I call these the 90/10 manuals because once you’ve taught one math year, 90% of the teacher’s manual is unnecessary. However, there’s a 10% that is VITAL to your sanity.
The missing piece in Abeka, for most parents without the manual, is the MEMORY WORK. There is SO MUCH DRILL that you don’t know about. In my opinion, it’s massive overkill, but I was under the impression that there was no memory work in math in the early years. Those worksheets get hard FAST under those conditions.
First, you need to know what is assumed.
I call the first month of Abeka, “You-already-know-this.” They blow through the review so fast! If you don’t already have these skills drilled in, you start out behind and the worksheets take a LOT longer.
- Fact Families 1-5 addition and subtraction
- Counting to 100
- Forwards and backwards counting by 1’s and 10’s.
- Calling out before and after numbers by 1’s
- Writing numbers 1-70
- Recognizing/ordering cardinal and ordinal number words 1-20
- Name or draw squares and circles
- Recognize pennies/dimes and say amount
- Recite days of the week and put word cards in order
- Process words like “sum” and “difference”
Fact Family Pacing Guide
The speed drills are just for speed. Anything on a speed drill should be already reasonably fast on flashcards. Abeka recommends that child to have the previous family of facts mastered by the time a new family is introduced (read: first appears in the box at the top of the worksheet). By “family” they mean the set of facts that all add up to that number (0+4, 1+3, 2+2, 3+1, 4+0) or the set of subtraction facts that are all taken away from that number (3-0, 3-1, 3-2).
More families are introduced, but the mastery expectations end with Family 13.
Other Drill
The actual manual drills way beyond this, but this is the section that Abeka thinks that you have down COLD by day 1 of 2nd grade. It starts in the second “theme” section of the workbook.
- Counting, reading 100 to 200
- Forwards and backwards counting and writing by 2’s and 5’s, evens, odds
- Forwards by 25’s
- Putting consecutive and non-consecutive numbers in order
- Writing the numbers 71-200
- Name or draw rectangle, triangles
- Amount and count of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies
- Name days of the week, put cards in order too
- Name months of the year, put cards in order too
- Setting a clock to the hour and half hour
- Measures (mo/yr, days/wk, min/hr, hrs/day, c/pt/qt/gal, in/ft/yard, dozen, 1/2 dozen)