My daughter is going to be doing 1st grade Liberty math this year. I am confused as to how to schedule the lessons... there aren't really any. The teacher's manual is mainly just answers and suggestions... we have to figure out how many pages to do each day. We are doing a 180 day school year, so it looks like we will do one page everyday, except for 70 days where we will need to do 2 pages per day. Is this how most people schedule math? I just want to do what is typical for this grade level. Now the part that confuses me a little: the drill book. I did not include that in the above calculations. I am a little confused as to how many drills need to be done after each assignment. For example, page 100 of the drill book, says to "complete this drill page after page 176" (in the regular math book). There are six drills to be done after page 176. Then there are six more drills to be done after page 178 (in the main book). So does this mean that six drills need to be done before gettting to page 178, which would be within the next two days (assuming you only did one regular math page per day at this point)? If you have done Liberty math please tell me how you did it! Also, if you haven't tell me how you would do it... thanks!
this is what i would do, I would do 2 pgs a day in the lesson book and then when the book tells you to do drills you can do those after, I am thinking that they are telling you to do the drills after a certian pg bc the drills cover what has been learned. Now I would use the drills for extra help on the things they may need the extra pratice for, you can also use the drills as an assesment to how much they are learning and retaining. I really would not worry too much about completing the drill book, to is for extra practice. I use CLP, but did not do in 1st only in 2nd and on, so anyway, but that is what i would use the drill book for, just use it as you see fit. by the way 2nd grade they do 2pgs a day and that is a lesson.
I originally thought two pages a day would work, but if we did that, we would be finished with math in 125 days. We are required to have 180 days of school where I am from. So it looks like we have to do two on some days and one on other days... I guess. So you did not do all of the drills? Also, did your child memorize all the facts using flashcards? Did you use MCP for 2nd grade math? If so, does the teacher's manual go into depth for each lesson? Or at least tell you which pages to do for each lesson? Sorry for all the questions!
I have it and the teacher's manual, but it has been a while since I looked through it and read the manual. In the first page of Unit 1 Learning about Numbers 0-10, Ordinals, and Time Pages 1-23 page 1 of the teacher's manual, there is a gray box that has General Lesson Plan above it. In this box, is some general guidance. "Each day your math lesson should include a variety of drills and games during class time; the student should also complete two pages in his workbook, or more if he is able. Since the first 23 pages are a review of Liberty Mathematics Level K, your student may quickly go over these pages. During later lessons, completion of two pages will be enough." This box is on the first page of each unit with some guidance as to when to slow down or speed up and the recommended number of pages to complete a day for that unit. Some units will tell you to do only 1 page for certain topics. As for the drills book, I found it had an excessive amount of drills. I would look through the drill book and determine a drill schedule as in 1x a week or 2x a week or whatever you feel will be sufficient for your child and do that number. I wouldn't worry about completing all of the drills. There is definitely not a scripted lesson plan for you to follow but more a general guideline for you to make your own lesson plans from ideas and suggestions in the teacher's manual.
I did read that, but if you follow that, you will run out of pages before the school year ends. There are only 250 pages in the math book... divide that by two and you only have 125 days worth of work. The layout of their spelling book is much simpler... 36 units with five lessons in each... 180 days worth of work.
I think that would be a good way to do it, in the early years the pages are less because the instructions are longer and sometimes take more hands on playing with counting rods or cubes etc, so when you do things that way you are actually doing a full class.
I did not use CLP in 1st grade, but I did in 2nd and the TM of MCP has ideas on how to teach the lesson and math review and so on, but back to 1st: I like what the other comment said: do math drills as a "lesson" one or two times a week. THis will give them more practice and you could work it towhere you will have enough work for your 180 days. THis is how I would divide it up: Monday, Wed., Friday ....... Lessons from book Tuesday, Thrusday ........ review with drill practice something like that, just so you use what you have to complete you day requirements for the yr. you are still getting work done, and ur child is learning but you are switching things up. I hope this helps, oh, i almost forgot, I had my dd to make her own flash cards and we reviewed them every day, also we went on line and played math games for review. (she likes hands on, so loved making her own cards)
Shelly, thanks for the suggestion. I think I am going to do that... M/W/F two pages of math and T/TH will be for drills and tests whenever they arise. If there aren't any, we will do flashcards that day, as it looks like she needs to memorize all the fact families. I really appreciate the advice! Do you like MCP? My son is going to do that for 3rd grade this year. The TM goes into a lot more depth than the Liberty Math does... which I would have purchased MCP for 1st as well.
yes, i really like it. My dd who will be in 7th this yr had trouble with fractions in 5th and i found that MCP gave her the foundation she needed. I also Used it for my other dd too, We are useing the 3rd grade also this yr. The work is just enough for her and she can understand their example well. We will also play math games on the computer this yr, she is a gamer and loves them so I am looking into games for her level this yr.
