Math Mammoth

I am so happy I have found Maria Miller and her website.. The workbooks are excellent and the value is also something we can do more with when it comes to purchasing more workbooks

I loved the value for the money, love the support Maria Miller offers online at her website (plus loads of freebies), and love the fact that she teaches each concept from many different angles and approaches, so that the student is not left with mere rote as the only foundation for arithmetic, for instance. She connects concepts to each other, and never wastes space: even the practice exercises call for the use of mental math skills that she has taught previously, to keep those skills fresh and avoid the tendency to rely exclusively on the calculation algorithms where mental figuring would suffice. I love the flexibility to purchase by single topics, or by entire grade levels aligned to current standards.

If you want to discover any weaknesses and address them, her free assessment tests will detect those, and her free samples of worktexts either by topic (Blue Series) or by nationally-normed grade level (Light Blue Series) will let you try before you buy. Even then, the price is so low, that the risk is minimal.

Whether your purpose is making sure that your child has a strong conceptual foundation from the beginning so as to avoid problems later on, or to prepare for doing well on nationally-normed standardized tests at a given grade level, or to make sure your child has no holes in his or her abilities before entering school, or to detect and remediate existing conceptual weaknesses before moving to the next level in math, Math Mammoth suits the purpose.

Although the size of the worktexts may look intimidating at first (two hefty books per grade level), there is no fluff or wasted space in Math Mammoth: they are large because they remove the need to keep up with or find a separate textbook, workbook or notebook, and teacher's manual, by incorporating ALL the conceptual explanations, graphics, and teaching, along with activities and practice, AND space to do the calculations, in the worktext. Therefore, the teacher/parent (or older, more independent student) can simply "open and go" and taking the lessons on the go is as simple as putting the worktext (or the printed sheets for that day) into a bag along with a pencil.

No lesson planning, preparation, or gathering of separate workbooks and textbooks, needed.

It should be noted, however, that this is not a spiral approach, but a mastery approach. However, additional practice worksheets can be downloaded and printed off, free of charge, from her website or as part of the downloaded bonus packet that comes with the purchase of Math Mammoth as a download, such that returning to a skill for review later, is easily accomplished.

My daughter finally TRULY understood long division with remainders, and what remainders actually are (as opposed to just memorizing rules about what to do with which number) thanks to Maria Miller's 3rd grade Multiplication review worksheet that I downloaded from her site. If I could have a do-over for my daughter's math education, I would have started with Math Mammoth from the beginning. However, we have had success at overcoming areas where my daughter lacked conceptual mastery, since using it.

Lastly, some find Math Mammoth to be too thorough, or slow to get through. Again, there is flexibility to suit the individual student: you can assign only a few problems for each topic, for the swift learner, or in the case of a child whose level of challenge is not met by grade-level materials, use the topical Blue series instead, and work at their individual level of challenge.

Best of all, for those who feel shaky on certain math topics, you not only do not have to become an expert in them first, for your child to learn very well using Math Mammoth, but you will probably find yourself understanding things now, that never made sense before, by learning alongside your student. I certainly wish I had been taught this way, as a child, but it's never too late!

I am so happy with MM. Just a great all around mastery math program.

MM is an incredible early math program. It gave my children excellent foundational math skills and taught them the concepts of beginning math I had no idea how to relay. (How do you explain that 1 is one?) You get so very much product for your money; an excellent investment. And, not to be scoffed at, the customer service is fabulous - quick & personal.

After my first child was struggling and crying daily with Singapore Math in first grade we made the switch to Math Mammoth and haven't regretted the change for a day. It has been so easy for each of my three school aged children to follow, doesn't require much in the way of teacher prep or one on one time, and I feel is giving them a solid math foundation.

I have really liked Math Mammoth. It's not a flashy program. Just a plain worktext that teaches the fundamentals in multiple ways, but in a sequential, master based sequence. This program also has taught my children to love word problems. When they see a word problem, they jump to do it first, so I'd call that a success since many kids struggle with word problems.
We switched to Math Mammoth when my oldest was in 2nd grade from Saxon because of the cost and the less-hands-on help needed from me, and since that time, we've used levels 1-5 with great success.

We decided to remove our children from public school in 5th and 2nd grades. My daughter, the fifth grader, had always had near perfect math scores her entire school life. However, after a few weeks of doing math at home, I realized that her math capabilities were under what was always reported on her report card.

Math Mammoth has been an incredible tool for her as she now really "gets" math. Her foundational skills have improved so much and she looks forward to tackling new math challenges. She takes great pride in her work and now has a solid math base that will continue to grow and flourish as she ages.

As for our 2nd grader, he too enjoys Math Mammoth and I am thankful to have found it for his math education.

We have used these books for the past 6 years and our 1st grader will start on them this year. Overall, it's the best option we've found for our family and would recommend it!

Love Math Mammoth! Have been using it for the past four school years and will continue to use it until my son completes the program. Maria has made a very user friendly math program that is very open and go. I love that it's pdf so I can reprint pages if I need to and it's usable with multiple children. It's a no nonsense program that has worked very well for my son to teach him basic math concepts in a clear manner that is easy for both parent and student to understand.

