Life of Fred: A Love Story

Prologue

“I can’t wait for Calculus!” my then 6 year old girl sighed wistfully. 

In September I hosted 5 extra children in my house for a homeschool day.  The preschoolers played in the living room while 6 elementary students sat around my dining room table for Morning Time.  I wondered how these bonus children would respond to Life of Fred.  I asked my daughter to explain Life of Fred.

“Well, Fred is a 5 year old Math professor at Kittens University.”  Giggles all around. “He sleeps under his desk in his office.  He has a doll named Kingie.  He just recently found a stray cat and took him back to his office.”

“Are you sure this is a math program?” the extra kids wanted to know.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. 

“And how can he be only 5 years old and teaching math?”

My daughter sighed.  “We have to get to Life of Fred: Calculus to find out.”

What is Life of Fred?

Life of Fred is a series of books written by Calculus professor Dr. Stanley Schmidt.  Dr. Schmidt has written Life of Fred books from his elementary series through the third year of college (Linear Algebra is currently the last book in the series, which is studied after two years of calculus.) I’m going to talk about the Elementary series because we are in the thick of it right now. We have two more lessons in LoF Farming (the sixth book in the elementary series).

The Elementary series consists of 10 books with 18 or 19 daily lessons in each book.  It is possible to work through the entire series in one year.  Each book costs $16 new. (Z-twist books is the publisher. You can also purchase them from Educents, which also has an adorable Kingie doll for sale. Guess what I want for my birthday?!) The book titles are alphabetical.  The first book is Apples, the next is Butterflies, the third is Cats, etc.  When I first heard about the series, I didn’t want to invest $160 in a math program, but what I didn’t understand is that LoF Elementary is cyclical.  Dr. Schmidt says the best way to use the program is to repeat all the lessons from Apples to Jellybeans several years in a row.  If you start with a first grader, you probably will not complete the series the first year.  You might get to Cats (book 3) or Dogs (book 4).  Then in second grade you may start again with Apples.  Even an older child should start with Apples.  They can do more than one lesson a day until it gets challenging.



Student completes a Row of Practice

Each lesson has a six page story about Fred’s crazy life as a 5 year old math professor.  He encounters a lot of math in each lesson.  At the end of the lesson is a Your Turn to Play.  The YTTP section has a 4-6 math problems to solve.  Many of these questions are in story problem form. The books are not consumable.  The children answer the YTTP on a separate sheet of paper.  Many of the lessons also include A Row of Practice.  These are just simple arithmetic problems.  Starting in Edgewood (book 5), if a child misses one of the five Row of Practice Problems, he or she needs to try them ALL again.  I’ll be honest.  We had TEARS.  So many tears.  When she questioned me about the need to do them all again, I told her she could email Dr. Schmidt (That’s right folks!  He hands out his email address and tells parents to have their children email him with questions, complaints, or mistakes they found in the books.) We have not emailed him yet.  My daughter eventually got used to it, and now her arithmetic is much more accurate than it ever was even with the drill and kill workbooks.  She even checks her work before looking at the answer key!!!!

From start to finish a LoF lesson takes about 15 to 20 minutes.  In the upper books, it may take more like 30 minutes because children have to practice multiplication facts before they earn the right to read the chapter.

What I like about Life of Fred

First things first.  You guys, there is no prep in this math curriculum at all.  None.  Pick up the book and read the next lesson.  That's it.  The only supplies you need are the books, a pencil, and a piece of paper.

Dr. Schmidt published LoF: Calculus first, then worked his way down.  His books were so popular and refreshing that there was a demand for an elementary series.  When he wrote the Elementary series, he had the end in mind.  In the Elementary series, he exposes children to more upper level mathematics than I have ever seen in a math textbook.  He loves to teach set theory.  My children can tell you the cardinality of a set, and they are learning to find the union of two sets.  I don’t think I learned that until Algebra 2! One of my favorite things about Apples is that right away, Dr. Schmidt dangles the promise that when the students get to Life of Fred: Calculus, they will find out how Fred came to be a Math professor.  Dr. Schmidt also shows students what a calculus problem looks like.  I love that.  I love showing children that things exist in this world, even if they don’t understand it yet.

In Apples, the first book, the only arithmetic used are the numbers that equal 7.  For example, 0+7=7, 1+6=7, 2+5=7.  These are the ONLY math facts that students encounter in the entire book.  Many homeschooling parents look only at Apples and decide LoF isn’t challenging enough for their students.  But what they don’t see is all the math that is covered. In Apples, the students learn how to subtract a number from 7.  They also learn some basic algebra like x + 2 = 7.  They explore geometry and set theory.  Here is a sample from Life of Fred: Apples.

In Butterflies, Dr. Schmidt adds other math facts, and students play with numbers using a very limited amount of arithmetic. 

Dr. Schmidt gradually adds math facts until all are covered and practiced in Farming (book 6).  In Honey (book 8) multiplication is the focus.

By the end of the elementary series, children should be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with confidence. They will also explore some basic fractions and decimals, solve basic algebra problems, and be exposed to many upper level math concepts. Here is a sample from Life of Fred: Ice Cream.

I know I said this before, but Dr. Schmidt wants children to email him with questions, complaints, or when they spot a mistake in his books.  What other math publisher does that?

