Life of Fred

We are loving life of Fred. We switched to this curriculum in October of last year. My kids were 9&10 at the time. They were able to move through all the elementary series fairly quickly and will be starting the intermediate series soon. They love how it is in story form. Especially my daughter. She learns best through stories. It use to be a struggle each day when it was time for math. That has all changed. I can see how some may feel they need to supplement with this curriculum. I did at first. After looking ahead to Fractions and Decimal & Percent books we now are just doing Fred. I highly recommend this curriculum. It has made a huge difference!

We used Life of Fred when we began homeschooling. My daughter loved the story and enjoyed reading the books with me. We did a chapter a day. My only issues was that I felt, for my daughter, there wasn't enough review questions. I would have to spend extra time and either make up my own worksheets or find some on Pinterest or from doing a Google search. We have since gone on to use Teaching Textbooks.

We love the Life of Fred books at our house. I would recommend starting with Apples, even if you have an older child. There are concepts taught in the early books, that come back later. We do sometimes take a few days "off" from Fred to find additional problems to cement a concept. This was especially true with multiplication and division facts. My daughter who struggles with math, appreciates that this doesn't take her all day and that once she passes the bridge, she can move on. Life of Fred made math do-able for my kids that struggled as well as taught them lots of random information about history, biology, and economics. I highly recommend this series.

Number one, I will say that we LOVE Fred! These books are fun and engaging and have sparked an interest in mathematics for my children. I use it more for math encouragement, which is totally worth it if you have those cross-armed math naysayers abounding in your home. Each of my children look at math with different eyes after a reading of Fred. I usually read the lessons as a family and the children each have their Fred notebooks and try to answer the questions at the end. I don't have much negative to say about Life of Fred. Used as a valuable suppliment to you math program will give you the best results.

I wouldn't suggest this for a student who needs several problems to remember a concept, or frequent review, or in depth lessons to understand. This was not a good fit for my eldest daughter, though she loved and laughed at the stories and really enjoyed the chapters. She just wasn't learning math with it. I do plan to pull it out for my youngest to try again, though. She'll love the stories as well and the short lessons may work better for her.

We started the series with Fractions and Decimals & Percents. We just continued on through the books - not expecting one year for each book - many of the early ones took only a short time. It was a godsend for my not-so-math-minded student, although, we did need to seek out a different book to explain geometry to him. For my math-minded student, he has worked through all of the subjects on his own and is currently working on Calculus in 11th grade. Another reviewer stated that problems weren't explained right away, and honestly, I think that is part of the genius of the program: Dr. Schmidt expects a certain amount of critical thinking which makes it a challenge.

My daughter struggles with math and Life of Fred has opened her eyes to a new way of looking at it so in that sense I really like it. The Fred stories are great for kids and include lots of good information. However, my daughter needs a lot of practice to retain the concepts so I only use Life of Fred as a "bait" to engage her with math.

We love Fred! For the first time math is fun! Fred uses relatable stories to teach math concepts. Its easy to expand on them if need be. My kids love the fact that Fred goes jogging like their parents! The kids ask for Fred when its time to do math!

My daughter loved the stories and not having to do a lot of worksheet work with it. I like that they cover stuff you would not normally see in a math book.

My math-haters love Fred! We'very used Fred for about 20 months. My now 12 year old complained about another program, "This isn't teaching me anything! " After using Fred for a year, she said, "(Life of Fred) doesn't teach me anything, but it is making me better at math, so maybe it is teaching me something! " My now 14 year old was recently heard saying "I like Algebra. " She used to complain and put off doing the other curricula. Now she does multiple lessons of Algebra 1 at a time.

We use Life of Fred as a supplement to our main math program. My kids really like it, but I wouldn't use it as a stand alone. There is not enough practice or teaching, but as a supplement it is fun.

Life of Fred is a fun math series. It is a set of stories about Fred, a 5 year old math professor. The stories go through basic mathematical concepts Fred uses in his daily life. However, practice is limited and supplementation is likely needed. For students who love to read, this would be a good math series, or good supplementary material.

