Math-U-See – Product Review

First, a little background. Last fall I invested in RightStart Math. I was considering using Moving Beyond The Page for my main Kindergarten curriculum and RightStart was the companion. We used RightStart for a while, but I found it too formal for my four-year-old. There was a fair amount of prep work required by me and the lessons were very structured. I did like several things about it. I loved that it explained the Eastern naming conventions for numbers (MUS does this as well). It makes so much more sense to call eleven “1-ten 1″ – the value of the number is implicit in the name. The problem was that Tornado Boy had already been using our conventional names for a very long time. It really wasn’t working for us to reinvent the wheel by forcing him to use other names. I also loved the abacus. It made learning skip counting by five and ten very easy. We really fell apart when we hit addition. Tornado Boy clearly wasn’t ready for it, so rather than skip around to other topics, we stopped using it. For the rest of the year, we did our own thing with numbers. We played a lot of different file folder games, used base ten blocks and do a lot of work with patterns. We made sure that counting to 100 was solid along with skip counting by 2, 5 and 10. I approached addition a couple more times. We tried working with a number line. We did some counting on. We used different sorts of counters. We learned a ton about place value, but addition really seemed to be a sticking point. I’ve read that it’s not uncommon for some kids to grasp more advanced concepts while they’re stuck on the basics. I really felt like we still weren’t ready to go back to the formality with RightStart.

When I was looking at possible curricula for next year, I re-visited Math-U-See. I had compared it when I chose RightStart last year. I really had preferred the variety of manipulatives that RightStart used; that’s why I selected it initially. I watched the entire demo again from the Math-U-See site. I like Steve Demme’s style. He’s very straight forward and uses good mnemonic devices. I knew that Tornado Boy did well with blocks, because that’s how we learned place value (through base ten blocks). I also knew that he responds very well to video lessons. His auditory recall is staggering. This strikes me as odd since he can’t follow a physical direction like don’t run in the street! However, he can quote long passages of video content verbatim, so I figured that was promising. I went ahead and ordered the Primer level of MUS, along with a set of their blocks. I felt like with the exception of addition and subtraction; Primer would be largely review, but that Tornado Boy really would need the basics of addition instruction.

Fast forward two weeks. Thanks to Math-U-See, I have a different child. He loves math. He asks to do Math-U-See. The picture above shows him working on “Decimal Street”. This reinforced our prior work with place value. I really like that it clearly shows the student that there can be no more than 9 of any number in each place. This work allowed Tornado Boy to really make the leap and be confident in his regrouping of tens. He knew to do it before, but now he really understands why. He likes the video lessons. You can either watch them on your own and then do the lesson with your child, or watch them together. We’ve chosen to watch them together. We watched all of the first 15 or so lessons on the DVD, but we didn’t do all of the worksheets that went with them. There are a ton of worksheets and since this was review, I didn’t feel the need to do more than a few of each type of problem.

We introduced the rest of the manipulative blocks. We spent a day or two committing the colors and values to memory. It’s important that the child learn to recognize them without having to count the squares. We started doing the addition sections and watched the same lessons several days in a row. I could see that Tornado Boy was starting to really understand that answers in math are constant. What was true yesterday is still true today. He did a good job with the +1 lesson and I could see that he was really starting to think about answers rather than just blurting out a random number. Something clicked and he started being able to do large number addition problems with the base ten blocks. This was outside of Math-U-See, but clearly the leap was because of the program.

I was so pleased with the quick progress that I ordered the Alpha level of the program since it appears that we will quickly exhaust the Primer content. I also ordered the wooden storage boxes for the blocks because they were a pain to clean up after each lesson. I had seen some links to different tackle boxes that people had used for a less expensive storage solution, but I couldn’t find any at my local stores or online that would appear to work. I’m glad that I ordered the wooden boxes. They are a bit cumbersome, but they provide a great work area for problem solving as they have two lines to create and solve problems. I really saw that Tornado Boy “got it” today. We’re having company this weekend so I was busy trying to get ready. Tornado Boy was playing the Incredibles game on his Leapster. One of the games had a math problem with three addends. He took his Leapster over to his MUS blocks and started solving the problems and then selecting the correct answer on his Leapster. Before this he would have either guessed or asked us for help. I was thrilled. The above picture is him working on one of the problems.

I was further thrilled tonight when we were playing with a centipede stretchy toy that Tornado Dad had brought back from a recent trip. I asked Tornado Boy how many legs it had and he started to count them one-by-one. I told him that I bet that he could count them faster by two. He handed the toy to me to show him and I realized that it was actually four legs to a segment. I asked him if he knew how to count by fours (we haven’t covered that yet). He said that he knew how to solve the problem and went back over to the wooden boxes and started pulling out the “4″ blocks and laying one beside each segment. Unfortunately we ran out of blocks way before legs, but I was so proud that he thought of that as a solution. What a leap in two weeks. I am so pleased. I’m not sure that I really want to get into all the drill and memorization of addition facts yet, but I’m really glad that the concepts are starting to take shape.

So – what are the potential drawbacks of Math-U-See? Partially it depends on the child. Here are my thoughts:

• This is a no frills program. The videos are straightforward and the texts are black and white text and drawings. That’s fine by me, but some may not like it.

• The teacher guides are not meaty. This isn’t an issue if you understand what you’re teaching. I’d be a little concerned with that at higher levels. I’m not sure what the feedback is for parents of older children as the program is designed to go through 12th grade. I’d definitely check the Yahoo Group for feedback before purchasing advanced levels.

• Speaking of Yahoo groups – there’s one for sales of used versions of MUS as well – wish I’d known that in advance.

• There doesn’t appear to be the support on the MUS site that is advertised in the books. A new edition was recently rolled out and the website is being updated. The blog and forums are gone. According to the Yahoo user group it appears that this has been going on for at least a few weeks if not more with no real communication as to when this will change. I’m not sure if I’d need the support, but was disappointed that it was not there.

• There is a ton of repetition with the ability to create further worksheets, drills and tests on the site. This will probably be great for some people, but I think it’s overkill for us. The program stresses mastery before moving on. I personally can’t believe that it will take us an entire year to cover two digit addition and subtraction, but the beauty of homeschooling is that you can move on when you want and need to. I would not be at all surprised if we chose to use RightStart to supplement some subjects as needed.

• There are not enough blocks in the starter set. There are only 5 one hundred plates. A ‘completer’ set is mentioned, but I don’t see anything named that. I’m assuming that some people just buy a second set. It definitely would seem necessary if you have more than one child.

Overall, I am overwhelmingly pleased. I think that for primary math, this is a great fit for us. I do hope that the website issues are resolved should we need to use it. I do encourage anyone who is interested in the program to download and watch the demo. It is lengthy, but it really gives you good insight into how the program works. They’re also attending a lot of homeschool conferences this year if you want to see it hands-on. I think that it’s worth it to give the program serious consideration if it fits your child’s learning style. We’re certainly glad that we did!