Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents

Life of Fred College Prep Set #2

by Stanley F. Schmidt

The Human Face of Decimals and Percents

You know your addition and multiplication tables by heart.

You have read Life of Fred: Fractions

Now the gateway to algebra—Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents

One afternoon and evening with our five-year-old hero and you will learn:

Everything you need to begin algebra
Why they no longer play football at KITTENS University
Why you should never eat alone at the 5100th Avenue Steak House
All fun! Just open & enjoy.
Number Systems, Adding and Subtracting Decimals, Multiplying by Ten, Functions and Inverse Functions, Pi, Multiplying Decimals, Whole Numbers, Squaring a Number, Subtracting Mixed Units, Sets and Subsets, Union and Intersection of Sets, Rules of Divisibility, Division of Decimals, Repeating Decimals, Bar Graphs, Prime and Composite Numbers, Consecutive Numbers, the Goldbach Conjecture, Area of a Circle, Dollars vs. Cents, Pie Charts, Conversion between Percents/ Fractions/ Decimals, 40% of 15, 30% off, Distance Equals Rate Times Time, 15% more, Area of a Triangle, Square Roots, Area of a Parallelogram, 13 Is What Percent of 52, Ratio, Ordered Pairs, Graphing, Negative Numbers, Elapsed Time, Probability.

Genres: Mathematics, Nonfiction, School, Education

191 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Stanley F. Schmidt is an educator. He began teaching high school teacher at the age of 22, and later taught in a college.

Reviews

[Els]

These are part of my baby sister's curriculum, and honestly they are TOO MUCH FUN.

Besides, Fred-the-book-addict is too relatable. Fred-the-never-hungry is not.

[Brittany Isbell]

Fantastic math curriculum!

[Chase]

Adults can even gain something from this.

[Rainier]

I will review this one for R since I went through it with him. I'm not fond of LOF writing. I think they could really improve the text and make it more cohesive. At the least I wish they would actually discuss math in the text. They hardly do. The only math instruction you get is through doing the problem sets. I like the problem sets though. I love how they take a single theme and work ten applicable real world problems in them. The books appeal to children though, even if they are not my favorite. But I really think that unless you're doing this book with your child and making sure they are doing the problem sets and making sure you explain more the why and how the math works, that they aren't such a great curriculum. Wouldn't use as a sole curriculum for those reasons. They need to have more math think in them. But it was a good book to go through slowly over the summer. Who can complain about 5 to ten fairly easy problems a day?

[Teri]

This is the second book in the Life of Fred series that my son and I have completed. We did enjoy it. I'm still not sure if this series will provide enough exercises. Sometimes the concepts found in the exercises are not explained beforehand and you're left to puzzle it out yourself. I think this is the author's deliberate strategy, however. He does want you to think for yourself. I also wonder if the concepts are logically presented... I'm not a math person, but even I felt the presentation, from concept to concept, could be disjointed at times. The book is entertaining. My son still loves it. It was a review for us, since we're back-pedaling somewhat after doing Saxon Algebra 1. Will Life of Fred be enough of a math curriculum? That's the question. At least my son isn't hating math any more, and that's a huge plus. We are continuing on to the next book.