Maths Curriculums

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Do you use a specific Maths curriculum? Is it an online one or from books? Which scheme do you use and what made you pick that particular one? If you don't use a curriculum then how do you plan the maths?

I'm asking as I have a very able maths DD who needs a bit of a challenge plus some nice practical activities!

Thank you.

I've just ordered a book from Galore Park, it looks really good!

here

I just looked at Education City online. You get a free trial so she could check it out. My 2 found it a bit too schooly and a tad patronising but your dd might see it differently. They have other subjects on there as well. It's worth a look

Hey there Runnerbean..we did The Independent interview..gulp! It should be in this weeks Education section on Thursday

Hello Kayteee. Not much experience in this as ds is still fairly resistant to teaching etc, but I purchased the Mammoth Math curriculum blue book series some time ago. If this works its here He's only 7 so we're doing quite elementary stages of it. I'm lucky if I get him to do a page every one and a half weeks, but I look at the activities ahead of time and do games to fill in those periods. It actually has suggestions of games you can do, but what attracted me to it is the price and easy availability of it. I also like the format and the way it logically progresses from one concept to another. I think this is very important in a maths curriculum. I don't like "boxy" curriculums that teach concepts in isolation so that you can't see how fractions relates to percentages or decimals for example. You can purchase the curriculum online and it is sent to you in PDF format where you can easily print it off. It contains brief guidelines on how to explain certain concepts, but is designed so that your child can do it on his own. (they say, we haven't got there yet) It's American and only does dollars and euro monetary system so thats the downside.

I also have Saxon Maths 5/4 put down for future, although looks slightly dull (no bright pictures) because I like the way it progressively builds on and reviews previous concepts learned in a very thorough way. It also goes all the way up to Algebra too.

Anyway that's just me. Ds hasn't actually expressed any personal preferences yet, so we may never get to finish either curriculum!
Hope this is of some use.

My pasta's burning!!

I have seen SMP maths reccomended on here (I did SMP at secondary level) I had a look at what they have got in Borders books the other day - loads of "help your child at home" type stuff but little else

At GCSE level they had a few text books but all were directly linked to an exam board - I wasnt terribly impressed with any of them tbh

I use Whizz.com

My kids really like it (aged 9 and 11). They do between 15 mins and 30 mins a day.

They've been doign it for about 7 months and they were both 'behind their age' by about 3-6 months when they started, and are now about a year ahead.

There's a free trial to see if it's any good. So you can try it without committing.

I heard that Mathletics is similar, but cheaper.

You could check out MEP (maths enhancement programme) - Plymouth University publishes it. I can't exactly vouch for it, as we've only just started looking at it. There are lesson plans and some materials and work books and you can download the lesson plans and work books for free from internet if you want - or buy them cheaply if you'd rather have them in book form. There's also a yahoo support group for it. Lots of people seem enthusiastic about it, so thought we'd give it a go and they seem to enjoy it so far. I haven't really worked out if we want to do something this structured, but thought we'd have a play with it.

Not sure how old your dd is but we just enrolled (2 week free trial) with this

It's fantastic!

We use both Whizz and Conquer, and supplement them with workbooks. Conquer is great because you get printed worksheets to do so it's not just on the computer.