TOS Review- MATH MAMMOTH - Make It Real Learning - Fractions, Percents, and Decimals I, Geometry I, and Sets, Probability, Statistics I

In our home Math is a dirty word. Not by me, but by my daughter Grace. Math has been a struggle for her since the beginning of her education. Because of this struggle she has grown to only tolerate math as something she needs to learn. Trying to get her to understand that she will use math on a daily basis has fallen on deaf ears. TOS Review Crew offered a review from Math Mammoth that seemed to fit the bill of using math in our daily walk. For this review we were given Make It Real Learning.

Math Mammoth is a company of math products created and owned by Maria Miller. Ms. Miller has a Master's Degree in mathematics and minors in physics and statistics. She started out as a teacher before coming home to teach her own children. Lucky for us she saw a real need in the homeschooling community for materials that explained math in simple terms that still conveyed concepts in a rigorous tone. The bottom of this page Math Mammoth you can find a newsletter and 300 free worksheets to get a feel of how her math program works. The problems in Make It Real Learning were written by experienced teacher Frank Wilson.

Looking At The Individual Products

Fractions, Decimals, and Percents I

This product is recommended for grades 4 - 8 and retails for $4.99. You will receive a total of 46 pages. We received this as a download. Some concepts learned in this workbook: 

Fractions - simplifying, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and comparing.

Creating Charts

Percents - converting from decimals and fractions

Decimals - converting from percent and fractions

Sets, Probability, and Statistics I

This product is recommended for grades 6 - 10 and retails for $4.99. You will receive a total of 46 pages. We received this as a download. Some concepts learned in this workbook:

Mean, Median, and Mode

Probability Determination

Working With Sets

Calculating Percentages

Permutations

Calculating Outcomes

Geometry I

This product is recommended for grades 6-7 and retails for $4.99. You will receive a total of 45 pages. We received this as a download. Some concepts learned in this workbook:

Area and Volume

Perimeters

Pythagorean Theorem

Cross Sections

Math Mammoth does offer a discounted price of $39.99 if you purchase one of the active libraries which includes 11 workbooks.

Many students do not grasp how many math concepts will be used in their adult lives with personal finances, jobs, DIY projects, and even cooking and baking. Some problems that we came across in this curriculum dealt with baking, allowance, shopping, finding averages, how license plate numbers are picked, construction planning, swimming pool design and so much more. Also included in the downloads are answer keys for each set of problems/questions.

How We Used This Product and What We Thought

We received all three workbooks as downloads and it was a very easy process to get the materials. I am a paper person, so first I printed all three workbooks and sectioned them out in a binder. Remember sometimes I do refer to myself as the "Binder Queen". The very first item I noticed and appreciated right away was the fact that all answers were directly behind it's corresponding questions. In other words I did not have to search at the back of the workbook for the answers. It's the little things that make me a happy home educating mom. We worked on a section of questions three days a week tacking it onto the math program we were already using. In order to get through all three workbooks I had us skip around and sample from a different book each day, sometimes from the front, middle or back of the workbook. Some of these questions definitely stumped me and even with the answers I didn't feel I could properly explain it to Grace. We are NOT math people and a little more explanation would have helped us immensely on a few of the problems. Sometimes I felt it was assumed that we already understood certain math concepts and unfortunately we didn't. I also found that occasionally I could find the answer working the problem differently than was explained. The material found in these workbooks was very challenging to us, but I guess when you think about it, that is the point. When I was in school word problems, critical and abstract thinking always stopped me in my tracks. I am afraid I have passed that on to Grace as well at least in the subject of math. The price for this product is unbeatable. Very inexpensive for what you get. Our favorite of the three workbooks was Fractions, Percents, and Decimals I. Grace could see the real world applications with this one, mainly to do with baking, cooking, and shopping. Great price, Challenging product (in a good way), and well worth a look.

Please go to Math Mammoth and check out the Make It Real Learning products.

Visit TOS Review Crew to see other reviews about Math Mammoth products.