FactsFirst

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.

If you have been homeschooling for any amount of time, then surely Saxon is a familiar name to you. But you may surprised to know that they now offer an online math program called FactsFirst. This is a supplemental math program designed to drill students in the basics: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

I feel like our kids can never get enough of this type of drill. Throughout my middle school and highschool years, I dreaded math class. This was largely due to the fact that I did not have a firm foundation in the basics. I knew how to do math...I was just terribly slow at it.

Not many children want to sit around practicing math facts. But FactsFirst makes math drills fun.

First, students get to design their own character. Since the invention of the Mii, this seems to be a requirement for all new games online. I'm not complaining though, our kids love it.


Along with their character, the student now completes lessons. They will learn new facts and take quizzes until they have mastered a unit.


As a reward, students are periodically given the chance to play in the arcade for a few minutes at a time. The arcade games are also designed to review math facts, but feel more like fun than a lesson.


Parents can view the Math Fact Matrix to see how their student is doing with FactsFirst. This allows you a quick overview of the areas of accomplishment and struggle for your student.

Our kids enjoyed playing FactsFirst, but they weren't necessarily asking to play it everyday. I think that just boils down to the fact that math is math is math. Nevertheless, the kids enjoy their computer time and they would rather play math games on the computer than not play the computer at all. And I would prefer that they play educational games than just surfing around nickjr.com. So FactsFirst is a great fit for that reason.

A one-year subscription to FactsFirst can be purchased for $49.99 and can be used for 1-4 users. You can try a free demo at their website as well.

Remember, you'll find more reviews at the TOS Crew Blog.

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