Investigations Math Poll Results - Supplementing your Public School Student's Education

This is a double edged sword. If you are in a school district that uses Investigations Math or some "new-math" program, your child will probably fall behind other students from around the country. The problem you face in homeschooling your child as a supplement to the "new-math" they get at school, is the educator's will tout the higher test scores and say it is a direct result of their program because there's no way parents teaching their kids at home would do a better job than trained professional teachers in schools.

So be warned that you must keep constant pressure on the officials to reject these failed programs and remind them that you are homeschooling your child to supplement the poor education they are getting in the schools.

Below I have listed a few sites with outstanding math curriculum. If you do not pull your child out of public schools for a charter or private school, you should consider purchasing these texts to supplement your child's education.

You can also find some of these resources available at Amazon.com and Ebay.com.

Singapore Math-this is the program used in Singapore which has rocketed them to the top of the world math rankings (see page 8 of this pdf file). Simple and easy to understand, it's also pretty inexpensive. They also offer other subjects. (Look at the Primary Math Workbooks and their CD-ROM's are top notch--this was our family's choice to work on over the summer to get our kids up to speed--basic multiplication is in the first grade workbooks) We have loved this program as it teaches both math facts and understanding relationships.

http://www.singaporemath.com/

Saxon Math-another great curriculum used by homeschoolers and charter schools in this country. They also offer other subjects.

http://www.pennywiselearning.com

http://www.schoolhousesource.com

Mythmatical Battles-If you've got children in grade school, I highly recommend this game. The other night I played a game with my 5th grader (who wasn't excited at all about playing a math card game). By the end of the game I think she had done somewhere between 200-300 multiplication problems and didn't complain about it once. In fact, when it was over, she wanted to play again.

The game takes an ancient culture's myths and create cards for each of the gods, monsters, heros, and "minions" from that set of lore. The set we purchased was the Egyptian and Norse set and there's also a Greek/Celtic set. Each card has it's own attack and defense scores as shown by multiplication problems at the bottom of the card. A player lays out their character cards on the table and they stay there until defeated. You also have bonus cards like weapons that modify the attack or defense scores so on a particular turn, a player may announce Thor is attacking Isis with a strength of 40(doing 5x8 in their head), and the other player says they're defending with a rating of 36 (9x4), so the attacking player captures Isis. The game is further enhanced by special abilities on the cards much like the popular trading card games kids are playing like Pokemon and Harry Potter. So if you lay down Loki and one of his children, the "child" gets a +10 bonus to attacking when Loki is on the field, thus prompting additional math calculations.

If you've got younger children that haven't mastered (or been taught) multiplication facts, you can either use the enclosed math grid to look up answers (which would mean slower playing), or convert the multiplication signs to addition and work on those skills. It's a brilliant game that reinforces math in a fun way where the kids don't realize they're drilling problems. An added benefit is the children are learning about ancient cultures and learning some tricky names like Hatshepsut and Neferkaptah. So if you can't tell, I give the game an A+.

Purchase Mythmatical Battles here: http://www.mythmaticalbattles.com/

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