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Science Weekly – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:00:48 +0000

The folks at Science Weekly sent a bundle of their leaflets to different TOS Crew members to review. We received the “fractions” topic edition to evaluate. We received a copy of each of the six levels (grade level editions) as well as the teacher’s edition/answer key of the leaflet. Each edition is a color paper 11″ X 17″, folded into four pages. The levels start at “Level Pre-A” (equivalent to Kindergarten) and go through “Level E” (equivalent to grades 5/6). You can preview a sample edition at each level on the topic of coral reefs here. The higher the grade level, the more involved the leaflet is.

Topics in Science Weekly for this past school year were:

I was glad that we had the opportunity to look at all the levels of the leaflets. I felt like the value of a subscription was much higher at the higher grade levels where there was a significant increase in content, despite the consistent page length. The upper levels had great experiments, vocabulary and relevant information in the issue. The lower levels were colorful and engaging, but the pricing seemed steep for what appeared to be a few Kindergarten worksheets. Science Weekly has done a great job in creating age appropriate content, but having the pricing be the same across all levels seems odd for what you get.

Science Weekly is available for $19.95 per year for 15 issues for an individual student. Classroom orders can be placed for $4.95 per student with a minimum of 20 students. The individual subscription includes one level of the leaflet as well as a teacher’s edition. You have to select the specific level that you want to subscribe to. A classroom order can include multiple levels, plus one teacher edition per 25 student editions.

Science Weekly also has a new section of leveled interactive activities that we really enjoyed. These electronic versions are similar to the leaflet that I received, but they can be used online or downloaded (see page 8 after you choose a topic) for later use. The teacher’s edition can also be downloaded on page 8 of each topic.

Overall I felt that the Science Weekly materials were well thought out and interesting for both children and teachers. We didn’t do a lot of formal science this year and I’d like having leaflets like these to base some of our schooling on, though I’d probably order a grade level up for Tornado Boy. He really enjoyed the combination of math and science that several of the issues seemed to have.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of Science Weekly, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

KinderBach – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 08:00:25 +0000

KinderBach is a music program geared to the preschool to early elementary (ages 2-7) crowd. You’ll need a piano or electronic keyboard in order to use the course, which is available either online or as a CD-based program. I can’t say enough good things about KinderBach. While I thought it skewed a little young, Tornado Boy absolutely loved it and asked to do a lesson most days. There are plenty to do – the online program has 240 videos.

KinderBach uses engaging characters (shown above) and kid friendly lessons to teach beginning music theory. The child meets new friends along the way, starting with a little boy named Frisco and a donkey named Dodi. They teach him things like sounds, rhythm, high/low, loud/soft and where the notes are on the piano. The characters are also featured on printable materials that go along with the program.

Besides the keyboard or piano (which should be close to the computer or TV – depending on the program type), you’ll need other instruments to keep the beat like a cup and drumstick, plus paper, crayons, etc. Each lesson has printable companion pieces like coloring pages and activity pages that reinforce the lessons. I really like that the printable that correlates with the lesson can be printed from the same screen while the child is watching the lesson. One of the really nice things for us is that the lessons are short and active. They are a great fit for Tornado Boy. I’ve wanted to get him into music lessons, but I was very concerned about his limited attention span. We’ve actually been able to do several lessons in a day because they are so short. I love that he wants to do more.

To purchase the lessons that KinderBach has, you can first do a free trial, and then choose from online lessons from $19.99 per month ($7.95 monthly if paid in advance for a year) or DVD packages, starting at $40.95. You may also want to consider becoming a KinderBach Friend on Facebook as they run specials there from time to time. We liked KinderBach so much that we went ahead and ordered a years worth of lessons – the program was just that good. I feel that it will give Tornado Boy a great foundation if he decides that he’d like to take piano lessons or learn to play another instrument in the future.

Also available for purchase are e-coloring books and music CDs that complement the curriculum.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of KinderBach, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

GoGo Kabongo – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:00:10 +0000

Kabongo is an online gaming world that allows your child to practice pre- and early reading skills. Skills are developed by playing in the three different Kabongo habitats (Laughter Lake, Twister Top and Galaxy Gardens). Each habitat contains three different learning games. Each game has six different levels of play. Kabongo uses the games to help foster cognitive development skills that help with reading. Integrated into the games is a rewards system containing virtual items like stickers, decorations and trophies for the Kabongo environment.

