Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 1

My little math boy has gotten quite a lot of practice this year! Our latest offering was the Light Blue full year curriculum 1st Grade from Maria Miller's Math Mammoth  program. We received the downloaded pdf version of the program (it can also be purchased as printed workbook, or on CD). 
This worked out well for us as littlest enjoys doing worksheets via the pdf-notes app on my iPad. I like it because it reduces the number of papers floating around our house, AND it saves on ink and paper. If you don't have access to an iPad, you may be happy to know that the PDF's in the download version are enabled for annotation and can be filled in directly on the computer if opened in Acrobat Reader version 9 or higher. 

From the website: The four main areas of study for first grade are:

1. The concepts of addition and subtraction, and strategies for addition and subtraction facts (chapters 1-2; chapter 4);
2. Developing understanding of whole number relationships andplace value till 100 (chapter 3 and chapter 7);
3. Developing understanding of measuring lengths as iterating length units (chapter 6); and
4. Reasoning about attributes of geometric shapes, such as the number of sides and the number of corners, and composing and decomposing geometric shapes (chapter 6).

Additional topics we study in first grade are clock to the half hour (chapter 5) and counting coins (chapter 8).
Please also see the table of contents for 1-A and 1-B (in the sample files), which will let you see the topics covered in more detail.

Littlest zipped through the initial "Kindergarten" Math Review lessons, and we moved on into the addition and comparison lessons. Although he has worked on his math facts before, I really wanted him to take the time to go through these lessons thoroughly, as Maria takes a slightly different approach (really focusing on fact families, and the ability to figure out a number sentence easily, regardless of whether an addend or the answer is missing) than I have used with littlest before.

Here are a few of the pages that Littlest completed:

Can you tell that sometimes we did the problems orally, and I wrote the numbers in? (See the green)

There were a variety of activities and way to work the problems, which my littlest thought was interesing, even if we didn't always follow the directions, as seen on the number lines below.

This was one of the pages that my littlest enjoyed, and boy, we sure do like being able to use "highlighter" and colored "pens" on these worksheets~ :D (please, pay no attention to the time at the top of the screenshot~ that is when I took it  for the purposes of including it in the review~ generally speaking he did his math at a much earlier hour~ with only a few exceptions... :D)

And finally, one of his favorite activities~ he thought this was a great "puzzle" (and even found more "matches" than the answer key!). He did a great job of using purple for the lines that didn't cross other numbers to make ten, and blue if they had to skip through a number to get to their match. :D

From what I have seen, this appears to be a methodical and solid method of teaching basic math principles. While there really aren't any real bells and whistles, some interest is built in through the variety of ways to approach each problem. Oh yes, my little guy LOVED doing the included story problems~ he thought they were fun puzzles too! There are also instructions for playing some math games, and a number of links to websites that do have bells and whistles which will reinforce the lessons being taught. So even if your family is not a worksheet sort of family, there are resources for you as well!

The Math Mammoth website is worth exploring~ The Light Blue Curriculum covers grades 1-6. There are also Books by Topic (dark blue series), Worksheets by Grade (gold series), Worksheets by Topic (light green series), and Real-Life Math (purple series). In order to determine which series and level is the best for you, Maria has a free math assessment your child can take.  You can also download over 300 samples from various Math Mammoth books and series to check out, and see if this is a good fit for your family (Be sure to check out Maria's blog, or sign up for her newsletter if you like what you see~ it's always nice to realize that homeschool curriculum providers are real people too!).

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Math Mammoth
• Product: Light Blue Full Year Curriculum 1st Grade
• Ages:1st grade
• Price: $34 for the full set, $16.50 and $17.50 each for parts 

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say, as they reviewed a variety of the books and series available from Math Mammoth. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~