Louisa used to hate math. Then we discovered The Life of Fred and now she LOVES math!
I was highly suspicious as I listened to Louisa laugh through her math lessons and totally enjoy doing them. I was stunned to watch her go straight for math when she started her homeschool work each morning. I picked up the book and read an outlandish story about a miniature boy named Fred and all his adventures. I couldn't imagine she was really learning math, so I asked her to tell me what she had learned so far in the 16 lessons she had completed. She quickly jotted down this list for me:
infinite sets natural numbers integers set notation ratios coefficients . . . (need I go on?)
I was impressed to say the least! How could a girl who hates math actually be enjoying Algebra and really learning the terminology as well as how to do the operations? I contacted Stan Schmidt, the author of The Life of Fred, and a retired college math professor of 28 years whose self-proclaimed mission is to help kids love math. I asked him, "How do I know a student who does Life of Fred will retain it?," to which he replied, "How much of your school algebra did you retain?" Ouch!
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 point: 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 Louisa'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!
Lifge of Fred Trigonometry covers all of trigonometry including...
Sines
Cosines and Tangents
Graphing
Significant Digits
Trig Functions of Any Angle
Trig Identities
Graphing a s in (bx + c)
Radian Measurement
Conditional Trig Equations
Functions of Two Angles
Oblique Triangles
Inverse Trig Functions
Polar Coordinates
Polar Form of Complex Numbers
Preview of all of Calculus
Unlike all other math programs, this one also has: • Preview of all of Calculus and what specific material you'll need from arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trig in order to do all of calculus • Reviews of functions, factoring, fractions, and graphing inserted just before the chapters in trig in which you will need them • The first time in your math career in which you will see the number one defined rigorously