The story is zany. Fred meets interesting people and animals, adopts 30 dogs, his doll is a world renown painter, and Fred is swindled multiple times by crook C.C. Coalback.   

Dr. Schmidt also puts in short essays about random things in his stories.  He says he doesn’t teach math, he teaches students.  He has taught my children about the Titanic, Orien, asterisms, and so many other things.

*One thing to note is that Life of Fred does not use very many math manipulatives.  Before Life of Fred, I would have said that any math curriculum without manipulatives will not teach children conceptually. Life of Fred is the only curriculum I know of that does teach math conceptually without heavy use of math manipulatives. 

Life of Fred is not for everyone

I believe that finding the right curriculum for homeschoolers depends largely on two factors: 

1. It must appeal to the student.  I know that not everything we have to learn in life is fun.  However, if a child loathes a certain curriculum for some reason, find another choice.  I had to do this with a Bible curriculum I was using.  I loved it.  My daughter did not.  It wasn’t worth the daily arguments.

2. It must appeal to the parent. If you or your child would rather do worksheets and not have all the “story fluff” of Life of Fred, then it isn’t for you. That’s ok. 

Also, can I just say that Dr. Stanley Schmidt is a genius, but he is more than a little eccentric?  Look up his tv show from the 90s.  He has been known to wear a toga while teaching philosophy.  His eccentricity might be a turn off for some. 

If you do not want a Christian math curriculum, then you might want to skip Life of Fred.  Personally, I love the Christian references.  They are subtle and natural.  I have always felt like some Christian math curricula seem forced.  Have you ever seen a curriculum that has word problems like- “What is the sum of the elephants and zebras on the ark?”  LoF isn’t overtly Christian, but just seems to be a natural outpouring of the author’s belief system.  For example, on a Your Turn to Play one of the questions is to name a set with three members.  I named my three children as an example.  My daughter named {Larry, Mo, Curly}.  In the answer key, Dr. Schmidt gave the example of {the trinity} as a set with three members. 

 

How NOT to use Life of Fred: The Evolution of my LoF Implementation Plan

1. When I first heard about Life of Fred, I bought Apples and Butterflies.  We read through Apples and Butterflies. Great math exposure. Little math computation.  Funny stories.  My overall feeling: Meh.  It’s missing something.  We switched to Rightstart Math.  Moral: Don't just buy the first two books. 

2. A couple years later I bought Cats, Dogs, and Edgewood.  I supplemented Rightstart with Life of Fred when I felt like it.  I think we got through Cats.  My overall feeling: The kids didn't retain very much. Dr. Schmidt is a genius.  I wish there was more math computation. Moral: Be consistent.

3. In January of last year I tried to make Life of Fred the spine of our math, and I supplemented with worksheets for extra practice.  My third grade daughter was really struggling to remember subtraction facts so I thought a daily drill and kill worksheet would help.  We got through Dogs, and my daughter was in tears because of the daily worksheets.  She continually made subtraction mistakes or forgot subtraction facts.  Moral: The Row of Practice problems can be just as effective  (or more so) than 25 problems each day.

The Best Way to use Life of Fred: Dr. Schmidt's Way

This year I dropped the other curriculum and I use Life of Fred daily.  We sometimes double up lessons, especially in the books we have repeated a few times. I never skip a day of Life of Fred.  My children are doing amazing things in math. I do still supplement the math occasionally, but I try to use math games more than workbooks.  My second grade son really likes his Star Wars Math workbook, so he does that a couple days each week. 

A few more thoughts:

 My daughter is behind.  She is in fourth grade, and she doesn’t know all her multiplication facts. She has dyslexia, and I’m wondering if she also has dysgraphia.  Math facts are harder for her to retain than typical children. She can solve multiplication problems because she can skip count numbers up to 15 (Thanks Classical Conversations memory work!).  I think that if I had used Life of Fred as our main math curriculum a few years ago, my daughter would have retained more of her subtraction facts.  She still needs to learn a lot of math before she is ready for long division, fractions, and decimals.  But it will come.  She has become a subtraction master, and I trust Fred and Dr. Schmidt to carry her through.  

Not ready to commit yet? See if you can borrow LoF books from a friend.  This year I have lent my LoF books to three friends.  We stagger when we start Apples so multiple children can use the same set.  Another option is to check your library or use an inner library loan.  The books are $16 with free shipping from the author’s publisher. I buy them used for $10-14 each.  They retain most of their value, so you can always resell them.

 Struggling Math students would benefit from Life of Fred.  The curriculum is zany enough that even a struggling 7th or 8th grader would benefit from the elementary series.  Let your student work through them in the summer. An older child could breeze through one book each week in less than an hour each day.

Students are ready for Life of Fred: Apples when they can write and recognize numerals, and have a basic number sense of the numbers 1-7. For example, when they see five Legos, they know there are five there.

Looking to the Future



Students use "Fred Bucks" in denominations of the
powers of 3 ($1, $3, $9, $27, $81) to buy things and make change.

Our plan is for my daughter who is 9 and my 7 year old son to go through A-J this year.  I hope my daughter will be ready to start the intermediate series (Kidneys, Liver, and Mineshaft) this summer when we start the next school year.  If she struggles through the multiplication and division books, I will have her repeat those before going on to K,L, M.  At this point, I would love to take my children through Calculus.  We will finally know how five year old Fred came to be a math professor.

Epilogue

And they all lived happily ever after.