Tuesday, March 3, 2009

MathTacular!


As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out the products and giving you my honest opinion.



Okay. Can I just take a second to join in with the chorus of homeschool mothers who are all letting out at collective sigh of relief after discovering this DVD. Finally! Someone. Has. Made. Math. FUN!

No kidding. FUN math! Where can you find such a thing? From Sonlight Curriculum. It's MathTacular: Unbelievably Understandable Math.

So here's what Sonlight did. They compiled a list of Kindergarten Math concepts from three biggie math programs...Horizons, Saxon, and Singapore. Then they created a DVD demonstrating these concepts in fun, informative, real-life scenarios. Your Pre-K through 2nd grader will enjoy watching one or more of the 88 bite-sized segments. (Each segment lasts anywhere from less than a minute to six minutes.) Concepts covered are:

Number Recognition
Odd & Even Pairs
Counting
Skip-Counting
Addition
Subtraction
Comparisons
Position
Colors
Shapes & Geometry
Patterns
Money
Calendar
Telling Time
Graphs
Fractions
Measurements

MathTacular is designed to be a supplement to regular math curriculum. Your children are already learning these concepts in their bookwork. MathTacular brings them to life. How? Well, meet Justin...



Justin is not your typical math professor...actually, he's much more like your kid's fun older brother. He doesn't do his teaching in front of a classroom either. Each video segment will find Justin in a different place...the living room, kitchen, a parking lot...every day places. Why? To teach your children that math happens everywhere!

When we first received MathTacular I decided to just watch a little bit of it to see what it was like. It was right after lunch and I had just laid my 1 year old down for a nap. I settled the 8, 6, 5, and 3 year old in front of the t.v. and sat down to rock and feed my fussy newborn. After watching several segments my little one had finally drifted off to sleep and my older ones were still happily watching the DVD. So what does a mother of six do when she has two sleeping babies and four content older siblings....why, she takes a shower of course! Thirty minutes later I was smelling nice and clean and the house was still quiet. Thinking my children had long since abandoned the math DVD and found some fun toy... or fun trouble, I walked into the living room. They were all still watching MathTacular!

Now we use MathTacular a couple of times a week (mostly with my Pre-K and Kindergartner). We'll watch a segment and then usually try it out ourselves. So if Justin is playing Go Fish to help with number recognition, then we play Go Fish. If Justin is learning about pairs by matching socks, we match socks. It's been fun and simple to use MathTacular in our homeschool and our kids love it!

You can purchase MathTacular for $29.99 from the Sonlight website. You'll also find MathTacular 2 for grades 2-4 and MathTacular 3 for grades 3-6. Both of these are officially on my "New School Year Wish List".

Check out more reviews of Sonlight programs on the TOS Crew Blog.

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4 comments:

  1. It's always so encouraging to hear that the hard work we put into those DVDs has paid off beautifully. Thanks for the encouragement and sharing your thoughts [smile].

    ~Luke

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  2. You have me sold! Thanks, Shanna!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow! I want to buy this...looks great! :)

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  4. Looks fun, sounds fun, but is it worth $30? each????

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