Mott Media has republished the version of Ray's Arithmetic from the late 1870's and early 1880's!
The Ray's Arithmetic books teach arithmetic in an orderly fashion, starting from rules and principles, building knowledge piece by piece, leading pupils from simple to complex. From the very first pages, Ray's Arithmetics incorporate what has become the scourge of today's math students—story problems. Students must read simple sentences which pose real life problems, decide whether to add, subtract, multiply or divide, and finally arrive at the answer—sometimes mentally—sometimes in writing.
Ray's Arithmetics students learn arithmetic, increase their reading comprehension skills, and learn to think rather than plod through page after page of addition or subtraction problems with a one-line direction at the top of each page. A student raised on Ray's will not even know he should be fearful of "story problems" because from day one every problem is posed in a sentence format.
Most early work is to be done with real objects such as fruit, counting blocks, or marbles. Later it is to be done in the head with mental images of the objects. When children are ready to think symbolically, they gradually drop their use of objects and images and learn to compute quickly with digits. Thus the child is carefully led through three growth states in arithmetic: 1) the manipulative stage, 2) the mental image stage, 3) the abstract stage.
Over 120 million copies were sold in American education's golden age. Many millions of children used these Arithmetics in the generations that produced Edison, Bell, and Ford. Now it's your turn.
Includes:
As of early 2014, Mott Media is transitioning all of their books to paperback versions. We can no longer order new complete hardcover sets.
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