L.E.D. Resources & Recommendations
for Home Education:
Choose a section in our Home Education catalog: L.E.D. Resources - Home Ed Resources by Me and My House Order & Resources Info General Home Ed Resources - to Lay a Good Educational Foundation Biblical Studies - Biblical & Christian Studies Biblical Worldview - General, Overview Resources Communication - Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening Governments - Self/Character, Family, Church, and Civil Stewardship - Personal, Financial, Business, Economics HisStory - including Geography, Biography, Literature, Music, & Art Creation: Design & Order - Science & Math Dominion Skills - Life Skills for Home and Vocation
Our Resource & Order Info page tells what type of resources are on each of these pages & gives ordering information.

Me & My House Resources
& Recommendations:
Choose a section in our Christian Family Living catalog: Resource & Contact Main Page 2 Shall Be 1 - marriage Eve's Treasures - womanhood Keepers at Home - homemaking Mykayah's Things - babies Beyond Babies ~ Parenting and Family Fun Beyond Babies ~ Family Fun Clear Vision - Christian Growth Lifestyle Education through Discipleship - home ed Good for You - Naturally! - Biblical Nutrition
We're much more than just home ed!
Recommendations for the Christian family.

L.E.D.™ Resources & Recommendations

Wisdom's 7 Pillars:
Creation - Design & Order

Our Creation: Design & Order Pillar covers what are typically called the "sciences". We study God's Design in His physical Creation and His patterns and Order in quantities and magnitude.

Thank you for your order through our links. It helps support the many aspects of "free" ministry from Me and My House.

Biblical Foundations & Rudiments of Order

Our favorite resource for laying the foundation of Order is A Guide to American Christian Education for the Home and School by James Rose, in the chapters "Arithmetic from the Principle Approach" by James Kilkenny and "Algebra: from the Principle Approach" by David Booton. You'll see this work recommended over and over in our Rudiments sections. It is a great resource, very highly recommended, to gain an understanding of the Biblical Foundations and Rudiments of many subjects. This is the resource for gaining the Big Picture in God's plan for each area of learning.

Encyclopedia of Bible Truths by Ruth Haycock has finally been republished! We have used and recommended this from the beginning, when it was 4 individual volumes. then it went to a single, all-in-one book, and now is back in 4 volumes again. These books are like a Topical Bible for school subjects, giving Biblical concepts (principles) and related verses for various content areas within each subject. The four volumes are: Lanugage Arts/English, Social Studies, Science/Mathematics, and Fine Arts/Health, and there is a slight discount for buying the 4 Volume Set. This is the resource for relating every area of learning to the Bible.

The Noah Plan Mathematics Curriculum Guide is more extensive for actual curriculum planning than either of the above books. It gives curriculum overviews for each level of learning, the American Christian philosophy of mathematics, and the methodology for applying it. This is the resource for building individual lessons after laying the foundations.

For parents and older teens we recommend James Nickel's Mathematics: Is God Silent? for understanding mathematics from a Biblical worldview. You can also read an analysis of Saxon math wirtten by Mr. Nickel on his website.

General Resources for Order (Arithmetic/Mathematics)

There are several good programs available for teaching arithmetic/mathematics. However, none of them incorporate the Biblical Foundations. We are working on a basic overview, Freedom & Simplicity™ in Creation: Order, to help you put together your own program, or at least guide you in pulling in the Biblical Foundations, Rudiments, and Principles into other programs. Also, James Nickel (author of Mathematics: Is God Silent?) is writing a math text for Junior High that will include all these components.

For Beginners, we highly recommend that you do not use a math curriculum, especially workbooks. Rather, teach them math concepts through real amounts and objects that surround them throughout their day. It is way too easy for children to get into the same mindset most of us have/had, of "doing math" means filling in the answers to number sentence problems on a page, rather than solving real life problems that involve amounts and measures. Give your children a good start to math, with a solid foundation in doing real life math.

I strongly believe that nothing more than the natural, real life suggestions presented in our blog post excerpt from our forthcoming Freedom & Simplicity™ in Creation: Order, or Ruth Beechick's book The Three R's (plus Biblical Foundations,) is necessary for beginners. The Three R's is a new format for what was previously 3 booklets. The section, An Easy Start in Arithmetic, presents math naturally amidst living real life, and explains how to teach the concepts necessary for beginners up through third grade or so. From there you can go into Ray's (or Making Math Meaningful, if you choose). More on both of those below.

Our blog post (mentioned above) covers all the steps for getting started in teaching math, and laying a proper and solid foundation for Beginners. It outlines everything you need to teach in Year 1. (No curriculum needed.) There is also a link in it to another blog post on what to do with younger children, to "prepare them for math."

