Now, my kids don’t sit in a traditional classroom, and they have not yet fallen asleep on me in class, aside from the four month old. We do now and then struggle with the boredom of a particular topic, and I am always on the lookout for new approaches and materials.

Math Tutor DVD offers a helpful resource for either parents that struggle with the teaching or students that struggle with the learning of some of the more challenging math concepts.

Product: Math Tutor DVD — Pre-Algebra and the calculator tutor TI83/TI84

Details: The Pre-Algebra offers 5 hours of instruction on important pre-algebra topics including real numbers, absolute value, working with integers, and the order of operations. The Calculator tutor takes you through 8 hours of how-to’s from a basic overview to matrices and interest calculations. These calculators do far more than most people are aware of or know how to use them for.

Price:$26.99 each DVD set

What we loved . . .

• See it before you buy it. On the site you can find recorded testimonials and sample videos so you can get a feel for the teaching style and format of the videos.
• Thorough. These video sets are long, but they pack in the information. He starts basic and grows from there to explain complex topics easily enough for most upper elementary students (and most middle aged non-math minded students) to grasp.
• Not stuck in his topic. Clearly, the teacher, Mr. Gibson, has a vision for teaching beyond just a video series. With a background in engineering and working for NASA he understands the real need to master math. He teaches not just to get through a subject, but for real life learning.
• Broken down into good sized segments. The bite-sized chunks these lessons come in are just right for a daily math lesson or to pull out when you need a little help.

Some considerations . . .

• No-fluff. These videos involve a math teacher and a white board (albeit with many colors of markers). No flashy movies or cartoons, just real life, teach ‘em how it is math instruction. Some kids might view this as boring, since you can make any school subject only so exciting.
• Not a complete course. And not priced or marketed to be. These products can help you with targeted areas in conjunction with your regular math program.
• Long. Eight hours of calculator instruction is a lot of teaching. I never knew all you could use this for, so it isn’t wasted time, but WOW, that’s a lot of time spent on a calculator.

Math Tutor DVDs cover many topics with the same solid teaching. If you are looking for a supplementary help for some tricky areas in math, check out these and other videos that they produce.

For more TOS Crew reviews on this product, check out the TOS Crew blog.

Disclaimer: These DVDs were provided to me free of charge through Math Tutor DVD as part of my participation in The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. I received no additional compensation and the opinions expressed here come from my personal experiences and sincere thoughts.

Do you want to keep your middle or high schooler engaged with math studies through the summer? The Homeschool Buyers Co-op is pleased to offer members a FREE subscription to YourTeacher.com, a leading online math curriculum for middle and high school-level math. This subscription gives you full access to ALL YourTeacher.com courses — Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Geometry — through August 31, 2010.If you were to itemize the elements of an ideal online math program, your list might include some of the following:

• Video tutorials by an experienced math teacher
• An abundance of interactive practice exercises, with step-by-step audio explanations
• Self-tests that your student can take over and over until she develops a sense of mastery.
• Reports, so that you can keep track track of your student’s progress
• Audio, video, text, and Flash animations for students visual or auditory learning styles
• Correlations with standard math texts, so that it can be used in conjunction with your favorite math text
• Built-in SAT and ACT prep for college-bound students.
• Self-paced instruction — of course! — so that students and proceed as quickly or slowly as needed so as to not become frustrated or bored

If any of those elements are on YOUR wish list, then YourTeacher.com may be the right program for you, because all of the above are standard features of YourTeacher.com!

