Do You Use Teachers' Manuals??

Right now in math we're working on fractional parts of sets and number arrays. That sounds fancy, right?? I'm slowly learning to use the resource with our math book sets called the "teacher's manual." This is very much unlike the teacher's manuals you'd get for homeschoolers, because our math curriculum came free from the public school... it's so full of teacherese that it takes me about five readings to "sorta" understand what they're talking about.

But the curriculum was free because they were updating to a new edition and I guess that math is such a changing subject that they were pitching the old stuff... but bonus for me. Plus, I know *for sure* whether my children are on par with what they are teaching in the public school district locally; at least in that subject I'll be comparing apples to apples when I look at the boys' progress. And at this level, we don't get indoctrinated so much in the math curriculum.

I had been *so* frustrated with teaching some concepts lately. For example: I have twelve dogs and three children. How many dogs can each child have if we divide them evenly? I get blank stares. Or, there are five fingers on each hand, and each person has two hands. Three people are in the room. How many fingers altogether?

But they could tell you easily that 3 x 4 = 12, or 3 x 5 = 15. They could!! But you ask a question like that and they have no clue. That's one thing I miss about the Horizons curriculum. They just asked the answer to 3 x 4 and didn't really apply it nearly as much as the Everyday Mathmatics. Or, here are six coins drawn on the worksheet... I gave 2/6 of the coins away. Shade the coins that I kept.

Thankfully, I looked at the scope and sequence pages of the magical "teachers' manual." Oh, they *introduce* these concepts in second grade, but the child does not need to be "secure" in the concept until about fourth grade!! Whew! So I'll go over the material but not flip so much about whether the boys completely understand all the details of the concept.

Anyone finding they are relying more on the teachers' manual as they progress, or do all you out in bloggyland find yourself needing these resources LESS?