I personally only did one page a day when learning the math facts. Two pages a day and my child wasn't really learning them and we were moving forward too fast. I would do one page a day on both the addition and subtraction facts especially if they didn't use the CLP Liberty Mathematics K book. When they are first learning the facts the 1st grade book has one fact family on one side of a page and on the back of the page is the next fact family so when you do 2 pages a day through them you are rushing to learn 2 fact families in one day.
Yes, I saw that! I was trying to figure out how to work that into the M/W/F schedule. I was thinking maybe during the times we learn the fact families, instead of doing two in one day and nothing but drills/flashcards the next, I would do one each day. The times when we aren't doing fact families would be the 2 per day M/W/F. I hope that works out. I have to go sit and calculate it. Thanks OpenMinded! Oh yeah, did you wind up finishing early or on-time? Also, how did you handle the drill book?
I am hesitant to say this, but we didn't finish the 1st grade math. The topics moved too fast. I couldn't do 2 pages during a lot of it b/c the concepts introduced on 2 pages often would have nothing to do with each other (like pg 69 and 70 one side is subtracting from 10 and the next is tallies and charts) and my ds couldn't keep up with it. I couldn't keep up with the amount of unguided teaching it required even though it was low level math. The drills helped dd who was in 2nd grade public school. Ds panicked at the drills b/c math had become so dreaded. We had done Liberty Mathematics K the year before and he didn't retain any of it. He wasn't really learning the facts. We needed the constant drill and repetition so over the summer he had forgotten almost all of it. Liberty Mathematics A was going the same way. We were on page 124 when we put him in public school in Jan. of this last year. He finished out the year in public school. I don't think we would have finished it before the end of the school year. We didn't finish the K book the year before.
OpenMinded, don't feel bad for sharing your experiences! I noticed it too. I wish I would have gone with the other option, Modern Curriculum Press. The Liberty Math teacher's manual is absolutely useless, IMO. It's too bad I didn't realize this earlier so I could have returned it and gone with MCP instead. I'm just going to try to get through it. If I realize early on that it is impossible, I am going to buy R&S for her, which I heard is really good. So far I have scheduled it to where we are doing related pages... when I saw pages like the one you were talking about, I scheduled it for one page only that day. I'm trying not to get too upset... my main goal is to get her to memorize her facts. My son has not memorized any of his so far (and he's going into 3rd) because the curriculum we were using previously did not require it. So now we will work on that with him this year along with everything else he is doing. We live and learn, huh?
If it helps, I bought a scott foresman 1st grade math book to use alongside CLP's and I found it taught better and I didn't need a teacher's guide for it. I did this in K as well. You can often find them for less than $10 including shipping. I am going to pm you a link to the one I used. I don't think I can post links yet.
Oh, awesome! I was wondering if I should try to find something else for math this year, but was hating the idea of wasting the money we spent on the one we have. It's funny, because I love CLP... just not the 1st grade Liberty math... I bet the MCP option would have been so much better. At least I know, now, for my younger one.
I really love CLP also. My thoughts are that if you have to find extras for it, you can and you still are not spending tons of money. I paid less than $500 for the year and if I add diff projects to go along with say science, and history. I still come out ahead buy the end of the year, One Question faith3, are you doing science every day, or just 3 days a week? I adding animal science 2 days and regula science 3 days. Just was wondering what you were going to do.
I have almost finished scheduling my daughters year... I just have reading left. I decided to do Science on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For History, I pushed it out about 6/7 weeks... then we will do Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I am not going to supplement it... we used Calvert School the last two years and these subjects were every other day in the lower grades. I still need to schedule my oldest son, who is going into 3rd... he might have more work. I can tell you that CLP's history is actually very good compared to what we did the last two years. What do you do as far as Reading? Each grade has several (very cute) reading books... how did you schedule them?
What do you do as far as Reading? Each grade has several (very cute) reading books... how did you schedule them? What I have done is just select a book and have her start reading it to me, we will read about 2 to 4 pg a day and when that one is done we go to the next one of her choice. We did not get to last yrs nature book, so we will use that on also, but i am useing them with science this yr, I do have her read with me, sometimes reading to herself.( if she is reading and is getting tired either i will read to finish the pg or we just stop.) I love reading the books also, we had fun with last yrs and this yrs will be the same!
Okay, sounds good. I keep worrying about which one to start, but I guess it doesn't matter. I think we are going to start with Trottino's Tale. What about the Noah Webster Reading Handbook? Where does that come in?
Where did you get the reading handbook from? I do not have that one so, sorry I can't help. but would like to know more about it,