Acclaimed by Homeschoolers

One of the things that drew our interest in YourTeacher.com were the reviews and testimonials by homeschoolers:

• “Lessons are very thorough and offer a number of ways for students to learn and practice the material. Explanations are excellent. This is one of the most truly ‘independent-learning’; math courses available.”
  - Cathy Duffy, Author of “100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum” (Read more.)
• “YourTeacher.com excels in the comprehensiveness and clarity of the lessons, in the ease of use, and in functionality.”
  - Maria Miller, Founder of HomeschoolMath.net (Read more.)
• “”I can personally vouch for this program … awesome!” – Paula H., Co-op Member
• “WE LOVE YOUR PROGRAM” – Shawna, homeschooler
• “… perfect for homeschoolers.” – Lisa, homeschooler
• “… an absolute godsend for us.” – Linda, homeschooler
• “I love it!” – Melanie, homeschooler
• “The best website for math on the Internet.” – Shirley, homeschooler
• “I LOVE your site!!!! So do my children.” – Tamara, homeschooler
• “I love your lessons…” – Cherie, homeschooler

Available FREE, Exclusively Through the Co-op!

This offer definitely goes into our Group Buy “Hall of Fame” — up to 3 months of a leading math curriculum, absolutely FREE — a $69.50 value! But don’t delay! To take full advantage of this special offer, sign up now! Your free subscription to YourTeacher.com will expire at midnight, August 31!

To take full advantage of this special offer, place your order TODAY!

Regards,
Homeschool Buyers Co-op

If you click the following link and join, I’ll get 100 SmartPoints, and you’ll get 100 SmartPoints just for joining. (Click me!)

Tune in tomorrow for a great freebie that you will need to be a member of the co-op to join. Free higher level math for the summer . . . be sure to check it out.

Registration for World Math Day 2010 has opened and this year is going to be bigger and better than ever. Apart from an exciting NEW format, World Math Day 2010 is registered to set a Guinness World Record.

You are invited to share with your friends and family this free and fun event. For the first time parents can also participate in World Math Day.

Register free at www.worldmathday.com

REGISTERED TO SET A GUINNESS WORLD RECORD in 2010

World Math Day is free and lots of FUN!

Join in a celebration of numbers as students from around the globe unite in their quest to set a GUINNESS WORLD RECORD – the largest online math competition in answering mental arithmetic questions. Be a part of this Guinness World Record and global education event involving more than 2.5 million students from over 200 countries.

It’s Free and Fun!

• Brand NEW format.

• World Math Day is the education event for the world!

• Your students will love it! Be part of setting a Guinness World Record

• It will create an amazing buzz around Math

• Designed for all ages and ability levels.

• Simple to register and participate. All you need is internet access.

• Great prizes

• And it’s absolutely free!!

HURRY, registration closes March 2^nd 2010

www.worldmathday.com

Information received from:

Peter Walters

CEO  – 3P Learning USA

37 West 26th Street

Suite 201

New York, NY 10010

Tel +1 866 387 9139

www.mathletics.com

www.worldmathday.com

“Freedom to Learn”

Facts First offers an affordable, entertaining way for your kids to learn, master, improve, and excel at their basic facts. They want your child to have fun developing an instant recall of these facts, and based on our experience with this program over the last month, they definitely succeed at this goal.

Product: Facts First
Details: A web based math program that was created by Skills Tutor, a sister company to Saxon, and is being distributed by Saxon Homeschool.
Price: $49.95 per year, this includes a one year household license for up to four users.

What we loved . . .

• Fun, fun, fun– Although entertainment is obviously not my chief goal during math lessons, my kids definitely ALL enjoyed this program. And, since it focuses on building their mastery and speed in basic facts, I don’t mind a little fun in the process. Or, even a lot of fun.
• Limited game time – While it does reward the hardworking child with games, it limits these to 5 minutes at a time, and even the games often help reinforce their math facts.
  
• Tracking progress — You can easily log on and see how each child is doing. These easy to read charts show which facts they have mastered, and gives you an idea of how close they are to mastering other facts they have been working on.
• Adjustable expectations — I clearly expect my seventh grade to know his facts more quickly than my kindergartner, and Facts First allows for that. You can go into the controls and change the standard for mastery. This alters how fast the program expects an answer, any where from 1/4 of a second to 60 seconds, or even untimed if that works best to motivate your child.
• Audio! — Even my kindergartner can use this program fairly independently. A voice reads everything that she needs to know in order to continue to improve in her basic math facts
• Instruction and drill — The program doesn’t just drill the facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), but it also introduces a new fact before drilling it and then adding it to the list of facts they might see in their quizzes.
• Great graphics — Just take a glance around their site, and you can’t help but enjoying what you see. Colorful, eye-catching, this site is fun to use and fun to explore.

