Customer Comments

These are some of the letters received from purchasers of the Ray's Arithmetic.

Letters from Customers:

Thank you again for my order. I put the CD in my computer last night and looked over the material with my husband. This is a treasure and I'm glad you are keeping it alive and sharing it. I noticed that the inside cover of my CD Jacket was personalized. You offer an excellent service.
 
Tisha

 Hello Aaron,

I just wanted to take a few minutes and let you know how much we have enjoyed using the Ray’s Arithmetic in our homeschool. We have four students – ages 8, 6 (7 next month), 5, and 3. They all have different learning styles, and they all learn differently than my teaching style. Ray’s has really helped with this because the lessons are so clear and simple that we can easily supplement with any others tools that will help the students.

First, I’d like to tell you why I chose Ray’s. To be honest, I first discovered Ray’s before you started offering the books on CD. I purchased the 8 book series in hard back, as published by Mott Media, and fell in love with it right away. It is sequential. It teaches math tables (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as other important conversions). It includes word problems every step of the way. It is self-reviewing. The concepts covered are wonderful and applicable to daily life. By the time a student finishes the Practical Arithmetic book, he/she would be ready to get a job and understand basic financial concepts (not that I expect my 12 year old to go to work, but they could help with the family business and family finances with ease). The real-world applications of the material in the books were the greatest I had seen. I also loved the Ruth Beechick Teacher/Parent Guide. Although not a step-by-step teacher’s manual, it had many tips, tricks, and tools to help teachers and parents use the books effectively, as well as a grade-by-grade lesson planning guide, sample tests, and games.

Now, if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to share what I didn’t like about the hard-bound set I had at the time. The main concern was that it ended with the Higher Arithmetic book. Although my oldest was only in Kindergarten at the time, I was already concerned with what curriculum we might use for high school. Second, although the lessons are simple and easy to use, I sometimes felt that things were missing. The Beechick guide helped with this, but my oldest is a worksheet/workbook fanatic.

When I heard of the Ray’s Arithmetic website, I was skeptical at first. I already had the books? Why would I want them on CD? When I finally checked out the website, I was so pleased to discover that the books covered on the CDs went all the way through Calculus! There went that problem. The CDs also solved the problem of my worksheet-loving daughter. I could print the pages for the lesson, and she could write the answers right onto the page. The price was unbeatable. I could get at least 6 additional books for $30 less than what I paid for the hardbound books. Not to mention the fact that an additional $59 was still considerably less than I would pay for one year of high school math. The Manual of Methods book was a wonderful aid in my teaching style. While it was not as comprehensive and clear as the Beechick guide, it did help me look at teaching math in a new way. See, I am a math addict. I love math, algebra, calculus, and trigonometry. I love finding math problems in everyday life and working them. But I’m not always good at finding ways to teach the basics.

So, how do we use the books? My oldest is now in 3rd grade and using the Intellectual book. I make a pre-test from the Test Example book and using Beechick’s book as a guide. Then, we cover the unit and focus on concepts she had problems with in the pre-test. I use the hardbound book as my copy, and I print the pages from the CD for her worksheets. Occasionally I will make additional worksheets, or find them on the Internet, to give additional practice. Once we’ve covered the unit or lesson for a few days, I give a post-test. If she still has problems, we’ll cover the material again. This has been very effective in helping her understand her problem areas, and it satisfies her need for the worksheets.

My son is in 2nd grade and has a very different learning style. He is a hands-on learner and doesn’t like writing things down. He is in the 2nd half of the Primary Arithmetic book. I do the same things for him that I do for my oldest, but we also work the problems manually – something my oldest never enjoyed. We do a worksheet style pre-test, study the concepts he doesn’t understand, then do a post-test. He likes doing the word problems and, like me, he finds real-world problems daily and talks through them. My older two are already teaching my younger two the addition tables. They talk about it non-stop.

My 5-year old is technically in kindergarten but doing first grade work. She is just starting the Primary book, but she already has an understanding that her older siblings didn’t have. While the first portion of the Primary book is oral lessons, it gives us targets for things she needs to understand before moving on. The counting lessons are a great guide for helping her understand numbers. She is another worksheet/workbook fiend, so I make a lot of counting worksheets for her to help her practice writing the numbers and counting. We will probably be working on this through most of this year, but she will be more than ready for addition once we start.

