Life of Fred Homeschool Math Curriculum Review

We've used Life of Fred for the last 5 years. This is my review, answering your questions like "is it enough?"

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[katielopes]

Life of Fred was an answer to prayer for us! My oldest hated math and there were tears almost every day... and then Fred came into our lives and that all changed! We also took a little break after we finished the elementary series and did Math-U-See for a couple years and will still be using that along with getting back into Fred’s intermediate series and then moving onto fractions and decimals. My daughter is looking forward to seeing what Fred is up to and so am I! Fred is a household name and I can’t wait to start again in Apples with my 6 year old soon 👏🏼

[michaelshear]

We tried several math curricula over the elementary and early middle school years for our oldest, ended up with Life of Fred as the third or fourth one that we tried - and it's the one that stuck. Our oldest jumped in at beginning algebra (with a brief detour to go back to the beginning to catch up on the story line) while the other two started with Apples in middle to late elementary - and the oldest is now discovering that the story of how Fred got to KITTENS is indeed about halfway through LoF: Calculus. (Kid #2 is doing Advanced Algebra in ninth grade, and kid #3 had finished Decimals and Percents last spring at the end of sixth grade before he started at a charter school this fall while the older two are still homeschooled full time).

The books up through trig/pre-calc were good as standalone curriculum (using the "zillions of extra problems" books only occasionally as needed) and fairly little help from me once they got to about pre-algebra (only once in a while for what one of the kids found to be a particularly tricky concept). However, when my oldest got to calculus this year, that changed somewhat as the problem sets have only answers and are not worked out in detail as they were in previous books. It's still entirely adequate as a curriculum - he's planning to take the BC calculus AP in the spring after using LoF then an AP review book - but we've been doing all of the problem sets together so i can help him much more actively than i had been doing with earlier books. I suspect that Calculus was the first one written and it shows... Still very much a good curriculum but absolutely requires a parent who understands calculus to help (and that with a kid who enjoys math and is good at it) - this was NOT the case with the earlier books up through pre-calc which stood on their own much better.

For what it's worth, the oldest is taking dual enrollment classes at the local community college this fall and had to take a math placement test to be allowed to take chem 1 (having used life of Fred as his only math curriculum of any sort since seventh grade) - and appropriately (since he had just finished LoF pre-calc) placed into calculus. Which we're doing at home rather than at the community college as I'm pretty sure that LoF: calculus is a considerably higher level of material than the classes available there.

Other than that one quibble specifically with Calculus (which is only a minor annoyance for us but could be a much bigger issue for a family in which neither parent can help with calculus), love the series and can't praise it enough!

[katrinakim]

I’m so glad you are highlighting this amazing curriculum! I just joined the FB group and there are so many positive testimonials! My sweet 2nd grader seems to have a lot of math anxiety. I think I’m going to pause Saxon 2 with her and switch to these books and see how it goes. So thankful we have so many great resources available to fit our kids’ unique circumstances!

[sclark]

My favorite part is finding these at the library and I don’t have to buy them. My kids love the literature aspect of it. They really enjoy just reading life of Fred over and over again.

[GinaRLacy]

My oldest loves LOF and we’ve paired it with Learn Math Fast. It makes math applicable to real life, which definitely pulls him in.

[thissimplelife]

I love this curriculum!! My kids have learned so many cool facts on top of the Math!

[Maggie-zbgx]

I have a math degree and yes math is all about the practice. Not every subject is but it involves correcting mistakes A LOT. Like buy pencils and a pack of big erasers lol

[Dreblueskies]

We use it as a supplement and my child loves these books.
I was very fortunate to have a friend gift me these.

[KCH]

Have you ever heard of the book? Sir Circumference. Is also kind of reminds me of child craft encyclopedia. When I was a kid my parents had a child craft encyclopedia and one of it was mathematics and they would have like stories in it. Crafts related to math. Nice.

[Momsisplayastoo]

Would this be good for my 12 year old son who has struggled in Math since kindergarten? We use good and beautiful. He will be 13 in September. He’s currently doing Math 7 of good and beautiful. He needs something easier to understand. Please help.