Daily Word Problems, Grade 1

Our son (6.75 years) loves the daily word problems. He is redoing them this summer before 2nd grade because he requested that I get copies from his teacher. Despite his enthusiasm for doing these problems, he can only do half of them independently. To solve these problems, he needs frequent teacher/parent direction and uses an aid from Using Visual Grids for Solving Math Word Problems.

Because he loves these problems and they are challenging for him, I give the book 4 stars.

Because this workbook cannot be done independently by most first graders, I subtracted a star. It can still be done in a classroom. Our son was an emerging reader until April and jumped to third grade level in June. His teacher spent one-on-one time helping him do these problems all year. He loved it, but his teacher felt that it took too much of her time. I thought that since he is now a fluent reader and has had a lot more practice in mathematics that these problems would be easier. Some are easy for him, but many like the following are too challenging for him to set up by himself.

"A llama eats one bale of hay each week. How much hay will five llamas need for a three-week supply?"

"The baby squirrel needs to eat every two hours. How many times will it eat in 12 hours?"

"This chimp is four feet tall. When it puts its arms out to the sides, its reach is 1 and 1/2 times as long as it is tall. How wide is the chimp's arm span?"

This is more than just a grade level book. It goes beyond simple word problems introducing children to more complex thinking. There are plenty of repetitions of similar problems, so by the end of the book a child will master and sharpen his or her math skills. My son is 6 and I give him a page a day instead of only one problem a day. He is doing really well. And I'll buy more books from the series because I see how well it stimulates his brain.

I LOVE the Evan Moor Daily Language Review for first grade so I thought that this would help my students in math. More specifically, word problems. Unfortunately, this book was a bit too hard to use. I was taking so much time explaining the questions and answers that I was teaching mini-lessons everyday for more than 20 minutes. One problem asked that if one animal was 1 1/2 feet tall, how tall was two? In my state, we go over simple fractions but don't really touch on how to add fractions until second grade. Other questions had them converting inches into feet. While these are good skills to know, I feel they asked them questions that were too hard to understand, too early.