All About Math Level 2 Review
Heads up:
I received Level 2 of All About Math for free in exchange for an honest review. (However, I purchased AAM level 1 and all of their reading programs with my own money).
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I have used all 5 levels of All About Reading from this company (and reviewed it extensively) but since All About Math (AAM) is brand new, I don’t have experience teaching it yet. My kids have been using Math with Confidence the past few years, and it pairs very nicely with the All About Reading approach. Nevertheless, I am thrilled that All About Learning Press has created a math program based on their effective hands-on, multi-sensory learning philosophy. Here’s my breakdown of the program as a former teacher and fifth-year homeschool mom.
All About Learning Press creates reading, spelling, and now math curriculum for elementary grades, with a focus on short, hands-on, game-based lessons. Their learning programs are based on the Orton-Gillingham philosophy, which has been used effectively for years to help students with dyslexia.
Approach
All About Math (AAM) Level 2 is intended for first to second graders. Level 1 is suggested for Kindergarten to First Grade, and then starting in Level 3 (which they have not yet published at time of writing) the level generally corresponds to the appropriate grade.
Placement Tests
Level 1 Readiness Assessment
You can find the Level 1 pre-assessment on the All About Math Level 1 product page. Look for Placement Test 1. This includes 1 PDF page with a list of questions for the parent to read through and answer in order to decide on the readiness of their child.
Check out my review of All About Math Level 1 here.
Level 2 Readiness Assessment
The Level 2 Placement Test is available if you scroll down this page. If you are need it, they also have a Level 3 Placement Test which will help if your child is too advanced for level 2. And, they have a Level 1 placement test if you want to start with the first pre-assessment.
The Level 2 Assessment is, in my opinion, appropriate for a child entering second grade. Unless your child has already done kindergarten and first grade math, I’d recommend starting with the level 1 pre-assessment.
The Level 2 assessment is a 9-page PDF with teacher instructions and student activity pages to fill in.
What's Included
AAM Level 2 includes both teacher and student materials. The current cost for this is $119.95. (Some additional materials are needed to do the program - see below under “What Else Do You Need?”)
Teacher’s Manual
Student Packet
Student Activity book (full color; perforated to easily remove pages from the book)
Flash’s Math Tools - reusable cards - some in black and white and others in color. These are lightly laminated for durability.
Progress Chart
Themed Stickers (used on the Progress Chart)
SATISFACTION GUARANTEE. Their website states, “Try this program risk-free—if it’s not the right fit, return within 12 months for a refund. No questions asked.” I’ve never had to put this to the test. However, I received a package from them one time that was damaged by the delivery service putting it in the rain (so, not their fault) and they replaced it promptly. I was super impressed by how they stood by their product!
Teacher’s Manual
Teacher’s Manual with Flash sticker added
I’ll delve into this more in the Lesson Structure section below. In the meantime, here are a few notes about how the teacher’s manual is set up. It is a paperback book with 530+ pages.
If you prefer your teacher manuals spiral-bound (like I do), you might want to take it to a FedEx or similar store to have them rebind it for you. I’ve done this with my All About Reading books and my Math with Confidence teacher’s guides. Be sure to also have them add a plastic cover (and back) to it for durability! But make sure you check your book before you leave with it. I’ve had UPS mess mine up and I had to repurchase the book. Best option to confirm the quality - purchase your own spiral binding machine like I ended up doing. (It is well worth the investment with how many books I’ve spiral-bound.)
Section 1
The beginning of the teacher’s manual includes 30 pages of information specifically for the teacher/parent! Don’t be overwhelmed!! They are broken into sections such as: “Is your student ready for AAM2?” and “How much time should I spend on math?” This section will answer many of your questions and provide a great overview of the program before you start. Alternately, you can watch the videos here.
Section 2
The second part of the teacher’s manual includes 58 “scripted” lessons, meaning you can just read the instructions from the page including what you’re supposed to say to the student. You can essentially open the book and start teaching, unless you want to cut out the activity pieces ahead to save time. If you are interested in prepping it so you can save it for future kids, check out how I did this for their reading program. You can apply the same process to the math curriculum.
Most of the lessons are around 8-10 pages with detailed instructions. BUT- the lessons are supposed to stretch over several days. Your kid will mark their progress on the progress tracker as you complete each lesson.
