files are in PDF format. I haven’t had much of a chance to use them yet, but the curriculum seems to be much more oriented towards a joint exploration of concepts. It includes some units that are as much science as math, like the one that begins with conservation of liquids.
Défi-Mathématique follows a non-traditional sequence for teaching mathematical operations. For example, multiplication & division are introduced before addition & subtraction. According to the publishers, kids are ready to handle a lot of the concepts we consider rather advanced, much earlier than in the traditional sequence. Because school texts generally hold off and draw out the exploration over a longer period of time, some kids will have trouble following along. When they are presented with materials that assist them in discovering for themselves, they master skills with less effort and can tackle more complicated subjects a lot sooner than we would expect.
One of the reasons we opted to try a French-language program is that our kids were, until this year, in a so-called bilingual school here in Montreal. Because they are growing up in a province where the majority of people speak French we want them to be comfortable in both languages. We did not find the bilingual program promoted much bilingualism, and we were further disappointed that only certain subjects were taught in French. Math & science, probably the two subjects whose vocabulary is least likely to be learned in a general second-language context, were taught exclusively in English. So, it has been our goal to supplement our regular instruction with enough French-language material in this domain to allow the girls to become as comfortable discussing these subjects in French as they are in English. If the Défi-Mathématique does nothing more than this, it will have been worth the time invested.
I will be working with both these programs over the next few weeks, and I promise I will write an update once I have time to see how well these two free curricula reach the girls. In the meantime, I invite you to do your own exploration!
This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a
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