Schiller Math - a large kit that comes with multiple books, wooden boxes with a number bank, wooden shapes, dice, audio CD's, a balance, counting cubes (single units, 10's, 100's, thousand's), dominoes, artificial money. The used kit I bought had the manipulatives and a few books, but I went to Schiller's website and bought the virtual version so I could print straight from it.
Even though math was a strong subject for me when I was a kid, I really would’ve loved to learn this way which was why I bought it. If they can hold things in their hands and actually see it happen they can really grasp the concepts even more than just reading it in a book. The hands on aspect is what really stood out to me about the Montessori method of learning. What really stood out to me about Schiller is that it covers multiple grades in one curriculum.
Kit 2 - grades 4th - 8th
Fractions - 2nd through 8th
- Hands on learning - lots of manipulatives
- Multi-sensory approach
- Teacher/student books are all in one
- No lesson planning needed
- No need to buy a new curriculum each year
- Over the span of years covered it's cheaper than most curriculums (even if only used on 1 kid)
- Can use with a range of ages, great for multi-children households
- Digital version of the books so you can keep printing for the younger siblings
- No specific timeline -it's student led, they may whiz through some days and then go slower for a while...it all levels out
- Excellent customer service, and private FB groups for extra support and help
- Upfront cost is higher
- Somewhat bland-No frilliness - for preschoolers it can look boring, this can also be a pro though, some kids just get overstimulated
- No exact definition of what grade your child is doing
Today's math lesson was about learning asending and desending order, Krissy had fun with it and wanted to keep "playing" so we did it with roman numerals and then while we were cleaning up also did it in spanish! Then we counted the steps while asending the stairs and desending the stairs. I love how our lessons are reinforced through other subjects or just throughout our day!