Review Detail
4.6 32 0.5
This was my daughter's first math program. I researched various programs thoroughly and landed on this one. The videos seemed fun, and it looked great ... and both my daughter and I hated it. While the videos are engaging, the workbook itself, in our opinion, was very dull. It felt like an endless rotation of black and white questions that asked some variation of 1 + 2 =, 4 + 5 =, 8+ 7 =. I felt it completely lacked depth and that I could have written it myself. Disappointed, we moved on to another program that had the depth we were looking for.
The program uses terms like onety, twoty for the numbers eleven and twelve. Demme reasons that English-speaking kids have a harder time with numbers because numbers like eleven and twelve don't really make sense, whereas in some other languages, they use something comparable to onety and twoty. Now, we may indeed have a problem with the logic of the names for used for our teen numbers -- however, it is what it is. My daughter already knew how to count when we started the program and her response to his logical idea of renaming numbers was "what on earth is he talking about??" I kind of agreed. I think it is quite confusing.
Positives include the use of the base ten blocks, which help to visually illustrate concepts, and couple of tricks to easily calculate equations with +9 and +8.
The program also does a great job explaining place value -- the best I've seen. We still use his method for explaining place value.
The program uses terms like onety, twoty for the numbers eleven and twelve. Demme reasons that English-speaking kids have a harder time with numbers because numbers like eleven and twelve don't really make sense, whereas in some other languages, they use something comparable to onety and twoty. Now, we may indeed have a problem with the logic of the names for used for our teen numbers -- however, it is what it is. My daughter already knew how to count when we started the program and her response to his logical idea of renaming numbers was "what on earth is he talking about??" I kind of agreed. I think it is quite confusing.
Positives include the use of the base ten blocks, which help to visually illustrate concepts, and couple of tricks to easily calculate equations with +9 and +8.
The program also does a great job explaining place value -- the best I've seen. We still use his method for explaining place value.
Grade levels used
1
Pros
easy to use, kind of fun
Cons
not very comprehensive
Do you recommend?
not really
N
Nancy
