Math Mammoth Blue Series Curriculum Review

Math Mammoth is a company that offers complete math curriculum. Offered as downloads or printed books (your choice). Math Mammoth also offers supplemental material as well and that is what we will be talking about today, the “BLUE SERIES”.

I hadn’t seen alot of reviews on the blue series at Math Mammoth. When when you visit their website honestly its a little confusing. They have a lot of different series and its a bit hard to get it straight. But when my daughter needed a little extra help with place value I decide to sit down and figure out what we needed.

The Blue Series of this math curriculum is separated into math subjects not grade levels. It is possible to use this series as your main curriculum as it has everything you need but you would have to decide what your child will work on when. As opposed to the “LIGHT BLUE SERIES” that is arranged into grade levels instead of subjects.

The light blue series touches on the usual subjects a particular grade would cover, all in one book. If using the blue series you would have to do that yourself through multiple books. Ok, I hope that all made sense. Now what we thought of it.

Our Experience

We got the book on place value like I said earlier, for my first grader. The book starts with an introduction statement with some good tips and encouraged using manipulatives and where you can get them. We already have a good amount of manipulatives thankfully but anything can be used. What works best for my daughter is the base ten blocks but we also have an abacus 🧮 and 100 number chart she uses sometimes. 

From the very first page I was impressed. Right off the bat giving the child an activity they have to perform with their hands (on the worksheet) to show the child how numbers are separated into tens and ones and how that forms our numbers. The book goes in a gradual progression. Starting with very basic activities to more involved activities.

I did notice that it uses all numbers under 100 right away. The number 85 is used just as quickly as the number 25 because if you understand place value it should not make a big difference and I like that. It also acknowledges the teen numbers and how they are a different and more difficult to learn and stops and has extra activities for those. 

Although this book is on one subject (place value) it presents it in many different ways and activities. This is important for alot of students who struggle. Sometimes their minds get fixated on one way or one type of picture but they have to practice and see that math is used everywhere, in all scenarios. In just a quick flip through I saw tally marks, bar graphs, number charts, base ten blocks to name a few.

I don’t know if my daughter will necessarily finish this book right away. We will use it until she gets a good enough grasp on place value to use our main curriculum without struggling. I will probably use the remainder of the book as a weekly review to keep the concepts in her head.

Price

The pricing is very reasonable in this series. You can choose to download each book which is ranges from $2-$9 or to use as a PDF. You can also buy the printed books which costs a little more plus shipping. I ended up paying about $14.50 for one printed book with shipping. 

The great thing about the pricing though, is if you get a “bundle” they give you a discount. They are pre selected bundles by grade. Or you can get the biggest discount by getting the entire blue series.

Pros

Open and go

Diverse activities 

Focus on problem areas

Reasonable pricing 

Encourages manipulatives but isn’t mandatory

Cons

I honestly couldn’t think of any cons. The blue series fills a very specific need and if thats what your looking for it completely fulfills that need. You could maybe say a con is that its worksheet heavy but it gives plenty of suggestions for hands on activities and you could even do the worksheets verbally with your own manipulatives.

In Conclusion…

I 100% suggest the Math Mammoth blue series curriculum if your child needs extra practice on a particular math subject.  You can use one of these books not only with their grade level based series (light blue series) but you can use them along with any curriculum! Even if your child is in public school and needs extra practice on something. Or for summer review work! 

I hope this review was helpful. You can see what other math curriculum my first grader used in this year end curriculum review here. Thank you for stopping by. Let me know below if you have used the blue series and how you liked it or if you plan on using it. 

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