Some considerations . . .

• Limited in scope. This program is just about basic math facts. These are extremely important to master, but don’t expect something else from this program. It drills and redrills, and encourages kids to improve in their basic math facts.
• One license for the house. My daughters didn’t like that my son could also look at their accounts and see their mastery grids. Simple solution, I just made other people’s information off limits, but as far as I am aware, there is no setting to prevent this.
• Still may have too much game time. While I generally felt this offered a good balance of games and instruction, 5 minutes of play for a few minutes of work is still quite a bit. Of course, the games do include further reinforcement.

Facts First has a limited scope, but one critical to your child’s success in math in the years ahead. Especially for multiple children, the cost is reasonable, and since the program is fun and able to be used independently, this is a great way for kids to work on their own and see their mastery grow without groans.

For more TOS Crew reviews on this product, check out the TOS Crew blog.

Disclaimer: This web based membership was provided to me free of charge from Facts First as part of my participation in The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. I received no additional compensation and the opinions expressed here come from my personal experiences and sincere thoughts.

Fortunately, there are many great resources for helping your child through math while reducing their discomfort and maximizing their benefit in the process.

MathScore provides students a place to learn their math, enhance their skills, attack their weak points, and build their mastery of basic math, computation, and applications of these skills.

Product: MathScore.com
Details: A web based program that allows students to work on math skills online. The program awards them with points for building their math skills in both speed and mastery.
Price: $9.95 per month for first child (introductory rate, after two months this goes to $14.95), $5 for second, $3.95 for third. There are other discounts for ordering for multiple months.

What we loved . . .

• Flexibility – You can choose and switch levels as you desire. You can decide which topics to work on. The kids don’t have to be stuck on something frustrating, or stay on a topic that bores them. They can do a little and return later. Or, if they like to do one topic and complete it, that is possible as well.
• Tracking – I would receive a daily email automatically that would summarize the student’s work. This would let me know the topics they worked on, the level of mastery achieved, and how much time the worked (as well as how much time they spent idle in the program). I really like that I knew not just how much time they spent on it, but also how much time they spent engaged with the worksheets.
• They encourage rewards — They don’t have any built in rewards (games, characters, etc.), but they do encourage you to recognize your child’s achievement. When they reach that 100 level saying they have mastered a topic, don’t let their hard work go unnoticed. They do earn “trophies” that are displayed on a page that shows their progress.
• Variety of approaches — Your child can choose to either simply begin the “worksheet,” follow a mini-lesson, or try some sample problems depending on their level of comfort in a given topic.
• Free resources as well — Their website has free math worksheet generators and lessons available to everyone.
• Timed lessons — Some kids might not do well with these, although they start pretty generous, but for my daughter they really helped her stay on track and not let herself get distracted. If she ran out of time, she had to work on that level again.

Some considerations . . .

• Might be difficult to use as a complete math program. They do present that as an option, but I prefer to use it as a supplementary program or as a break from the regular math book.
• The scoring confused me a bit. To master a topic they must reach “100.” There were too many classifications of accomplishment for me to really grasp — rating, points, percents, etc. I wasn’t quite sure why they had so many different ways of presenting the same information. It was like reading a standardized test result.
• If you have a particular goal for your child in math, you might need to spend more time with them. Since they do have a fair amount of free reign once logged in (they could choose grade 1 material if they feel like it), you will need to guide them and make your expectations clear if you want to make the most of their time on the computer.
• No frills. This program does not come with a lot of extras. It gets the job done efficiently, but when my daughter first tried it out she said it was “boring.” Now, when I let her try it for a couple days in place of her regular math text it became “fun.” So, I guess it depends what you compare it to.

