Math-U-See Blog

The Mike and Beth Novak family.
The Novaks have been using Math-U-See for 10 years and have six children: Annie (19), Mikey (17), Becky (14), Chris (14), Emily (11) and Isaac (7). The Novaks live in beautiful Lancaster County where Mike works… [find out info here or take out]

Temperatures were pressing 90 degrees as I pulled up to the Novak house and got out of my car. I was about to have an enjoyable time finding out how they used Math-U-See, I had to hurry though because they were headed to a friends house to go swimming soon and I didn’t want to cut into pool time I smiled as I approached the door as I could hear the commotion of dishes being put away as they cleared the counters for the “visitor”

I asked Beth a few questions about Math-U-See and what she enjoyed about using it. She said that she enjoyed, “Steve’s Jokes, I like how he explains things, he makes it fun and he makes it simple and if you don’t understand it you don’t have to feel like an idiot and ask someone to tell you again, you can just rewind it, go back and watch it again.”

I also asked her how she usually teaches Math-U-See and how she manages all the “students” She told me that, “It’s different for every child, with Isaac I teach him with the manipulatives, we watch the video together, we do the work pages together and I let him do some on his own. With the older kids they watch the video, some of them read the teachers manual, they take the tests and they grade the tests, it’s self taught and if they don’t understand something I go watch the lesson with them and go from there.” While we were talking Isaac started building a “block tower”

A firm foundation in math

I also asked the kids how long they spent doing math every day and they all responded at the same time with several answers, Chris stated matter of factly that he only spent 10 minutes a day doing math. This statement produced many clarifications from his siblings and mother about what he “really” did and how he actually would skip math for a week then spend an entire day catching up and that it may average out to 10 minutes Chris enjoys the outdoors and riding his skateboard.

Math on the go…

A lonely math book left for more interesting activites

Becky thought for a minute and said that she usually spends between 30 and 45 minutes a day doing her math and that she does her math at her desk in her room.

Emily said she only spends 10 minutes a day as well and her siblings interjected saying that if she went slower she would get more right answers. Emily enjoys doing her math outside when it’s nice out and in her room when it’s not.

Enjoying the outdoors

Not to be outdone little Isaac proclaimed, “I can do a math page in under a minute”. We may never know what the actual times are but we do know that they have fun and enjoy plenty of sibling competition.

In response to Isaac’s grand math page claim Beth told me a story about Isaac and his math pages, “One day I went through and Isaac was doing his skip counting facts, he had put down, “6_12_18_24_B_D” so I asked him, ‘why do you have the B and the D there?’ and he said, ‘well Mr. Demme said if you don’t know the number then just put in a letter’” If you ever meet Isaac you will agree with me when I say that Beth definitely has her hands full with keeping track of him.

Where on decimal street does this house belong?

I asked Beth about using Math-U-See with her now graduated kids and she said, “We’ve worked from the original yellow book (Foundations) all the way up, Annie’s gone through Trigonometry. Mikey graduated this year and has finished Algebra 2 but he is going to do the rest of the books next year and not go to college so when he takes the AP test he can do as best as he can. It’s a cheap way to get a good background in Math”

Beth, Emily, Chris, Becky and Isaac in front of their house

Many thanks to the Novaks for letting me take a peek into the real life adventure of a homeschool family.

If you would like to be a featured user on the Math-U-See blog please e-mail me at ethan@mathusee.com

If you think you are a better block architect than Isaac and would like a picture of your block creation on the blog email me at ethan@mathusee.com