Have you all seen this funny little pinterest meme?
How to Do Math
1. Write down the problem
2. Cry
Ha! But isn’t it the truth?! I know math has certainly been the cause of many tears around here. Most people I meet either love math or loathe it. My son had begun to loath math until we received a 12 Month Family Plan to CTC Math, an awesome online math tutorial program.
CTC Math
CTC Math is a user-friendly, interactive, online math tutorial program for grades kindergarten through high school. It features video tutorials, each lasting from 4-9 minutes, on a variety of mathematical subjects including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, area, perimeter, volume, money, rounding, measurement, square roots, geometry, angles, and so much more! Your online tutor, Pat Murray, presents difficult mathematical concepts and explains them, step-by-step, in simple terms, using pictures and animation.
CTC Math is based in Australia but there is a US version available for those of us here in the United States. Pat Murray, has an Australian accent but my son had no trouble understanding him or following his lessons.
When you log in to your CTC account ,you’ll find this menu:
All of the courses and grade levels are listed on the left side. In the 12 Month Family Plan you’ll have access to all grade levels! Clicking on a course, such as 4th grade, opens up the Stream, which offers the same four options in all six grades. By clicking on Numbers, Patterns, and Algebra, you can see all the different topics in that stream.
After choosing a topic, such as “Number I”, you can then view all the lessons that are available. There are eight lessons in this topic and the blue bar next to each lesson shows that my son completed those lessons. You can cover streams, topics, and lessons in any order you wish!
After choosing a lesson, my son was presented with a short video. I liked that he could pause the video and even go back and repeat a section if he needed to. After the video, my son completed a series of interactive questions. He got to click and drag the strawberries to help him find the answer to 8×10. Most of the questions were interactive in this way but for some questions, my son had to work out the problem on a separate sheet of paper.
All my son’s answers are recorded in CTC Math’s electronic system so I did not have to grade anything! In fact, there is a separate log in for parents where I can view all my son’s activities; what days he logged in, what lessons he completed, and what grade he received. I even get weekly progress reports sent to my email.
Usage and Thoughts
We used CTC Math for four to five days a week, as a supplement to our current math curriculum. My son spent about 20 to 30 minutes a day using CTC math, sometimes for much longer if my son was really enjoying the topic. Yay! CTC Math worked great in conjunction with our current math curriculum. Instead of me explaining and teaching his daily math lesson, CTC Math did all the work for me and with much better results! If my son was studying division, we simply played the division topic pertaining to the lesson. If he was learning about fractions, we went right to the fractions video lesson. It was awesome.
My son is a visual learner and I love that CTC often uses colorful pictures to break down a difficult concept and make it easy to understand. My son had this to say about the use of pictures in the CTC Math lessons, “When they show me with pictures, a problem that was really hard becomes really easy! And I love math!” And that makes a mama’s heart happy.
Finding lessons on a particular topic was super easy with the CTC search engine. Need to find a lesson on area, perimeter, or multiplication? I simply typed whatever I needed to find into the search engine and was given several options in differing grade levels to choose from. I got a lot of use out of the seach engine!
My son loved getting immediate feedback as he completed the math problems. As soon as he completed a problem, either a green check would appear, meaning correct, or a red “x” would appear, meaning he had gotten the problem wrong. He also loved that he could go back over a topic again to obtain a better score. I didn’t know scores meant so much to him but, in this program, depending on how well you answered your math problems, you can be working at a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum level. If my son wasn’t working at a platinum or gold level, he wasn’t happy. He would redo lessons over until he had improved his grade!
My son loved the certificate incentives that CTC Math offers for each topic completed!
I would definitely recommend CTC Math to anyone looking for a fun and simple way for their kids to learn math. Although I wouldn’t use it as my sole math curriculum, it was just what we needed to supplement our current math curriculum.
The 12 Month Family Plan gives you access to all grades and courses for ten students at a cost of $118.80, a special price for homeschoolers. You can even get a free trial and try it out for yourself!
Being in the US, we do a lot of measurements in inches, feet and yards so I might suggest they change the US version to reflect our measurements, but meters and centimeters are important measurements to learn as well. CTC Math is a very comprehensive and complete program. I’m very happy with their program and the results I’ve seen in my son from using it. I know that we will continue using this program for a long time.
My son gives CTC Math five stars. This program has helped him understand difficult math concepts and he has learned so many new things. CTC Math has made math “fun” for my son again. And for that, I’m extremely grateful. Be prepared for your child to take over your computer chair for awhile!
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