Mathematics
Blog Posts
Learn Math Fast! Best Self Study Books (all ages)
Life of Fred: Financial Choices
Math Facts series
I love this 4-book series! Full of great games and strategies for consolidating math facts in the younger years, you can also use these with older children who may never have memorised all their math facts. Highly recommended.
Help Your Child Master the Addition Facts for Good in Just Six Weeks
Help Your Child Master the Subtraction Facts for Good in Just Eight Weeks
Help Your Child Master the Multiplication Facts for Good in Just Ten Weeks
Help Your Child Master the Division Facts for Good in Just Ten Weeks
Life of Fred series
Life of Fred is a great option for those who do not love mathematics and enjoy more of a story-based approach. Don’t let this fool you though… this is not full of fluff and is a very comprehensive series, taking children all the way from their early years right up to college level mathematics.
The age recommendations are a guide only as the idea is to work through the books in order. If your children do this and complete each book successfully, they will be ready to move on to the next volume. It is easy to rush through the early years (some of my children read through these just for fun) but like most mathematics programs, this series works best if you take your time. Allow your children to work at their own pace, moving on to the next book when they have mastered the one they are working on.
Apples, Butterflies, Cats, Dogs (4-Book set)
Kids love Life of Fred Books because they're funny. Parents, Teachers, and Librarians love Life of Fred Books because they're educational.
Edgewood, Farming, Goldfish, Honey (4-Book Set)
Kids love Life of Fred Books because they're funny. Parents, Teachers, and Librarians love Life of Fred Books because they're educational.
Ice Cream, Jelly Beans (2-Book set)
Kids love Life of Fred Books because they're funny. Parents, Teachers, and Librarians love Life of Fred Books because they're educational.
If you know your addition and multiplication tables by heart, your next step is to get to know Fred. In this book and the next book (Life of Fred: Decimals & Percents) you can learn everything you need to know to begin Algebra!
This is the last arithmetic book. After you finish the 192 pages of this book you will be ready for algebra.
Book 3 in Life of Fred Pre-Algebra series
Older editions of Beginning Algebra had a companion book. This edition replaces both Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra and Fred's Home Companion: Beginning Algebra. All problems are completely worked out.
Older editions of Advanced Algebra had a companion book. This edition replaces both Life of Fred: Advanced Algebra and Fred's Home Companion: Advanced Algebra. All problems are completely worked out.
Every aspect of geometry--including proofs, constructions (46 of them!), the 4th dimension, coordinate geometry, non-Euclidean geometry and the flawless modern geometry invented about a hundred years ago. Great for self-study.
Life of Fred is a series of math books that break the old pattern of drill and kill. Dr. Stanley Schmidt wrote these to make math come alive with humor, clear explanations, and silly illustrations that will make math a fun subject. Your children actually want to read these books. The stories carry on through the exercises, leading the student through them.
(Textbook + Answer Key)
All of Calculus! Sixteen college semester units.
Includes answer key.
A year of college statistics.
Don’t forget to check out this great Life of Fred Language Arts series for your teens!
Life of Fred: Language Arts
Books to Inspire
Age 7+
A bumper book of fun with maths stuffed with things to draw, puzzle, invent, order, unscramble, code, decode for kids aged 7+ years from Australia's best known maths man. There's magic in maths - if you know where to look...
Age 7+
A bumper book of maths fun stuffed with things to draw, puzzle, invent, order, unscramble, code, decode for kids aged 7+ years from Australia's best known maths man. There's magic in maths - if you know where to look...
Age 9+
An Adventure in Words and Numbers.
When thirteen-year-old cousins Ivan and Daphne go on a treasure hunt in the rain one summer day, they never expect to stumble into a whole new world where words and numbers run wild.