For your older children, (though each of these has resources to use with beginners,) here are some programs that we've found to be good, and you can incorporate the Foundational elements fairly easily into them.

Ray's Arithmetic, a classic from the 1800's, has been the Principle Approach recommendation for many years. It includes Principles and their definitions. It is a great program! However, it is not set up the way we are used to in modern programs. No games, bells, whistles or workbook pages - just math instuction and problems to solve. It has plenty of practice exercises, mostly real life (word/story) problems that the students have to reason through (which is a good thing). Each aspect of arithmetic is defined, the principles given, and the rules spelled out, step by step. Everything (outside of the Biblical Foundations) needed in a good math program is here, and at a super price - all levels up through 8th grade at less than the cost of 1 or 2 years of other programs. This program begins entirely orally and hands-on, and fits well with our philosophy with very few adjustments.

Making Math Meaningful by David Quine (Cornerstone Curriculum) is good at teaching by concepts, and has Christian content, though not explicitly teaching Biblical Foundations. It presents math in real life problems, and natural story format. This program goes on through Algebra I and Geometry. The books are student directed beginning in Level 5. Making Math Meaningful is not as explicit in definitions and principles as Ray's, but is very good in lifestyle presentation and application of concepts, not rote memorization. It teaches students to reason through the problems. Very "Charlotte Mason" method friendly.

Math U See is another good curriculum for teaching by concepts. It utilizes a lot of story problems, but still in the format of worksheets. (Obviously not my favorite part of this curriculum.) But it is great on incorporating all modes of learning. The child builds the math problem, hands-on, and sees how math works before he writes it out. The big plus for Math U See is its manipulatives (one type) that are used throughout the entire program. At the time we began with it we had an older daughter who still needed the "hands on" experience. We greatly appreciated having a program with this built in. (Our experience with MUS is with their Classic materials. We were a rep for them in their early days.)

RightStart math is the only program we give a recommendation for that we really haven't used much ourselves. It is the program now recommended by the Principle Approach® (for the younger grades, and then switch to Ray's). It is based on abacus work rather than blocks as manipulatives. We have used their Activities for AL Abacus some, which is their original K-4 program. Their program is now redesigned into individual level programs for K-4 plus geometry. RightStart also has a Math Card Games Book with over 300 math games that can be utilized with any math curriculum you are using.

For getting the facts down, we like Math It. However, it is pricey. In more recent years we've made our own facts game. It too will be included in Freedom & Simplicity™ in Creation: Order, when that resource is released.

Our newest recommendation for older children is the Life of Fred math series. This series is math instruction through a hilarious story, that of Fred Gauss, a 6 year old math professor at KITTENS college. For your kids that hate math, they'll love Fred! There aren't very many problems per lesson, but they're all very practical real life (well, as real as a 6 year old math professor gets) and they all build upon each other. Stan Schmidt, (the author,) has you use what you've learned in the story chapter right away on a few problems and then has reviews every few lessons.

In addition to being the funnest (and funniest) math lessons available, I also like that 1) this is very practical, real life math; 2) these are real books, no workbook pages; 3) they are reusable for all your children; 4) they are very inexpensive.

The Life of Fred series begins with Fractions. When do you start it? I love what the author has to say, so I quote him.

(The link above will take you to our Amazon page which has the books, but we won't hold it against you if you want to hop over to the author/publisher's website, where you can get more info.)

For our family, so far, we have not found that Life of Fred has brought enough complete understanding, so we continue to include Ray's also, (and some great teaching tips I learned from Steve Demme of Math U See.)

Ray's Arithmetic

"If you want to teach your child how to think, as well as math, this is an excellent curriculum. If you are willing to be involved as a parent and help your child figure out those challenging problems (and believe me, some of them are challenging! They are teaching me a lot of new things!!) then you will be happy with this curriculum. If you are willing to go at your own pace, realizing that your child is learning valuable skills and not worry about what those kids in public school are doing, then this is a great curriculum. This curriculum is not one of those that fills your kids with facts. Ray's teaches your child a fact and then has them use it, along with other facts they have used, to solve problems from real life."

comment from Shelley Sexton,
a Ray's user

Download this free Eclectic Manual of Methods, an original teacher's guide, that went along with Ray's. It gives suggestions of what to do (the first year) before even beginning Primary (Ray's first book, for beginners.) (The Manual includes instructions for other subjects too, such as using McGuffey's.) Or read my blog post for first year math.

Algebra 1 Student Book
By David Quine / Cornerstone Curriculum

Geometry course coming soon!

This Kit Includes:

L.E.D.

Home

Write Us

L.E.D. Resources and
Recommendations