We use Math Mammoth along with Life With Fred. It's a perfect combination. The price can't be beat, but I would pay more for it if needed. It's no nonsense (yea! No silly distracting pictures!). They do a great job of explaining not only how to work the problem, but why you do it that way . Layout is simple and clear. We love Mammoth!

We haven't used the whole curriculum but have used some of the supplement books- especially the children's best mazes book. My kids love mazes and really enjoyed doing them.

I wanted to like Math Mammoth. It has a lot of pros: It's economical, has no-nonsense explanations, there aren't extra books to deal with (all the teaching is contained in the worktext), it's mastery-based, and there is plenty of practice provided for each lesson. If you like the Singapore approach to teaching, MM is very similar, but easier to teach. Plus, you can go with the full curriculum, or you can use the topic workbooks to target areas your child is having trouble with.

I wanted to like it. My pocket book likes it. Unfortunately, my kids don't. It's one of those programs that I have tried repeatedly in different situations, but each time it is a fail. We used the full curriculum at one point, and we have also used some of the topic books.

What we had issues with:

The pages are cluttered and not aesthetically pleasing. Seems minor, right? Unfortunately, there is often not enough space for the child to write his/her answer or show his/her work---my children all prefer to use a worktext they can write in, so this was annoying for them.

While the author states that you can (and certainly should) have your child only do half of the problems unless she needs more practice, the sheer volume on the page causes a mental block for my kids. They need more white space. Spreading out the problems on the page and having "extra" pages that could be printed only if needed would solve that problem.

We also found that some of the explanations are problematic/confusing. This was true more with the higher levels (the young levels are much simpler). While I can teach directly in those cases, more than once I found myself having to look at the answers to understand what the author was getting at and in a couple of cases I found the pedagogy to be flawed. My husband, who has taught math to remedial college students and has tutored for the SATs agreed with me. I ended up teaching those lessons myself and ignoring the instructions given.

Math Mammoth has been revised since we used it---it is possible that some of the negatives have been fixed, but looking it the samples, it appears to still have the same clutter/too much to a page issue.

My son (11) uses the subject books to review concepts when we have a few weeks in between starting a new Life of Fred book. There is a lot of repetition. I go through the assignment and only assign the odds or evens. He really does not like repetition. The books are very self-explanatory with clear and concise directions.

This is our core math curriculum and it has been a great way for my son to learn. He picks up math quickly and this was a great way for him to learn more independently while I was working with my daughter. The books are inexpensive and you can get them printed and bound relatively cheaply. We use the books by grade level, although I have used the subject books when we need review on a single subject.

The only issue I have had is they have a lot of repetition. This is great for kids who struggle, but for those who catch on quickly it can get tiring to do all of the problems. To work around this I would have my son show mastery and then skip the problems he understood.

I have a adult son who is mentally challenged and in 2001 he was tested and the said he would never get beyond a 1st grade level. Well it has taken a lot of work but he is not doing 2nd to middle 4th grade depending on the subject. If he likes it he will do well if he doesn't he just ignores it. I have learned to us materials he does not like with ides from subjects he does like. That way it is getting better to teach the things he does not like. He likes the math mammoth and I love that fact because Math is one of his don't like subjects.
Thank you for creating the Math-Mammoth it is working even if it takes me a long time to get things through his head.

I have purchased and used Math Mammoth for my 4th to high school tutoring business. I use the summer workbooks year round supplementing students who may need more time in a concept or that wants to move ahead.

I love the depth of the curriculum knowing all material for a grade is covered in them thoroughly. I purchased the PDF version and simply send them to a local printer to get the books I need. Math Mammoth is very helpful if any bugs are found (which I have not found any) or updates to packages.

A great home school or tutoring program for me especially for Summer Brain Drain....it really keeps students at grade level if the student diligently works the grade finished in the spring all summer.

I have used this program for the past three years and have been very pleased. I am a former elementary school teacher who decided to homeschool my own kids. I love that it is a work text so the instructions and examples are given at the beginning of each lesson. There are plenty of practice pages for each concept and you can print more if you need them. My daughter is bright in math and so we tried another curriculum as well, but found Math Mammoth to be more comprehensive and she prefers it. Maria also suggests games and links for further practice. This is a great curriculum at a fantastic price for homeschool families.

I like the books and the author also send helpful email links and tips.

We used this as our whole math curriculum in middle school after not doing well with two other programs. I liked the ease of use, and that everything the student needs is in one teaching worktext. They don't have to switch back and forth to learn the material and then practice it. I like that I can buy it once and use it for all my children. It was recommended that my daughter work topic by topic to get back on track with math and catch up, and she was able to do that with Math Mammoth and it did help her, though sometimes the mental math was just overwhelming for her, so we didn't always do that part. For my younger children, I used it as a supplement to a program which includes video instruction. They had folders with the printed pages for each topic, like "Money" or "Time", that we wanted to focus on for extra practice. For students who need more than book work to keep them motivated, you will need to add hands-on activities, games, etc.

We switched to this after using a different math curriculum. My daughter lives this so much more. It's visually appealing to her. There is also enough repetition without overdoing it.