My youngest is 3 and not quite ready for formal math, but again, we use the Ray’s as a guide for her. We focus a lot on shapes and time and calendars, but we’ve also been slowly working through the first few counting lessons and writing numbers. She already counts to 20 (mostly) and copies numbers non-stop. She recognizes them when she sees them and loves counting people, fingers, forks, plates, beans, clothes, groceries… I think you get the idea.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that because the books are logically organized, the concepts are built one upon another. This makes it very easy for students to transition to different thought processes as they mature. I have never seen another math curriculum like this. Many other programs out there, while certainly effective, are not logical in this manner. Of course, they are also considerably more expensive. My students have found it very easy to apply these logical thought processes to other things such as Sudoku puzzles (we do them about once a week), jigsaw puzzles, real-world problems, carpentry project, sewing projects, grocery shopping, etc. They are currently working on building a rocket (which they plan to ride in to the Moon – I know…it will take them a long time and they never finish it, but they are applying their logic processes to the problems they encounter in this project). The value in the Ray’s Arithmetic books is so much more than just math. It is certainly the most “bang for the buck.”

We fully plan to use the Ray’s Arithmetic series throughout our homeschool years. Once I saw the Ray’s books, I knew it was the program for us. Thank you for helping to make such a wonderful resource available to homeschooling families. While the hard-bound books are not that expensive, having them available on CD has been an even better investment. Of all the things I have purchased for our homeschool, the Ray’s CDs are my 2nd favorite thing (our unit study curriculum is my first – sorry). By the way, I am constantly trying to convert other homeschoolers to the Ray’s math books. So, I just might be sending more customers your way.
Sincerely,

Mandi

 Ray's is great if you can get used to thinking about teaching and learning math differently than most of us had it in our own education. Read the Ray's teacher's manual a few times over. This was also written by Ruth Beechick. She gives the big picture rather than all the details, but I think the reason is we are so used to having each day's work told to us of what we are to do. Ray's, rather, presented the content of the next topic to be learned, each topic and content to its own lesson, and Ray's left it to the teacher to teach the content and drill the content and test the content in the way that fit her own style and personality.

The idea was that each lesson, each topic, the content of each topic, didn't have a time period associated with it. When we think of modern math textbooks, we equate one lesson with one day. But with Ray's, the content of each lesson was to be worked on however long it took for the child to master the content, whether one day or one month, it didn't matter. You stayed there until the child knew that topic and was ready to go on to the next.

The advantages to the Ray's approach are many: there is no such thing as failures in math with Ray's, because a child works on the lesson until he has mastered it. Contrast this to the modern way of doing one lesson each day. If a child doesn't get something in the lesson the first day it is presented to him, he might get half his problems wrong for that lesson. Of course, you go back and work with him on it, but he has the stigma in his mind of, "I got only a 50% on my math today, that's not good." He develops the idea that he isn't good at math.

Also, Ray's can be used with bright children or slower children, it matters not. A bright child might master the the content of the lesson in a day or two. He is then free to go on to the next. He isn't held back. The slower child might master the content in two weeks. He is then free to go on to the next. He isn't made to feel as if he isn't "caught up" to where he is supposed to be, because Ray's is set up as a series of content to be mastered, not as 3rd grade math, 4th grade math, etc. The bright child who "gets it" isn't forced to do two weeks of lessons teaching the same content as in modern math, and so avoids boredom, and the slower child isn't rushed through two weeks of lessons teaching the same content if he really needs to spend four weeks on it, and so he avoids labeling himself in his own mind as no good at math.

Because Ray's is ungraded, the lessons are not keyed to 1st grade, 2nd grade and so on, anyone can begin where they are and not feel as if they are doing "baby" work.

As for games and measurements: I also recommend The Three R's by Ruth Beechick. Another good resource for games and unconventional ways to teach the measurement concepts as well as other arithmetic concepts is Family Math and Family Math for Young Children. Most public libraries have these, and you can check them out and see if it would be something you want to purchase or not. Something nice about Family Math: the games are written so that adults as well as young children, and all the ages in between, can play the same game together, each at their own level. So you can have family game night and play math games instead of scrabble or something once in a while and the whole family can have fun with it.

Christine