Life of Fred--Ice Cream by Stanley F. Schmidt, Ph.D. (2011) Hardcover

Life of Fred Elementary Series #9

by Stanley F. Schmidt

The idea behind Life of Fred is that if students have an enjoyable experience and have fun doing their math, they will remember it and use it and have a good taste in their math about the whole subject. The sub-title on each of his math books is "As Serious As it Needs to Be". And that is just the math doesn't need to be horrid and dry. This is math-just as serious as it needs to be-and I can tell you from my child's smiles and chuckles, that's not very serious at all! As a bonus, these books are very low priced compared to any other math books on the market. (Compare to Saxon at 50-70). If you have a creative child who is languishing on traditional math programs, try Life of Fred! Math, As Serious As it Needs to Be!

Genres: Mathematics, Nonfiction, School, Education, Childrens, Reference

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Stanley F. Schmidt is an educator. He began teaching high school teacher at the age of 22, and later taught in a college.

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't give these books less than 5 stars when they entertain and inspire your children to LOVE their math lessons and beg for more!! :)

[Laura Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this series more and more. They do such a good job of making sure the kids actually understand what’s going on, rather than just plug in pieces.

[LauraW · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must say, I am a bit disappointed in this book. I am frequently on the watch for books that people use for teaching math and a home-schooling group that I often see sang the praises of this series, so I decided to look into it. I am NOT a home-schooler; I am a substitute teacher. I have not used this book with young children, either, so I cannot discuss their reactions to it. What I can say is that I wasn't all that impressed with the pedagogy. The book has a good story line - or at least I think it probably does. This is not the first book in the series, so it is a bit like jumping in mid-way in a novel and trying to figure out what is going on. The people I have heard talk (write) about these books frequently mention how the kids get involved in the story of them.

Mathematically, though, at first, I thought the book was jumping around between topics WAY too much. I have looked at it again, though, and I think now that it is just some repetition of topics covered in other books and brought up in this one for review. That isn't bad in itself, but it does make the first impression of the book look quite disjointed.

But the biggest disappointment for me is that I found the math to be thin as far as explanatory depth. If the child(ren) this book is used for are able to understand connections, then this is probably OK, but I know a lot of children who would need more. And some of the math notation is puzzling. The use of the sigma notation with children of this age is one example. I subbed recently for 3rd and 4th graders for whom this notation would be completely confusing.

Personally, if I were home-schooling students in math, I would choose Singapore Math over this, but there may be other alternatives that are good, too.

[Jennifer]

Reading to E

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great bedtime math fun.