For each week that your child spends time in Kabongo, the parent will receive a progress report update via email. The email shows which areas of the site have been used, the level that the child has attained in each area and what skills they’re working on developing. Tornado Boy’s favorite game is called Crazy Maze. According to the progress email, its focus is on Spatial Awareness: Being able to visually determine the placement of objects in space helps readers begin to identify sight words and particular letter groups as representing certain sounds. Progress information is also available within the game’s parent dashboard area. It gives level and skill information for each habitat. Here’s a snapshot on the in-game progress report:

Kabongo is recommended for kids ages 4-7. Since Tornado Boy’s reading skills developed so early, the games are somewhat easy for him. I do like the ones that challenge him to pay attention to details like “Design-a-door” in the Twister Top habitat. The group that created Kabongo has also created another gaming environment (currently in beta) for older children called Skatekids. I’d be curious if he enjoys it as well as he does Kabongo. I rather like that he can use Kabongo so independently. It’s nice for me to be able to get a short break once in a while.

Free trials of Go Go Kabongo – Laughter Lake are available, and the standard price for an additional individual habitat is a one-time fee of $4.95. The Kabongo website also has activity suggestions and printables like coloring pages and dot-to-dot puzzles.

As of now, Kabonga is a “beta” release, meaning there are a few technical issues that they are working on.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of GoGo Kabongo, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

BigIQKids – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:00:22 +0000

BigIQKids is an online learning program for elementary and middle school children that has four different focus areas – math, U.S. geography, spelling and vocabulary. I was asked to review BigIQKids through the TOS Homeschool Crew. There are a few different membership levels – free, free with upgrade and a premium paid account. The free with upgrade option adds additional game content. The paid premium account adds additional lessons and quizzes for most topics, along with parental tracking and full game support. There is also more limited advertising on the premium account. For the purposes of our review, we were given premium accounts for all topics to use on the site. I really appreciate the vendors generosity for this review.

Here is a video that gives a quick overview of the BigIQKids website:

The site intends for the child to complete one lesson per day in each area of instruction. The site works well when learning specific sets of facts (spelling, geography or math) to mastery. The premium membership in particular allows students to complete different types of lessons and quizzes and then rewards them with coins that can be used in their game section. Parents are notified via email message or on-site reporting about their student’s progress. The intent seems to be to allow the student to work independently online to reinforce lessons that they have already been taught elsewhere. This paradigm works well for things like math facts.

Pros:

In the spelling and vocabulary programs, the parent can set up their own word lists to use with their existing curricula.
In the premium math program, the parent can select the areas of math that they want the student to work on, and the program will automatically move them up as they display mastery.
The parent can control access to the reward coins that the child gets for completing lessons. The default is that the child earns one coin (that they can trade for game play) after each lesson. The parent can also opt to only shows game content on the weekends, or not at all.
The site is actively growing their content. The free section of the site has a new eBook preview, vowel reviews and quizzes on measurement and time.

Cons:

The program doesn’t seem to always mirror the student’s level very well. In the Geography program, the intro section throws so many facts at the child and there doesn’t seem to be any way that a young child would have good comprehension given the pace. Also, 50 problems is the default math quiz setting regardless of the grade level of the child.
I found the digitized voices on the pages very distracting. There are some pronunciation issues and also the phrasing is often awkward.
I had a few issues with site areas not working. At one point, the screen said “double click on the word below and Jake will say it”, but I couldn’t click on the word. I was using Google Chrome for my browser, so that may have been a problem. The site recommends using Firefox or Safari. The technical support section of the site seems to be a little bit out of date. Windows 7 is not listed as being supported, but it does work on my system.

Pricing:
Free account – Free!
Free account with game access upgrade – $9.98/yr.
Premium account for one subject -varies by subject.
Premium account bundle for all four subjects – $19.99/month or $99.99/yr.
Classroom pricing plans are also available.

Tornado Boy enjoyed the math practice areas when I reset the problem sets down to 20 problems rather than 50. I felt like the rest of the site was over his ability level at this point, mostly due to the pacing in the areas. This may be a site that will be a better fit in six months or so. Tornado Boy is currently age 5 and in Kindergarten. I think that this would likely be a better fit for kids in later 1st grade and onward.

