Pre-Algebra and the Over-Planner

Planning the Pre-Algebra Year has been daunting. I figure there's a ton to cram in there, but I have two entirely different students' needs to meet. With one our goal is to get her graduated before 18 and therefore she needs to complete 7th and 8th grade work this year and one who's years ahead of the game, but needs to be kept challenged. So to keep them on a mostly similar path so I can keep up, my plan is to start broad and narrow in.

We're starting with Life of Fred's Pre-Algebra set of Fractions then Decimals and Percents. People love them and say they are conceptual, but I'm leary. I picked it mainly for Veronica who prefers literature to math and they contain a cute story of Fred the 5 1/2yr old math genius who teaches at a University. I figure it'll do Richie some good since his reading comprehension isn't advanced the way his math skills are and if we present math in literary terms, he might be interested enough to keep reading and gain some reading comprehension skills. Veronica will also add in related worksheets on the concepts to help them stick. These two Life of Fred books will take a combined 20 weeks.

After those, we'll include Kit in the beginning unit of Hands-On Equations, which I'm really excited about. I'm goofy and get excited over balancing equations...hopefully it's catchy. It uses chess pawns in two colors for X and -X and two colors of dice for positive and negative numbers that you "balance" on a printed scale representing both sides of the equal sign. Kit will work with us through X and positive numbers, then the older two will continue into the unit on -X, then the final one on negative numbers. It's about an 8wk course.

After that, if we're all still sane enough to go on, we'll be starting Chalk Dust Pre-Algebra, which is DVD lessons of a man at a chalk board teaching each concept. There is a huge worktext that goes with it. I splerged on two of those at the insane price of $0.50 each used on Amazon...new, $156 each. I even got the $200 DVD set for only $50 there. See, it pays to be an obsessive curricula researcher!

Now, I live in reality and know we won't barely scratch the Chalk Dust surface, but I figure by this point we'll work with concepts not previously touched on and gleen from the worktext's work problems. I never did word problems with anything equation based in high school so I'm not going to skip any of the application stuff of doing Algebraic word problems with my kids...boy they're going to love in for Algebra I and II!

I figure by this point Veronica will be prepared to attempt Algebra the following year as a Freshman. *Crossing Fingers* Math is not her strong suit, but at worst we could continue on with Chalk Dust Pre-Algebra the 1st semester of the following year before switching to Algebra. With Richie there's no time line, at least not for a few years, so he can leisurely do everything in Chalk Dust's full-year course over the end of next year and however long of the following year. I am also planning on him doing Math Logic and Word Problems with Kit, but it might be way below him. It's a 3rd/4th grade level but I think he'd get a kick out of teaching Kit to do it anyway.

Both will also be mixing in Math Detective by the Critical Thinking Company. It's a great CDRom program that has full-page story problems with difficult multi-step questions to figure out pertaining to each. It's on a 5th/6th grade level, but add in the logic and length and it'll be a good challenge. Plus it will again incorporate reading.