Thursday, July 12, 2018

Math Essentials: Math Refresher for Adults {Homeschool Crew Review}

If you've been a faithful reader of my blog for long, you've heard me say often that math is not our best subject around here. Yes, it mostly has to do with my own school experiences while growing up; it's not the easiest subject for me to teach my kids. I've always felt my own math skills have made it a challenge for me in helping my kids.

I was thankful for the opportunity to review Math Refresher for Adults, from Math Essentials, to brush up on my math skills to make it easier to help my final student with his pre-algebra and algebra studies, as he enters high school.
Math Refresher for Adults is a softcover workbook/textbook, which covers general math topics, geometry, pre-algebra and algebra. If you want to, you can work on it straight through, but the detailed table of contents makes it easy to pick and choose the topics you may most need to brush up on.
Each lesson begins with review exercises, helpful hints, then several practice problems, ending with a word problem. There isn't much space for showing your work, so in the book's introduction, the author suggests using separate paper to write out your problems and solutions. This makes it easy to use as textbook format.
Because I am using it as textbook format, my daughter is also able to use the book, to refresh her math skills in preparation for college classes (which we hope she will be able to begin soon). She has glanced through it a few times, but hasn't actually sat down to work on any of the lessons yet.

Also my youngest can use it, perhaps to help prepare for his GED, which he may take in a couple years. It could also serve as review work for him, or just because he's kind of a "math geek" anyway, he might do it "just for fun."
If you struggle with a concept, there are video lessons available online. You are given access codes for those videos. The videos consist of a whiteboard with step by step illustrations for solving the problems, and the author verbally instructs as he illustrates. This is especially handy, because you can pause the video, or rewatch as many times as you need.

SJ is currently taking a math course through a virtual school. I chose to have him do that, so I don't necessarily have to teach him math. But because of his learning challenges, I do have to sit with him, usually, while he works on his exams. Well, that becomes a challenge for me, if I haven't gone over the coursework, too, because I can't explain to him how to solve the problems, what steps he needs to take.

For that reason, this refresher book is helpful for me: I can scan through the table of contents, to find a lesson on the topic he may be struggling with, and work through some of the practice problems myself. Then I can more easily instruct him.

There are a variety of uses for this book. I hope you will check it out for yourself.

Last year we reviewed No-Nonsense Algebra by Math Essentials. You are welcome to go read that review.

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Several others of my Crew mates reviewed the Math Refresher for Adults; simply click the banner below to read their reviews.
Math Refresher for Adults {Math Essentials}

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