If you would like to try a free trial of the premium account, you can sign up here for 7 days free. This will allow you to test out all of the premium features on the site.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of BigIQKids, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Reading Kingdom – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:36:02 +0000

Tornado Boy and I have been evaluating an online program called “The Reading Kingdom” for the past six weeks or so. I had expressed interest in being a reviewer for this product through the TOS Crew because I was curious how the program would evaluate Tornado Boy as a reader. The program states that it customizes itself to the child and it adapts to their particular strengths and weaknesses. I will be honest, a lot of our experience with the program was a real struggle. The first part of the program is an assessment/skills survey. What I found was that it seemed like they really penalized the child if they didn’t type quickly enough. Tornado Boy was placed in a pre-reader sequencing section of the program that was incredibly repetitive. The program wanted him to select specific letters from a group, and in order. The section was supposed to take FOUR to SIX weeks to complete and we were both ready to pull out our hair when TB finally worked his way through it. We did multiple lessons (that required exiting the program and going back in to actually advance) in order to complete the section.

The next section of the program was supposed to be “Letter Land” but according to the chart, TB had tested out of that section of the program due to his skills assessment. Except that the program put him in Letter Land anyway, but it wouldn’t advance, it just kept doing the same lesson over and over again. I contacted Colby from the Reading Kingdom and she was able to put me in touch with their technical support team in order to fix our problem. I found their support to be very courteous and helpful. They resolved our problem within a day. We were moved into the Reading/Writing Level 1 section of the program. The downside to this was that Tornado Boy bypassed a second assessment that should have placed him at his natural reading level within the program. For review purposes, this wasn’t a big deal, but I would have preferred that he actually do the assessment.

Once we got to the Reading/Writing section, I really started to see that value that The Reading Kingdom can offer. I was a bit disillusioned up to that point because the program seemed far too focused on typing and that can be very difficult for really young children. It is very helpful to have a basic idea of Marion Blank’s beliefs on reading development in children when you are using the program. The program is very different from any other reading program that we have used so far. Ms. Blank’s book The Reading Remedy describes what she believes is the best process for teaching children to read. She is not a proponent of phonics. The Reading Kingdom uses a multi-faceted approach that is designed to teach an integrated reading and writing program based on word recognition. The following graphic shows the key aspects of the Reading Kingdom program:

We have a year to use the Reading Kingdom program and I really wish that we’d had another month or so to use it before this review was due. So far, I really can’t evaluate how it is as a reading program, but it is definitely one heck of a spelling program. The games that the program uses are really well developed. One of my favorite is a pattern recognition game where the child has to pick out the pattern that can become the target word:

The games really reinforce the spellings of the target word. Later the child has to pick the word out of paragraphs. This is one area where I’m really not sure if the program expects the child to be able to read the entire paragraph or just the target word. One of the things that concerns me about the program is the lack of instruction offered to the child. It often expects the child to just “know” to capitalize a word or use specific punctuation without really introducing it or explaining the rules for it.

My biggest concern about the program is one of security – there is a “parent” link in the left column of the online program. If you click on that link, your password is displayed and there is no security on the link. I DO NOT want my child having access to my password. He is far too curious as it is and this is a real problem as far as I’m concerned.

The Reading Kingdom is a subscription-based online reading program. To get your subscription sign up for a 30 day free trial. After you’ve created an account you can purchase a subscription. Subscriptions to Reading Kingdom are $19.99/month with no monthly minimum, or $199.99 if you purchase a 12 month subscription. If you have multiple children using the program, the cost per each additional child in your family is $9.99/month.

Overall, I feel sort of neutral about The Reading Kingdom. I can definitely see the positive impact on Tornado Boy’s spelling skills, especially with irregular words and I’m happy about that. I wish that we could have bypassed the introductory sequencing section. One of the reasons that I homeschool is because it allows me a great deal of flexibility in how I teach my son. This program does not allow for any flexibility. You are forced to follow their exact sequence. If I had the ability to select what my son was working on, I’d like it better.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of The Reading Kingdom, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

MathRider – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:00:21 +0000

MathRider is a program that helps your child to drill/study their math facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. This program, which is based on the Adobe Air platform can be on Windows, MAC and Linux system. The program was created by an Australian company called Sharper Edge Pty Ltd. The standard price is $49.95 (U.S.), but it is currently (as of 2/24/11) on sale for $37 via instant download. In order to purchase the program, you must be able to pay through PayPal. The program includes a 30 day money back guarantee. Any child requiring help in learning their math facts could use the program, but it’s probably best suited to children ages 6-10.

