Open­ing a Miquon math book is like open­ing a rain­bow.  Each page jumps out at you in a dif­fer­ent col­or.  But not in a dis­tract­ing or annoy­ing sort of way.  While each page con­tains col­or, it’s the prob­lems them­selves that are col­or­ful.  There are no images and few intro­duc­tions or direc­tions to detract from the assign­ment itself.  Yet, the col­or inside of a Miquon book wel­comes you into its very pages. 

The Miquon math pro­gram can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to under­stand.  It’s actu­al­ly very sim­ple.  Miquon books are designed to be used in first, sec­ond, and third grade.  There are 6 books in all, 2 per year.  The dif­fi­cul­ty comes with know­ing the order of the books them­selves.  That’s because they aren’t num­bered or let­tered, but are labeled by col­or.  There is the blue book, pur­ple book, orange book, and so on. So how do you know which to do first? or which book to work on after the blue book?  The order in which the books are designed to be used is list­ed on the back cov­er of each book, or you can go view the scope and sequence from Miquon.

Because of its empha­sis on hands on activ­i­ties, Miquon is adver­tised as a math lab pro­gram.  The most impor­tant manip­u­la­tive used in this pro­gram is a cuise­naire rod set.  You can find cuise­naire rods at Ama­zon or any oth­er cur­ricu­lum store.  The activ­i­ties in Miquon include using your rods, or com­plet­ing mini books by cut­ting out and sta­pling sec­tions of the workbook. 

Miquon often uses sym­bols instead of let­ters to rep­re­sent high­er con­cepts.  For exam­ple, in a graph­ing sec­tion, Miquon uses a square to rep­re­sent the X‑axis and a tri­an­gle for the Y‑axis.  It’s sort of a back door method of intro­duc­ing abstract con­cepts to chil­dren.  Some stu­dents’ minds work in such a way that this is exact­ly what they need to not be intim­i­dat­ed by the mate­r­i­al, while oth­ers find it frus­trat­ing to not learn it the “offi­cial” way the first time.  This is one of those, “know your stu­dent”, moments. 

The prac­tice prob­lems in Miquon are suf­fi­cient for grades 1–3 and Miquon does a good job mak­ing the work fun.  It is sim­ple yet effec­tive.  My math­e­mat­i­cal­ly mind­ed brain strug­gles with the appar­ent lack of direc­tion and for­mal instruc­tion in Miquon so I rarely rec­om­mend it as a pri­ma­ry math cur­ricu­lum.  The prac­tice pages and instruc­tions rely on a stu­den­t’s intu­ition.  There is an instruc­tion book for teach­ers avail­able that may clar­i­fy some of the pages.  Because of the for­mat, Miquon tends to be teacher led as the stu­dent often needs more direc­tion than a blank page.  For exam­ple, one of the games is based on the 100s chart and trav­el­ing between num­bers with arrows.  The text does­n’t explain how to use a 100s chart, but relies on the teacher to give the prop­er instruc­tion to the student.

By rely­ing on dis­cov­ery with num­bers and a stu­dents intu­ition to dis­cov­er pat­terns, Miquon does a good job engag­ing the stu­dent in play­ing with num­bers.  If your young stu­dent is strug­gling with math and start­ing to have some anx­i­ety around the sub­ject, then Miquon math is your solu­tion.  I have found myself using Miquon through the years to help stu­dents slow down and under­stand a con­cept with­out becom­ing over­whelmed by the material. 

Miquon math is a sim­ple, fun, and effec­tive way to intro­duce your young ele­men­tary stu­dent to the joys of mathematics.