I cannot speak highly enough about this program. My children have really enjoyed doing these activities/problems each day and they have actually ASKED to do them. Now, that is an accomplishment for any curriculum!
What interested me the most when given the opportunity to review the products, was that they were problems based on real life. There were questions that have real sports scores from actual basketball games, there were arithmetic questions using prices from the PetSmart website. Real, relevant and applicable. I love this. It makes math worth studying for a kid because it answers that age old question, "When am I ever going to use this?" :-)
My younger two children enjoyed doing the problems from the Arithmetic book. I would be lying if I said the problems were easy. They were definitely a challenge, but they kept the kids engaged and interested by the subject matter. They had to calculate costs of pet food, work with money, determine how to equally share snacks and figure out numbers of website visitors, among other activities. We did these activities in addition to their regular math curriculum. It really allowed them to put their knowledge to use and see how math is necessary and needed in everyday life, not just for filling out worksheets and endless rows of problems. Since I had more than one child using the product, I printed out the worksheets (there was an option to enter the work into the PDF, though) and had each child work on his/her own.
Kiddos 1 and 2 have been diligently working through the other two titles, figuring out sales tax, the proper ratio to enlarge photos with no distortion, post differentials in basketball and graphs of the Pro Bowl (which were huge hits with Kiddo #2 since he gives new definition to the words 'sports fan.' lol. I like that this opportunity to put Algebra to everyday use was available to my sons, because they have asked me more than once, "when am I EVER going to use Algebra in life?" :-) We used the worksheets in addition to their Algebra curriculum. This was a plus, since they already had a rudimentary understanding of the material and were, for the most part, able to complete the MIRL work independently. There were some concepts that were new to them, so I took that opportunity to work with them together and teach them the concept and work through the problems with them.
I was very pleasantly surprised by all of the titles in the MIRL series. I had never heard of them before and was glad to be able to review and use them with my children. Math really needs to be applicable for kids, not just given to them in endless rows of problems in a textbook to be completed "because the teacher told them so." When it is applicable to life, it becomes relevant and real. This not only makes it interesting but inspires the child to *want* to learn and use the material. When something is used in a practical and meaningful way, the learning is internalized. It is not just put into short-term memory for a test or worksheet, just to be forgotten the following day or week. When learned in such a manner, it gets cemented more into the long-term memory. And when a child really wants to learn something, that is priceless. That is *authentic* learning. There need to be more materials like this. Our children's education, imagination, creativity and innovation are at stake.
I was very pleasantly surprised by all of the titles in the MIRL series. I had never heard of them before and was glad to be able to review and use them with my children. Math really needs to be applicable for kids, not just given to them in endless rows of problems in a textbook to be completed "because the teacher told them so." When it is applicable to life, it becomes relevant and real. This not only makes it interesting but inspires the child to *want* to learn and use the material. When something is used in a practical and meaningful way, the learning is internalized. It is not just put into short-term memory for a test or worksheet, just to be forgotten the following day or week. When learned in such a manner, it gets cemented more into the long-term memory. And when a child really wants to learn something, that is priceless. That is *authentic* learning. There need to be more materials like this. Our children's education, imagination, creativity and innovation are at stake.
These titles are all available for $4.99 at the Math Mammoth website.
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