The following video will give you an idea of the structure of the program. Each child is given a magical “quest” and then is rewarded when they are able to correctly complete 30 problems in a given area with a time limit. The product recommends you pick one type of math subject and work through it sequentially – through the easy/medium/advanced levels and then to master. Here’s a sneak peek at how it works:

As a parent, my very favorite part of the program is the visual progress chart that you can see for your child. The chart gives you a quick way to assess how your child is doing what they still need to work on. It also shows you the specific facts that are a challenge for your child, so that you can work to reinforce them.

Some of the best features of MathRider:

The child can use the “practice” mode to learn the program without impacting their scores/statistics.
You can use the program for basic facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
The child’s status is shown after each round. You can see how long it took them to answer each question in relative terms. If you hover of the bar for a specific problem, you can see their performance on that question vs. past answers for the same problem.
Over time, the game remembers which problems were missed and will continue to repeat those problems as you progress through the quests.
Multiple players (up to ten) can each have their own accounts.

A few things that give me a bit of concern:

You can’t be working on two different operations at once. If you want to work on a new division quest, any work on your current quest will be erased.
The number of required problems to complete a quest can’t be adjusted – 30 problems per round is a lot for a really young child.
I ran through several of the multiplication tests to see how the program adapted to me. It did speed up the individual questions that I saw, but even though I showed full multiplication mastery for all problems through number 12 according to their chart; I still had to answer another 300 problems to complete the quest.
The placement of your typed answer vs. the problem that you’re given is a little awkward. You can’t always really see both the problem and the answer at the same time, so you may mis-type and answer and not know it.

Overall we enjoyed trying out MathRider and it definitely helped Tornado Boy continue to learn his addition facts.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of MathRider, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Times Alive – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:00:39 +0000

I was asked to review the Times Alive program as part of my participation in the TOS Homeschool Crew. The Times Alive program employs excellent usage of mnemonic device to help children to remember their times table facts. The program is based on the book “Times Tables the Fun Way” by City Creek Press. The program uses stories, songs and quizzes to teach and reinforce the times tables.

Here is a sample of one of the songs that the program has – this one is to help the child remember what 6X6 is:

You can see other sample lessons here.

I was a little bit concerned about how Tornado Boy would handle his exposure to the Times Alive program. He is definitely young compared to the target audience for the program. Typically the program would be used by 7-10 year olds. We spent our first session using the “Try it” feature so that Tornado Boy could play around without having his scores recorded. The program assumes that the child understands the basics of how multiplication works and that they just need to memorize the facts. I spent the next couple of weeks after we played with the program explaining how multiplication works conceptually. He has a pretty good grasp on addition, so he picked up on how multiplication works pretty quickly. The question for me really was could he grasp enough to be able to reliably learn the times tables.

The above picture is one of the “reward” sections of the program where the child gets to paint a scene from one of the lessons. In this one, the three blind mice each have three tails – giving them nine. The program states that “blind” and “nine” rhyme. I find that to be a bit of a stretch, but Tornado Boy certainly remembers the fact, which is what is important. He also had fun with this little painting scene.

We had a few issues with the navigation while using the Times Alive quiz sections. If the child does one of the problems out of order during a quiz, the “enter” key on the keyboard will no longer work correctly to take them to the next problem.

One of the stated program objectives of Times Alive is that the “Student will develop a positive attitude towards math prompted by the success and entertainment value of the program design.” I was surprised at the 3X4 video clip (Cheers at Southgate) that starts out with a classroom of sullen kids with the heading above them “None of the kids at South School liked math.” I was a bit taken aback and I definitely didn’t want to give my son the idea that it’s okay to act in that way.

Even though I had a few reservations about the program, I can say that it really does work and it works well. Tornado Boy now knows his times tables for 0′s, 1′s, 2′s, 5′s, 10′s and some of the other facts based on our work since starting this program. For some of the facts, he will recall the answer to the problem if you remind him about the story that he saw. For example, if I ask him “what is 4 times 4″, and he gets stuck, I can ask him how old you have to be to drive a car and then he’ll say “it’s 16″. The program shows a teenaged boy driving a 4X4 truck, and says that he has to be 16 to not have to walk up the hill. Once that association is solid, TB is unlikely to forget the facts. We will definitely finish using ths program to completely TB’s times table facts.