Age 9+
A Story of Math in Surprising Places
Math can show up in the most unlikely places! When the schools in Jeremy’s town ban math, all the kids cheer, all except his friend Sam, a self-proclaimed mathnik, who sets out to prove that math is not only important, but fun. Running parallel to the fictional narrative are informative sidebars that discuss the weird, puzzling, and amusing aspects of mathematics. Some topics covered are math in nature, art, music, magic and tricks, crime solving, and sports.
Age 10+
Eddie Woo is the WooTube sensation. World-renowned Maths teacher extraordinaire and TV host, he has put magic into Maths and has been named one of the world's TOP 10 teachers! He is a champion of school-based integrated STEM education. This is his story from being bullied as a child to losing his mother to cancer as a high school student, to dedicating his life to helping students to love learning, and to be successful no matter what their background or their personal circumstances.
Age 10+
In this exciting series from educator/author John Hudson Tiner, short biographies of the world's most gifted thinkers will inspire the leaders of tomorrow.
From Ancient Record Keeping to the Latest Advances in Computers (The Exploring series) - Age 11+
It’s amazing how ten simple digits can be used in an endless number of ways to benefit man. Explore the development of these ten digits and their many uses in this fascinating story. Includes chapter quizzes and extra reading suggestions.
Age 12+ - 2021 Mathical Honor Book
How Math Is Hiding Everywhere―from the Crown of a Tree to the Sound of a Sine Wave
Why aren’t left-handers extinct? What makes a rainbow round? How is a pancreas . . . like a pendulum?
These may not look like math questions, but they are―because they all have to do with patterns. And mathematics, at heart, is the study of patterns.
That realization changed Eddie Woo’s life―by turning the “dry” subject he dreaded in high school into a boundless quest for discovery. Now an award-winning math teacher, Woo sees patterns everywhere: in the “branches” of blood vessels and lightning, in the growth of a savings account and a sunflower, even in his morning cup of tea!
Publisher’s note: It’s a Numberful World was published in Australia under the title Woo’s Wonderful World of Maths.
Age 12+
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch tells the inspiring, true adventures of Nat Bowditch, a boy during the American Revolution. Nat's passion for learning and his unstoppable spirit lead him from poverty and servitude to triumph and adventure at sea. Ultimately, Nat achieves everlasting fame for revolutionizing navigation, thus streamlining voyages and saving countless lives.
Age 14+
Darrell Huff runs the gamut of every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study, the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which are used to fool rather than to inform.
Age 16+
This book revolutionizes the prevailing understanding and teaching of math. The addition of this book is a must for all upper-level Christian school curricula and for college students and adults interested in math or related fields of science and religion. It will serve as a solid refutation for the claim, often made in court, that mathematics is one subject, which cannot be taught from a distinctively Biblical perspective.
Picture Books
The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race
They participated in some of NASA's greatest successes, like providing the calculations for America's first journeys into space. And they did so during a time when being black and a woman limited what they could do. But they worked hard. They persisted. And they used their genius minds to change the world.
Children can test their math skills and learn the Pythagorean Theorem alongside young Pythagoras in this STEM adventure.
The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos
Paul Erdos never followed the usual path. At the age of four, he could ask you when you were born and then calculate the number of seconds you had been alive in his head. He traveled around the world, from one mathematician to the next, collaborating on an astonishing number of publications.
This colorfully illustrated biography of the Greek philosopher and scientist Eratosthenes, who compiled the first geography book and accurately measured the globe's circumference, is just right for budding mathematicians, scientists and historians.
When Leonardo grew up and traveled the world, he was inspired by the numbers used in different countries. Then he realized that many things in nature, from the number of petals on a flower to the spiral of a nautilus shell, seem to follow a certain pattern. The boy who was once teased for being a blockhead had discovered what came to be known as the Fibonacci Sequence!
The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain
For six years, Sophie Germain used her love of math and her undeniable determination to test equations that would predict patterns of vibrations. She eventually became the first woman to win a grand prize from France's prestigious Academy of Sciences for her formula, which laid the groundwork for much of modern architecture (and can be seen in the book's illustrations).
