This math is very gentle. We tried several math programs and my daughter wasn't understanding math and was very frustrated with other programs. With this one she asks to start our home school day with her piggy math. We enjoy the stories and simple short lessons. My daughter is understanding math and enjoying it! My daughter is flying through this book!

level 1 is for kinder level. my son (5yo) is very good at math and has finished this book in 4 months...i need something more challenging for him...

that being said, my daughter (4) is not so good in the math area and needs the slower pace, constant review of concepts and storyline so this book would be perfect for her.

so i would not rank this as a bad purchase, it really depends on the learner that you have. what works for one child will not work for another.

i will be switich my son to a different program, only because he is a grade 2 level math and this program plods along too much for him.. but, i will be buying this book again for my 4 year old next year as she does not grasp math concepts as quick. its a good book for little ones to really try and build and grasp math foundations.

one other thing i would consider is maybe using this book as a summer time book. i keep doing learning throughout the summer and this would be great as its pretty laid back and a great break from the more intesnse year. With a lot of other curriculum i do go back to previous lessons if a concept isnt understood well enough, i do not have to do this with these books, it works slow and repeditive enough that there are no repeat lessons necessary. which is great!

This seems to be a great math program so far for my 1st grade son! He loves the farm theme!

I should have done more research before buying, but this curriculum was not challenging enough. I felt like the amount of material learned by the end of the book was insufficient for this grade level (and I'm a pretty laid back Charlotte Mason-y type :)). I was bummed I bought these books and then had to buy another set of books that fit us better.

I expected the exercises to tie into the story but didn't see that happen all the time. There is not much interactive, engaging illustrations...which is important for my son. This might be a good fit for someone that loves storytelling but not for us as we do enough of that for our reading/phonics curriculum. We'll stick with Horizons, Mathematical Reasoning and maybe The Good/The Beautiful new math program.