Singapore Dimensions Math Review
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My friends at work all know I love teaching math--something that is interesting to me because I never liked it as a student. I never felt that I was “good” at it, but now I know that is because it simply didn’t always come “easily” to me. I associated “work I was able to complete with ease” with my own personal idea of “being smart.” I try very hard as an educator to help my students break through these limiting thoughts and develop their growth mindsets. Because of my interest in this process and in teaching math in general, I have come to also love perusing and studying math curricula. Now that I will be doing a bit more “formal” homeschooling work with my own kids, I am excited to implement @singaporemath with my eldest (4.5 yr old). She has demonstrated a lot of interest in math work over the last year so I happily ordered this program to guide me a bit more concretely over the next few weeks/months.
Here is what we love:
Each set comes with a teacher’s guide, a textbook, and a workbook making the set very comprehensive.
The Teacher’s Guide is spiral bound (lays flat, can’t beat that :)), provides chapter overviews, notes, and materials, and then delves into the exploration, learning, playing, and extension parts available to you for each lesson. The exploration and learning parts provide clear directions for direct modeling and practical ideas for manipulative work and visual/kinesthetic tasks relating to the topic. The activity ideas offer opportunities for whole/small group play that can be adapted to smaller families working at home and they are inclusive of art, building, matching, reading, dramatic play, music, sorting, and more.
The textbook is paperback and consumable and provides a solid foundational framework for children to build upon. The students are introduced to five friends that help them to complete tasks and learn new concepts in the textbooks. The textbook lessons are sequenced in such a way to allow for deepened understanding of a concept across a chapter and they provide ample opportunities for children to exercise their problem solving skills as well as their mathematical reasoning and mental math skills.
The workbooks are scaffolded with problems relating to the textbook pages that range in difficulty. The pages may be ripped out for ease of writing (I love this) and they include these really great “direction keys” (I made that term up) at the top right of each page - my daughter has figured out what to do by looking at the visual direction at the top and no longer really needs me to read it to her.
There is also access to a comprehensive and high-quality set of blackline masters for the set that can be accessed online as well as videos and further activities.
I really like this program (Pre-K B) because I believe that it supports many of the underlying principles, skills, and strategies that early learners need to grasp in order to truly deepen their number sense and mathematical thinking. It introduces concepts such as number bonds, bar modeling, and the CPA approach (concrete, pictorial, abstract) that are, in my opinion, invaluable when striving to truly gain independence, confidence, and accuracy when solving problems and when acquiring and implementing mathematical processing skills and mental math fluency. Also, I highly recommend reading through the suggested discussion questions and incorporating the exploration and play aspects even if you think your learner knows how to complete the workbook page independently. Completing the page doesn’t always give the children the necessary opportunity to use accurate and precise language when TALKING about math-something that so many adults struggle with. The suggested activities will help you and your learner to bridge that gap. Overall, I am grateful we have this set in our hands at home now and look forward to using it with my little one!
If you’re looking for more information on teaching math at home, please feel free to reach out to me! I am happy to help.