The Times Alive learning game software is available for download for PC or MAC for $44.95 or via CD for $48.95. The CD will work on a PC or MAC. City Creek Press also offers a variety of kits that include multiple items at a discount.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of Times Alive, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Speekee – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Speekee TV is a Spanish-language immersion program with 10 lessons from the company Lingua4 Ltd. The program was developed in the UK using native (European) Spanish speakers and puppets. It is intended for children ages 2-10. The U.S. pricing is $7.50 per month for online access. They offer the first two weeks for free.

Tornado Boy LOVES Speekee. We’ve watched all 10 lessons and he is always excited when I tell him that it is time for Speekee. The interface is easy to use and TB likes to watch the videos in full-screen with the closed captions on. This allows him to read what is being said in both Spanish and English. The music used in Speekee is very catchy and he will often sing along with several of the songs including the intro and closing that are used in all of the episodes. Clips of Spanish children are interspersed with the three puppets – Speekee (the little alien looking guy in the graphic at the top of this review), as well as Dino and Lupi, who are two sock puppets. There is an adult, Jim who also converses with Speekee in some of the scenes. The children do sometimes interact with Speekee. There are some scenes that were clearly filmed with a green screen, but a lot of them were filmed on location at places like a school, the park and the zoo to support the content of the lessons.

Since this is immersion-style program, there is no English spoken. The entire program, singing and speaking, is entirely in Spanish. The lessons use a spiral-style approach where words that are introduced in one lesson are repeated in subsequent lessons without the same amount of context. If your child is reading the subtitles, this is not a big deal. If your child is not a reader, or you are watching without the subtitles, it would be helpful to watch the 10 lessons in sequential order. Each lesson gives children the opportunity to respond to Speekee in Spanish. You can see a clip of how that is prompted here.

The child is given “awards” at certain points in the program. You can see the graphics at the bottom of the screen shot above. Tornado Boy really wanted to click them and having something happen, but they are just to look at.

Each lesson has companion worksheets that you can download and use with your children. My only real complaint with the Speekee program lies with those companion worksheets. They’re all named “worksheet”, so when you download them, you must remember to rename them something more meaningful or you’ll end up with a bunch of pdf files with the same name. Yes, that’s the voice of experience talking!

I really wish that there were more than 10 episodes of Speekee! I do not speak any Spanish, but Tornado Boy is definitely interested in learning the language. Speekee was a fun way for us to learn together. It does make me curious about some of the grammatical rules that Spanish uses. I’ll have to do some research to continue to use the program, especially if we want to do more of the written worksheets.

Speekee is also offered in DVD format, but it may not be compatible with all U.S. players. It uses the PAL video format. You can follow Speekee on Twitter for more information and offers.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of Speekee, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Maestro Classics – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:02:41 +0000

Tornado Boy and I were lucky enough to be selected to receive a copy of Maestro Classics’ “Peter and the Wolf” on CD as part of my participation in the TOS Homeschool Crew. The CD and booklet package is part of their Stories in Music™ series. The music on the CD is performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the story is narrated by Yadu (aka Dr. Konrad Czynski). Yadu narrates the other stories in this series as well.

This CD set is so much more than just the story of Peter and the Wolf. You also get an interesting look at the life of the composer (Prokofiev) and a great description of the music itself. The introduction gives the listener a bit of story background as well as the identity of the main characters of the story and lets them know which instrument and musical theme represents each of them. In addition to the narrated version of the story, there’s also an instrumental version and a couple of selections of Russian Folk Music. The companion booklet gives a quick bio of Trio Voronezh, the folk group and a more in depth look at the unusual instruments that they play – the balalaika, the bayan and the domra. The balalaika is the standing instrument with the triangular bottom in the picture below. The bayan is similar to an accordion, but without a keyboard. The domra is a Russian folk instrument, similar to a mandolin.