MathScore meets a definite need in developing a child’s mastery in mathematics. It makes it easy for the parent to track progress, and provides tools for helping a child learn and excel at a variety of levels. I think it is reasonably priced, especially for families with multiple children. This might be a great tool if you are looking for something to supplement your current math curriculum or to help students retain knowledge during those longer breaks from school.

For more TOS Crew reviews on this product, check out the TOS Crew blog.

Disclaimer: This web based program was provided to me free of charge from MathScore.com as part of my participation in The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. I received no additional compensation and the opinions expressed here come from my personal experiences and sincere thoughts.

While I didn’t know that we really needed another math product floating around the house, I quickly learned that Mathletics was not just another math product.

This became a common site on our computer screens, as my kids raced against kids from around the world in real time. But, the real competition was against their previous scores. The rewards poured in as my kids’ math abilities continued to thrive in this lightly competitive and highly rewarding environment.

In addition to the speed drill type races against other kids they also boosted their math skills. Mathletics offers nine levels of math teaching and practice, from kindergarten through eighth grade. Students learn about various topics and again receive recognition for increasing their math knowledge.

I was surprised to see my kids highly motivated by the characters they chose and getting to “buy” new hairstyles, backgrounds, etc. as they completed more problems correctly.

What we loved . . .

• Friendly competition. While the drills take place against other students, you really compete against your own best times. You receive rewards as you improve your personal score.
• International involvement. My kids loved seeing what countries popped up in the races. New Zealand, UK, Canada, Australia, Puerto Rico, UAE, etc.
• Many levels of material. Topics cover mathematical concepts from kindergarten through eighth grade. It is not just speed drill material. A couple times now, in our “regular” math time, my daughter has said, “Oh yeah, I learned that already on the computer.” It is definitely more than just playing games, but the kids don’t need to know that.
• Lots of recognition of achievement. Students receive points for topics mastered and improved skills, and printable certificates are available as well.
• Easy to change levels. If you feel your child is struggling or having too easy of a time, you can easily change their level to one more appropriate

Things to consider . . .

• Not a complete curriculum. While Mathletics offers a great supplement to math and definitely presents the material in an interesting and engaging format, it does not offer a thorough math teaching for each level. They seem to present it as a curriculum, but I do not feel it is as thorough as most texts we have used.
• A little pricey if you have multiple children. While in general the price is reasonable, it adds up quickly with many school aged children.
• Parents should check in on their student now and then. You will want to take some time now and then to see what they have worked on, how much time they spend on various topics and activities and check up on them. While the student can easily work independently, you will want to stay involved to make sure they make the most of the time online.

Mathletics is another great math resource. It definitely kept my kids’ interest throughout the time that we had the subscription and they were sorry to see it end. It offers entertainment and motivation for a student to learn and practice their math skills even outside of the regular school day.

For more TOS Crew reviews on this product, check out the TOS Crew blog.

Disclaimer: This web membership was provided to me free of charge from Mathletics as part of my participation in The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. I received no additional compensation and the opinions expressed here come from my personal experiences and sincere thoughts.

K’NEX in the Classroom
K’NEX is a dynamic, open-ended spatial building system. We offer exceptional educational value through building and bringing models to life. K’NEX sets work so well in the classroom that we’ve designed an entire contest around them: the K’NEXpert Classroom Challenge.

The K’NEXpert Classroom Challenge…

ALEKS describes itself as follows:

Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces is a Web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system. ALEKS uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and doesn’t know in a course. ALEKS then instructs the student on the topics she is most ready to learn. ALEKS can provide you with the instruction and support that you need to homeschool your children in mathematics for grades 3-12. ALEKS offers highly-targeted, individualized instruction from virtually any computer with Internet access, making it a comprehensive and mobile education solution for your children.

Overall, we really enjoyed our trial with ALEKS, so let me break it down for you.

What we loved (and, some of this I might not have discovered if my 12 year old had not had so much fun poking around to figure out all he could do with it):

- Jump right in! You don’t really need to figure anything out ahead of time, it is ready to use once you start your subscription or trial. Pick the grade level for your child, and let them loose!

