Homeschooling Math: Glad we found Fred!

I haven't had much time for blogging lately, but wanted to post about a math series we love.  A friend who is a homeschooling pro recommended it and let us borrow her book for a little while until we get our own.  Have you heard of Life of Fred?  It's a fun little set of books that go from kindergarten to calculus and teach children math through stories.  Fred is a 5-year-old math teacher at KITTENS University.  In Fred's daily life, situations come up which show why certain math skills are important and relevant before asking children to learn them.  For instance, it is 5:00 AM and Fred wants to go jogging, but he thinks he will wait two hours until it is 7:00 AM and no longer dark outside.  5+2=7.  We just finished chapter four in the first book, Apples, and Suzi and I both love Fred.  She really relates to this strange math teacher child who sleeps under his desk and has a doll named Kingie!

Suzi isn't quite ready to answer the end-of-chapter questions on her own yet, and I don't want to push her too hard, so I help her answer the hard ones.  If it gets too frustrating for her, we'll take a few weeks out and come back to it later.  As a child who felt crushed under rows and rows of repetitive math problems, I'm so happy to have found something totally different for Suzi.  I'm even thinking of trying out the higher-level Fred books for myself.  They aren't even expensive!

As for our general homeschooling progress, I do have some pictures, but I don't have much time to upload them right now.  We are swiftly approaching day 90, which is the halfway point of our 180-day school year and time to fill out forms and send in a mid-year checklist to our accountability association.  I'm oddly excited about it, maybe because it's the first official thing we'll have to do besides joining.  Our schedule has been fluctuating due to holiday events and activities, but we'll almost certainly be halfway done by Christmas.  Instead of taking a long Christmas break, I think we'll take advantage of Daddy being home to help with the little ones and keep on schooling.

Well, naptime is probably almost over around here.  I hope to have some pictures up soon!