The booklet that comes with the CD combines the educational articles and biographies with puzzles and games that your child can do. It has a dot-to-dot, a code puzzle, a crossword, a matching activity (match the instrument to the character in the story that it sound represents), and a bit about Cyrillic script -the Russian language that the original score was written in. The Maestro Classics website has the puzzle answers posted. For the more adventurous, there is also sheet music for part of the Peter and the Wolf score. The music CD can really be enjoyed by anyone, but the booklet really requires reading and some puzzle skills, so I’d think 6 and up would probably a good age to enjoy the booklet part of the package.

Maestro Classics sells their base CD and booklet sets for $16.98. The Maestro Classics website allows you to sample some of the content of the Peter and the Wolf as well as pieces from the other stories in the series. We are seriously considering purchasing Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel for Tornado Boy as well. I loaded Peter and the Wolf to his iPod and I think that he’d enjoy having Mike Mulligan on there as well since I already know that he enjoys the story. If you don’t already have the Mike Mulligan storybook, they also offer a CD and book package for for $29.95. I love that the website already has a lesson plan for the Mike Mulligan disc available for download.

We really enjoyed this product!

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of Peter and the Wolf, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Math Facts Now! – Product Review

Pathfinder Mom — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 08:00:31 +0000

Tornado Boy and I were able to try out a program called Math Facts Now! as part of my membership in the TOS Homeschool Crew. This software (available for $15.95 for either download or on CD-ROM) can help your child learn addition, subtraction, multiplication or division facts. The software is Windows-based only, it does not work on MAC or LINUX computers. The software allows you to setup user accounts for multiple children. They share the list of lessons that you create for them. It is probably best for children who are 6-10 or so depending on the strength of their math skills.

When you first set up the software, you’ll need to create an account for each child. Next, you create lessons. You select one of the four areas of math, such as addition, and select the types of problems that you want your child to work on (such as adding +5). You name the lesson and then set the criteria for the lesson – how fast the child must answer the question (anywhere from 2 to 60 seconds), how many times the child must type out the entire problem if the answer it wrong or too slowly (between 2 and 10 times), and how many correct answers must be given to complete the lesson. You also have the option of entering in a “reward” message. I had a message that seemed to be too long and it didn’t display properly. The message will display each time the child completes that lesson, so make sure that you really mean it! You can edit the reward, speed, correction and number of answers for any lesson later, but not the base criteria for the test. Meaning that if you chose to test your muliplication by threes, you cannot later change that to be threes and fours. You’d have to delete it or just create a new lesson.

I did not see a limit to the number of lessons that you can create. It is important to give the lessons a meaningful name in a short space, though. You get about 25 characters per lesson name that you can see on the screen.

Once the child selects the lesson, the testing starts. This is a non-frills environment, very similar to using flash cards, except that the program remembers what your child got wrong and it automatically reinforces those problems. Your child will be required to re-type the entire equation at least twice and then they will be given the problem again later in the session with a warning to help them remember that it’s a problem that they missed before. The program also creates reports at the end so that you can see the number of problems that your child missed and how long it took them on average to answer the problems. If you click through the detail report, you can see the specific problems that were missed. The reports make it easy to see how your child is improving over time.

Things that I like about the program:

Lessons are very easy to set up.
It is nice that you can easily set up multiple users of the program.
The reports are easy to read. You don’t have to sit and look over your child’s shoulder.
I like that I can control the number of problems in a lesson.
I like that the child can use the enter key to submit their answer rather than having to use the mouse.
I like that the program automatically re-tests questions that the child has answered incorrectly.

Things that could use some work:

There is no parent-secured area for the program. My kid is insanely curious and he can easily delete or change lessons. He could also log in as another child since there is no password security. Not an issue for my single child household, but this could be an issue for multi-child families.
I’d like the option to not have a time limit for each problem. My child is young enough that I’m okay with him taking the time that he needs to come up with the correct answer. He’s forced to type out the problem if he takes too much time.
I would like the ability to test addition and subtraction together to reinforce their relationship, but you can only have one or the other for each lesson.

Overall, I like the program. It is simple and effective. Tornado Boy tends to like more “visual” and game-like lessons, but he definitely learned from this. We haven’t been using flash cards, but I can see this program being helpful as we get to the point where he’s memorizing his times tables. If you’d like to try out Math Facts Now! for yourself, they have a free trial that you can download or try online on your Windows-based machine.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of this Math Facts Now!, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!