Lifepac Mathematics

A complete, Christian math curriculum that emphasizes skill mastery. Each Complete Boxed Set contains ten LIFEPACs and a teacher guide. The only exception is the Grade K Boxed Set, which contains two student books and a teacher guide. LIFEPACs only (no teacher guide) are also available for use with multiple students. Review and self-tests are built into the curriculum. LIFEPACs are thin, consumable student work texts. They are colorful in the elementary grades, but become less colorful as the grade level increases. Each set of ten LIFEPACs provides a year-long curriculum.

The spiral-bound teacher's guide contains a curriculum overview, teacher's notes, answer keys, and suggested guidelines (for scheduling, grading, study methods, etc). Daily lesson plans are not included. Teacher guides for grades K-1 provide more detailed teaching instruction than guides for grades 2-12. Why? Because the LIFEPAC curriculum facilitates the independent study approach. Starting in second grade, written instruction is included in each LIFEPAC so that the lessons are largely self-instructional. The teacher's responsibilities include introducing each LIFEPAC, setting a schedule, completing teacher checks, being available for student questions, administering and grading tests, and developing additional learning activities.

You might be wondering, "What's the difference between this curriculum and Horizons Math?" After all, both programs come from the same publisher and follow a similar scope and sequence up to the sixth grade. The main difference, in my opinion, is that Horizons is not self-instructional (written instruction is not included in workbooks). Another difference is that LIFEPACs offer standard practice problems whereas Horizons offers a greater variety of problems (mazes, decoding, etc) as well as standard drills, but LIFEPACs provide many more problems per workbook page. ~ Anh