- Visible progress. As each topic is mastered the kids fill in wedges of their pie chart. The sense of victory is impossible to miss in those glowing eyes.

- Very little writing! Once again, my 12 year old loved this. He loathes anything involving a pencil, but didn’t mind doing the few problems on scratch paper that he needed to since the vast majority of his work was typed or clicked in.

- You can send little messages to your math students through the ALEKS program, and they can send them to each other. Blake would send his little sisters challenge questions by emailing them screen shots and links to his problems and reward them with Webkinz dollars if they got it right. What a clever kid! He had to show me how to do that one.

- Make your own quizzes. They give you so much flexibility in putting together a quiz for your child, and still without you having to come up with the actual problem. You can pick the length of the quiz, the topics it covers, when they have to take it, how long they have to take it, how much each problem is worth, etc., etc. And, they walk you through all of it, so I could even do it without my 12 year old helping me.

- Weekly email updates. Each week, just in case I forgot to check obsessively throughout the week, they would automatically email me a summary of each student’s progress.

- Online records and progress. You can see everything they do summarized into neat little charts for your knowledge. Attendance records show when and how long they were logged in, how many topics they attempted and mastered, their level of mastery of each topic and much more.

- No grading! That doesn’t need any more explanation.

What we tweaked:

- Because I let the kids work on their own, we had to lay down ground rules initially about when to use the calculator (only when ALEKS lets you use their calculator), how much time to spend on it, and avoiding distractions during logged in time.

- The assessment at the beginning is rather lengthy, and my kids got a little weary of the process. So, I let them complete it in more than one sitting. It was just fine. The next time they logged in, it put them right where they left off.

Challenges:

- This is designed for kids in 3-12 grade, but they wisely recommend younger kids (3-4 grade) have parental assistance in the process. I definitely agree with this. My 8 year old is not a strong reader, and could not always follow the explanations. It would be nice if they had an audio option or some animation to make it easier to follow for young readers. We knew it going in, but it did make it less desirable for her.

- Also, as with most computer programs, some kids learn to work the system. I assume he would eventually have to tackle these tough topics, but I found in watching Blake that when he picked a topic he didn’t like or found too hard, he went back and did something else. If we were to use it long term I think I would need to go through and assign him topics to work through at least some of the time so he didn’t just put them off.

- I would have like more review. Maybe I’m just used to Saxon and similar programs, but I didn’t feel like ALEKS had enough review built in to their program. It will review a couple problems at the start of each session, but I would be interested to see if the retention is there long term using this program.

Would I recommend it?

Definitely, in certain situations. Personally, I would probably not use ALEKS as our regular math program, but I could see using it to keep skills fresh through the summer months or breaks. It would also be helpful if you were taking an extended vacation where you would still have internet and wanted the kids to keep up on their math while gone. Or, in a time of family crisis it would be a great fill in to free up mom/teacher while not compromising academic excellence.

If you have not tried ALEKS before, you can also get a free one month trial and discover all they have to offer for yourself:

If you already know ALEKS is for you feel free to jump into a subscription. It regularly costs $19.95 per student per month, but they have other discounts for families and 6 and 12 month subscriptions.

To learn more of what others have to say about ALEKS, check out the TOS Crew blog.

Now through August 2009, LEGO^® Education is hosting an activity challenge for educators of all grades and subject areas!

The LEGO^® Smart™ Creativity Contest begins with your imagination and ends with great prizes, online recognition, and the chance to share your activity with thousands of students across the nation!

The task is simple.

Create an activity using only the
bricks included in a LEGO Smart Kit

Educators are being challenged to use the kits’ contents to develop a hands-on activity for their students. This can range from a simple build to a more advanced mathematical problem. You’re the creator, so let your imagination lead you!

Check out Lego’s site to request your own kit, submit your idea, and enter for your chance to win!

Thanks to Money Saving Mom for sharing this news.