We have a curriculum that we use, and we love, but I really prefer to use living books when I can, and I like to weave different academic areas, be it math, reading, history, what have you, into our day whenever possible. So when we were at the library the other day we checked out some of the "Sir Cumference" books. From what I can tell, there are so far at least six books in this series. They are so much fun! We read two of them this morning, and my kiddos learned about area, circumference, radius, diameter, and perimeter. It is extremely well done with a narrative style. The story centers around a knight, Sir Cumference. As the books go on, you're introduced to his wife, his son, and all sorts of people with different "mathy" type names. And it's done in a really fun way, without it seeming like a math lesson.
The story seemed to be the main thing for my kids. After we read the first, they were immediately ready for another, and these are fairly long stories! At one point, when they were describing how area worked, I believe, C looked up at me and asked if that was for real. I answered that indeed it was, and that these were all real math things. We talked about how it worked. And C, who's absolute favorite subject is math, said that she didn't know it was a math book since it was so fun! I thought that was funny since math is usually fun for her anyway!
What I think is great is that children can read or listen to these stories over and over, and they'll want to because they are fun, and they do have a great story to them. Then, by the time the need or want to know the actual concepts, they'll already have this background. I definitely plan to actually purchase this entire series in the very near future.
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