My son has a lot of difficulty with Math. I am homeschooling him and considering the On Cloud Nine program from Lindamood Bell. Anyone have any experience with this? Can you describe it for me? Will I need the training or is it fairly user friendly?
Thanks,
Debbie
Re: On Cloud Nine
BTW, as for user friendliness, I think OCN is the most user friendly of the LMB programs (though I am not sure how much that is saying). It is easy enough to use without the training. Rereading you post I think it might be useful for your kid but it is not a total math program.
MUS is best for more visually oriented kids, btw. It is user friendly and inexpensive.
—des
Conquering math
I have used the On Cloud Nine program in conjunction with the Saxon Math program. I started with the third grade math book and worked with two different high schoolers 1 hour per day for a year. We went from a 3.2 math score to beginning 7th. You need to wrok at each math fact level until it is mastered ( the jumping skills) and really develop the math language. Saxon math is excellent for this. Use manipulatives for every thing. OCN is conceptual, but is not a standards based math program
Re: On Cloud Nine
What, specifically, are his difficulties?
I agree — On CLoud Nine is a great way to pull in other senses for specific math tasks — but it’s not a math program.
Landmark School has a program worth checking out — http://www.landmarkschool.org/ is their site and it would be under “publications and outreach.”
Math U See is also very good, but not for everybody. The folks I know who have really loved it are the very bright, but very visual thinkers who could take the visual elements and get to the mathematical abstractions. Most folks needed a little (or a lot) more practice with the skills.
Re: On Cloud Nine
I’ve seen recommendations for Singapore Math that sound very good — haven’t seen the program itself but it sounds worth looking into. Note that the grade levels are different, so 1 there is 2 here, etc; if you don’t realize this it could look too demanding.
Re: Conquering math
>thing. OCN is conceptual, but is not a standards based math program[/quote]
Not to pick on you or anything, but I don’t know why that “standards based” term grates on me so much. But you are correct. I really consider it an approach vs a program. You can take the ideas of OCN and pretty much use them in any program that you have.
BTW, I think that MUS requires more computation time, so I would agree with Sue. It wouldn’t exactly be rocket science to add it in there. I think you can speed it up or slow it down however you want. From my understanding (just seen the manipulatives for Stern) it has some of the advantages of Stern without the price tag. Also heard good things about Landmark and Singapore Math. However, I would guess that many of these alternatives do not include all concepts tested in some of the state wide test-o-mania. If you are worried about this, you need to find out what those are, and be sure to teach them.
—des
On Cloud Nine (OCN) is an excellent, well let’s see, viewpoint to thinking about math. Using it will help a child learn visualization of math problems and math concepts, and help you teach that. However, I don’t consider OCN a real math program in the sense of clearly teaching new math concepts and computation in a rational and organized fashion.
I’d suggest you look into Math U See (MUS) or some other excellent math program for homeschooling. MUS is a structured math program (perhaps you need to do more computation than the program states). You might benefit buying the OCN manual and teaching some of the concepts to your kid, particularly if there is a math disability.
—des