Maria's Math News, September 2024

Hello again!

Math Mammoth news
Videos for grade 8
Keep numbers lined up (grades 1-5)
Videos for the Blue series books?
Printing to A4 paper?
Just for fun!

1. Math Mammoth news

Math Mammoth Grade 8, Canadian version is here! 😀

Both digital and print options are available.

This Canadian version is essentially the same as the U.S. version of Math Mammoth Grade 8, only customized for the Canadian audience in these aspects:

The curriculum uses the metric measurement units. Since Canadians do use some imperial units (inches, feet, miles), in some contexts, the curriculum does mention them, but not often.
The spelling conforms mostly to American English, taking into account a few key differences where Canadian English follows British English.
Numbers are formatted with a space as a thousands separator, and a point as a decimal separator.
Page (paper) size is Letter.

Grade 8 international version is also coming soon, sometime during September.

Math Mammoth has once again received the Practical Homeschooling Reader awards! Thanks so much to you all, my users! ❤️

Math Mammoth received the 1st place award in the middle school math category, and the 2nd place award in the elementary math category.

The awards have been announced in the fall 2024 issue of Practical Homeschooling magazine. The Reader Awards have been a regular feature in the magazine since 1998. Thousands of homeschoolers rank the curriculum they have used, and the products with the highest satisfaction ratings win. So, this is a bit different from regular awards. They're awards based on user satisfaction.

Reminder... how to get updates for the digital version

If you have purchased any digital product in the past, OR if you've purchased a bundle at MathMammoth.com or at Homeschool Buyers Club/Co-op, you can generate yourself a new download link here to get the updated files. 😀

If you've purchased the digital version in the past and the generator doesn't work for you, contact us for assistance. This also applies those who have won it in a giveaway.

If you've purchased at TPT, you can simply log in there and redownload your files from there. We keep the files there updated.

Here's a short testimonial from someone concerning the WORD PROBLEMS. Yes, that is one of the focus areas of Math Mammoth! I have always planned that using lots of them, from 1st grade onward, will help children not to be afraid of them and to learn to solve them as they go through their years of school.

Right now, I’m going through my kid’s math for next year. I have children in Grades 6 and 7. And can I say, I love your story problems. Thank you for making them as close to real life as possible. You are seamlessly showing my children that math is necessary for science and everyday life. I have a hard time choosing which problems I will assign!
Christin

Another recent testimonial:

Dear Math Mammoth Team,
I wanted to say a big thank you for Math Mammoth. I was new to the homeschooling world when we decided to homeschool our eldest child for her kindergarten year. I researched many math programs because I had been taught with Saxon in public school and I felt it really didn't teach how math works and jumped around with topics to frequently. Many homeschoolers recommended Math-U-See because of the slower pace that was focused on mastery. I couldn't find negative reviews on that particular program and used it for the entire kindergarten year.

Neither my daughter nor I liked the program very well but I decided to use the Alpha level in first grade hoping it would work better for us. Unfortunately, my daughter wasn't getting the concepts and everyday math became more of a slog with no variety in problems or real world math. The blocks also didn't help as much as advertised. Finally after 3 months of this I decided to change programs.

Abeka was recommended to me but I felt it was too similar to Saxon. Not knowing what to do I ordered Abeka's grade 1. While I was waiting for it to arrive I looked through some school books I had collected and found Math Mammoth for grade 1. I thought we could work through that until the Abeka book came. We were in for a surprise! After three months of not understanding how to solve unknowns with blocks, our daughter could do it easily within a few days using visual dice from Math Mammoth. The variety of solving problems in every way was refreshing for both of us and her number sense took off. We pushed to finish grade 1 in May and by the end of it I could see her competency with numbers was allowed flourish.

I wanted to write this note to say how much we have enjoyed Math Mammoth and appreciate the straightforwardness of this program. It teaches math in such a practical way without boring repetitiveness or lots of fluff. Thank you all!
Lacey

2. Videos for grade 8

We've started making videos for grade 8!

The first ones are here! Yay! I've been anxious to get this started, and now the time is here! We are working on more videos on scientific notation right now, so approximateyl within 2 weeks, there will be several more for chapter 1.

We are also adding videos to grade 3, to match the lessons in the new edition.

3. Keep numbers lined up

Here's an easy fix for keeping numbers in their places!

In case you can't visit FB, it has to do with lined notebook paper. Turn it 90 degrees (sideways) so that those horizontal lines become vertical. Then it's easy to use it for column addition/subtraction, multiplying in columns, and long division, to keep all the digits lined up.

4. Videos for the Blue series books?

In case you're new to MM, the Blue Series books are topical workbooks with instruction & exercises, and work well for filling in gaps or for reinforcing specific math topics.

Someone asked the question below, and I cannot email the answer to them, because it bounces back and says "the remote server is misconfigured." I'll post it here in case the person sees it. Maybe others are wondering too.

Does the blue series have the teacher videos of her teaching the lesson? I'm looking for curriculum that doesn't specify the grade level but would have someone teaching the lesson.

Answer... yes, we do have some! If you scroll down this page, we have lists of math videos organized by topic also. Those lists correspond to books in the Blue Series. 😃

5. Printing to A4 paper?

Someone asked about printing the Blue series books to A4 paper...

"I am interested in buying the Blue series Grades 4-5 and 6-8. We live in Australia and our printing is to A4 paper. Could we still be able to print out the worksheets without the content overflowing?"

This is an interesting timing, as we're just now starting to make international versions of the Blue series books, which will be formatted to A4 paper size.😃 Meanwhile, yes, you can print these. Your printer will likely choose a setting such as "Scale to fit" or "Fit to page" or similar. Or maybe you need to choose that setting yourself. Check the preview that your printer (hopefully) gives you.

You can test it with our sample files, for example this one:
Multiply Fractions and Whole Numbers

You CAN even test a page or two with 100% scaling and see what happens. The Letter size paper is less tall but wider than A4. However, the document has margins and thus it might work out OK.

Since the printer will be scaling the pages, any exercises (in geometry) that might require measuring lines or sides of figures in centimeters will be shrunk slightly. This means the answer key won't match and you'll need to check your student's work yourself.

6. Just for fun!

Thanks for reading! 🙂

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Till next time,
Maria Miller