Student Packet
Student Activity Book
Sample Student Activity Page
I really appreciate the quality of the activity book. It has full-color, standard-weight paper. I can see through from one side to the other when the page is on the table somewhat - I’d guess 28 lb. paper. Pages are single-sided unless they are game/card pieces where they want you to have an image, etc. on one side and a math problem on the other. This prevents pages from two different lessons from being printed back to back.
This also makes it easy to prep the entire curriculum in a binder (like I do the AAR binder here) and keep each lesson in a separate secure-top sheet protector.
Flash’s Math Tools
Sample of Flash’s Math Tools
“Flash’s Math Tools" are 8.5x11-inch pages printed on coated cardstock (not laminated but still pretty durable). The quality was very nice - much nicer than I had expected, and a much nicer quality than the All About Reading flashcards, just for reference.
Additionally, the cards included in the math tools are perforated for easy separation. These tools are similar to the Level 1 “Brinda’s Math Tools” with some overlap. But they are specific to this curriculum level.
What Else Do You Need?
All About Math Manipulatives Kit
This is a one time purchase that you will use for EACH OF THE ALL ABOUT MATH LEVELS. You may have these supplies already on hand. But you will need these manipulatives whether you purchase the kit or buy them piecemeal. If you have previously purchased some of these supplies for other math programs, you may wish to just fill in the gaps rather than purchase the whole kit.
I have listed the items below with links to Amazon for you to see what each is referring to. But, note that many of the linked product sets are larger than what is included in the math kit. You may have some of these supplies already, or you may find that purchasing the set is easier or cheaper than tracking them down individually.
The All About Math Kit Includes:
Base-10 Blocks, 1 thousands cube, 10 hundreds flats, 50 tens rods, and 100 units cubes
Storage Bin with locking lid - I’m not providing a link to this because I don’t know what size bin they include.
Note: The highlighted items above are not used in Level 2 but are included in the kit for future levels. If you purchase the manipulatives individually, you can hold off on those for now.
Suggested Scheduling
Since All About Math is not broken into “regular” chapters or school weeks, how do you plan it out for the year?
If the idea that your kid won’t check off 1 lesson per day overwhelms you, I get it!
Here is how I think through this as a “former” teacher. When I approach planning a curriculum (esp. one I haven’t used before), this is what I do…
Find how many lessons are included in the book.
Determine the number of days (or weeks) you have to complete the course.
Divide the time out to get your average number of lessons you need to complete per day or week to finish the course in your allotted time.
Check the structure of the material to make sure you don’t have strange breaks (like stopping for a long break in the middle of a section - unless you design it that way).
Check every few weeks to see how you are tracking, and adjust as needed.
AAM-2 has 58 lessons. 36 weeks is equivalent to 180 days of school, which is a common number for the US. So, here I’ll divide 180 days by 58 lessons to get 3.10. This is how many days I can plan to spend on each lesson. Or, I could do it by weeks, but it’s easier for my brain to think of spending 3 days per lesson to “stay on track” So I would use my calendar in my lesson planner and jot down the approximate lessons we would complete each week. Then, as we move through the year I can see if we need to speed up or slow down or whether we are on track to finish the curriculum “on time.”
Granted, when you homeschool, you get to decide what is “on time.” But I know many homeschool parents are like me and want a plan to gauge progress. The good thing is, if you finish “early” you can go ahead and start the next level even if your child isn’t in the next grade yet. OR if your kid is struggling and you need to take it slow THEN DO THAT.
You are creating a bespoke education for your own child. Tailor it to his or her needs because you can. You are not trying to keep your child on track with 20 other kids in one classroom so you can send them on to the next grade in a batch. Your kid can be in 1st grade reading, 3rd grade math, and 2nd grade for everything else!
Lesson Structure
The following section introduces the information found in the teacher’s manual. I have color-coded the boxes to match the color in the book to make it easy to reference.
Teacher Info (in a yellow box)
As with their other programs, a yellow box follows each lesson’s title. This section is intended just for the teacher. If you have not taught this level of math before (or even if you have!) it is very helpful in explaining what is going to be covered - and often why it is presented this way. It also includes the supplies needed for the lesson.
Each yellow box includes:
Objective
You Will Need
Before You Begin
(Occasionally it will include other items like “Math Vocabulary” or “Don’t Forget”)
The Objective is always followed by the words “your student will learn…” All objectives for Level 1 are included in the Scope and Sequence at the back of the teacher’s manual (Appendix A). (Other levels should include this same format.)
