If you’ve been in the homeschool online community for any length of time, you’re sure to have come across information or a sample or two of Math Mammoth. Math Mammoth is the brainchild of Maria Miller. Maria has been supporting the homeschool community since 2003 with her website Home School Math. Math Mammoth curriculum was born out of Maria’s concern for homeschoolers and the struggles she saw them having with their math studies. Oftentimes, the materials were inferior and sometimes contained blatant errors! Maria was spurred on to write her own math curriculum. A curriculum that would give homeschoolers the help they needed – explanations, examples and encouragement… and in 2003 Math Mammoth was introduced online.
I had the opportunity to use Math Mammoth with my kids (ages 9-10 & 7). We chose to use the Light Blue series which is a complete curriculum. Maria has created several types of sets to choose from.
Here’s the breakdown:
The Light Blue Series goes by grades, and being a complete curriculum also includes tests & cumulative reviews.
The Blue Series just consists of worktexts for various topics, and the material in each book usually spans 2-3 grade levels. The worktexts offer explanations on each subject, much like the light blue series.
Topics include:
*addition and subtraction
*place value
*clocks & money
*measuring
*multiplication & division
*geometry
*fractions
*decimals
The Green Series books are workbooks, or worksheet collections, each one on a different mathematical topic. These have been compiled from the grade-level Golden Series and therefore contain duplicate content.
If you’re looking for extra practice in specific areas, this is a good choice.
The Golden Series books are collections of worksheets for grades 3-8(9), consisting of two parts (A and B) for each grade.
For grade level practice in all areas, the Golden Series will work perfectly.
Like I said, we’ve been using the Light Blue series here in our homeschool. Our electronic versions ($29.70 for each grade 3 & 5) also come with a bonus! The Soft-Pak consists of 7 low-graphics, high-content software programs that contain both on-screen and printable activities. You can even print out results for easy record-keeping. The subjects covered are Math (4 programs), Language Arts (1 program) and testing (2 programs).
I really like Maria’s style of teaching math. I have always loved the math curriculum we’ve used throughout our homeschooling career, but at times I have found myself teaching my students some concepts in a more common-sense way than what’s presented in the teaching text. As we worked through Math Mammoth, I often found myself saying ,“Hey! That’s how I taught this too!” Sometimes, it seems math curriculum companies just can’t stick with basic tried and true methods. Maria makes it easy for parents with her explanations and I definitely recommend Math Mammoth. My kids loved having the examples and texts right on the page with their problems. This made it so much easier for them to recall the information. In the end, they needed less help and learned better than just having me teach the concept and do worksheets with no explanation visible.
Maria offers 280 free sample pages for you to try out before you ever buy a thing! You can find out more about that right here.
Take a look at Math Mammoth and evaluate what you’re currently using. You may just find that Math Mammoth would be a wonderful switch.
Ah, the beauty of homeschooling – if it doesn’t work, chuck it! If you find something better, just switch!
Sara O’