Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 1

This year I decided to use Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 1 with my 1st grader. I have used other Math Mammoth products in the past and really liked them. It is turning out to be a very good fit. I wanted to ensure that my daughter was being taught to understand math in addition to being able to do the drills. But I also wanted a traditional scope and sequence. Math Mammoth does a great job of bridging the gap between traditional math programs and those that teach conceptual math (like Singapore or RightStart).

Here are a few of the reasons I am liking Math Mammoth this year.

• It teaches the process involved in each concept working from concrete (pictorial/manipulatives) to abstract.
• It focuses on addition and subtraction to 10 the first half of the year.
• It uses fact families which is the method that makes the most sense to me. An example of a fact family: 3+5=8, 5+3=8, 8-3=5, 8-5=3.
• It uses wording such as one ten, two tens, three tens, etc. and one-ten one, one-ten two, one-ten three, one-ten four when first teaching tens and the teen numbers. This is the same concept that RightStart Math uses and is a great bridge to ensure that students really understand what the numbers mean.
• It teaches completing the ten within equations. Example: 8+5 = (8 + 2) +3.
• It uses story problems.
• It includes game suggestions to further cement the topics.

The second half of the year teaches addition and subtraction with tens, clocks with whole and half hours, shapes, measuring in inches and centimeters, graphs, and money. You can see the complete table of contents here.