Next they have listed what You Will Need for the lesson. The items listed in this section will include the pages from the Student Activities book as well as manipulatives required from the Math Manipulatives box. Any additional household items required for the lesson are also included here.
Finally the teacher is given some information for Before You Begin. This part previews what is covered in the lesson and, more importantly, why. Here they share tips for knowing whether your child is “getting it.” This section also shows how the current lesson fits with what has been learned previously and how it flows into the following lessons.
Occasionally the yellow box will include other sections like Math Vocabulary or a Tip (often in a blue box). But these are few and far between.
Review
Each lesson starts with a Review. For the first four lessons an activity is included in this part. Then, beginning with Lesson 5 the book refers you to the student’s Daily Review Tracker. You will use this tracker to mark the date that the student begins a concept as well as the date it is mastered. (So…if you are using level 2 with more than one kid, you will need to make a copy of this tracker for each of your kids.)
New Teaching
The meat of the lesson is found in the New Teaching section, which includes both hands-on learning as well as written activities.
Within New Teaching you’ll find visual representations to show what you should do with the manipulatives as well as Tips (in blue boxes). As each Activity Sheet is referred to, a picture is included along with the page number.
Each lesson ends with a Math Reflection section where the child is encouraged to ask questions and clarify their learning. Then, the teacher can assess and address any misconceptions.
Extended Practice is included for each lesson to provide any needed practice or reinforcement. This is optional. Seriously, don’t pressure yourself to do this unless your child needs or wants to do it. You could also complete these Extended Practice activities on a separate day if you wanted to spread out a lesson and use this for review.
The Daily Review Tracker should be marked after each lesson with the date that the objective was introduced.
A Progress Chart is referenced after the extended practice for each lesson. - use it at the end of each lesson to record your child’s progress. This is essentially a sticker chart that the kid will get to update after they complete each lesson.
Like level 1, these lessons are NOT intended to be completed in one day. Some will take longer. They also have not broken the book into units, chapters, or weeks.
The student activity pages look similar to the way AAR is set up with cards that need to be cut up. You could definitely do it ahead of time if you like to work that way, or you could just cut them out as you start the lesson. I prefer the former approach generally, but in the lesson that I did with my five-year old I let her cut out some of the pieces and she enjoyed doing it.
One difference between Level 2 and Level 1 is that I found more pages that you would want to copy for each kid to write on (or use a plastic sleeve and a dry-erase marker).
I found the games in this very similar to AAR games where the kid flips a card over, tells what it is and then “feeds it to the mouse” etc.
Suggestion - mark up the teacher’s guide by highlighting things you want to say or emphasize. I wish that they had the teacher’s words in bold because I found them a little hard to spot quickly. They were also a little wordy for my preference. But you can easily summarize them as you read them over. After you’ve looked over a lesson or two you shouldn’t need to spend much (if any) time prepping future lessons - other than making sure you have the supplies. It really is open-and-go.
Flash’s Math Fun
After the New Teaching section in each lesson there is a purple-ish box like this that has games or activities to do - and to reuse. The pages for these activities are usually found in the student activity book.
Who is Flash?
Flash is the Fox who accompanies the kid throughout the book (well, in the teacher’s manual) and gives encouragement as they go. He (or she?) is a cute addition to the manual that you can read with your child.
In between his random appearances in the teacher’s manual, your kid can enjoy the games and other activities that are included in Flash’s Math Fun.
The pages in Flash’s Math Tools are perforated to make prepping easy.
Using with Multiple Kids
Thankfully, the front of the activity book gives permission for copying within your household. SO - you could easily make copies of any sheets that you specifically wanted your kid to write on with a pen or pencil and then repeat with other children. One such page I would definitely copy would be the “Show What You Know” lessons. The exception to this would be if you are working with two or more kids simultaneously in the same lesson. You would probably want to purchase a separate activity book for each child to have the activity in front of them as you taught the lesson.
It looks like it follows the same format as the All About Reading curriculum with lots of hands-on games but it also includes written practice. The spaces seem to be big enough that you could write on them with a dry-erase (or wet-erase) marker if you put it in a sheet protector. My kids always love using something that’s not a pencil.
Videos for the Parent
All About Learning has also created a video about Preparing to Teach All About Math Level 2. They give you a preview of the various parts of the curriculum as well as suggestions for teaching it.
Continue Reading
I will add more articles here as I continue doing more reviews on this curriculum.