We've used Fred as a fun supplement to Math-U-See. Fred adds a real life side of math and is a fun way to learn!

I just started on Apples with my first grade son. So far, he seems to be enjoying it. The lessons are short and funny. It's also nice that there aren't a lot of problems to solve at the end. My son gets overwhelmed with too many problems. So, this seems to be a good fit for him.

We have used this a supplement , especially when my kids hit a wall , so to say in math. This provided a break, and had the work broken down and explained in another way, so they" got it" We've used the Fractions book and percents, book. And I am so thankful! The work was challenging them, but they didn't fight it as well as it did not overwhelm them. Love Life of Fred!

As a former math teacher, I love Fred. My first grader gets bored easily and didn't find the illustrations enough to hold his attention. He enjoyed the storyline and is an excellent reader but I had to read with him to keep him going. I was hoping it would hold his interest more. I will introduce them to his brothers and see how they do.

My daughters love Fred. we had to limit how often we could do Fred because my girls would power through an entire book in one sitting. We use the books as a reward for finishing work they aren't as interested in now, if they had a choice they would only do Fred math and nothing else. We love this product.

We gave Fred a try. I had high hopes, and I still have a lot of respect for the series...I just couldn't get my kids interested in it, and perhaps part of that was the timing: a baby in arms or toddling underfoot makes it hard to sit down with kids and read it with enjoyment. But the other part was, it felt like something we had to do, rather than something we wanted to do. I kept staring at it on the shelf thinking, "we really ought to get it out" but rarely did.

Even though I could tell a great deal of intelligent, thoughtful consideration went into the creation of the Fred series, the humor left my daughter flat. My son appreciated some of the slapstick and absurdity, and I appreciated some of the sophisticated wry wit behind it that went over their heads.

However, in the end, at the time, we just weren't in a place where all my kids could/would sit cuddled up on the sofa and have Fred read to them, and it just didn't grab us from the start, enough to make us want to MAKE time for it in our lives. Bottom line, we didn't use it.

I noticed and appreciated how well-crafted it was, that the understanding for why and how a concept was useful, came first, and the nuts-and-bolts of how to perform the math (along with an invitation to "try it yourself") came next. I think that is a good approach.

Much as I was disappointed that it wasn't for us at the time, I don't write off trying it again in the future... but the books are not inexpensive enough to try casually, and I don't know of any "try before you buy" option except for borrowing some from a friend.

Bottom line, they are really different from all other math curricula. Truly unique. And the approach seems like a very good one, particularly for kids who need to know WHY, before HOW, which is how my kids are. I still can't put my finger on why we it didn't work out for us. It should have. Maybe it will in the future.

Although my son loved these books, they were not rigorous enough for him.

I've used the beginning of the elementary books with my "advanced" daughter in kindergarten and first grade, and the fractions/decimals books with a middle school son.

I found the early elementary books alleged scaffolding to be rather scattershot and random. My daughter originally found the whole concept of learning Fred's way fascinating, but that waned by the time she finished half the book. "Well, I like the story about Fred, but it didn't teach me much real math." I agree with her. We looked at another one at the bookstore half a year later and she wasn't interested in bringing it home. I can't imagine using Fred for anything but a supplement for elementary math.

The fractions and decimals/percents books were also originally well-received by my middle school son as well. He loved the story. This child did struggle with math, and I was hopeful that the entertaining story would reel him in. He loved the story aspect and the tiny problem sets. Unfortunately Fred lacked teaching the WHY of the math and my son struggled to learn new concepts with these books. Anyone can memorize an algorithm, but if he isn't taught how and why it works, it won't be retained long term. After my son learned his fractions and decimals with a traditional math book that explained the concepts thoroughly he could enjoy Fred as a fun summer review. Again, this would not be sufficient as a primary math text, but it could be a fun supplement for the right kid.