During the summer months we stop using our regular math curriculum but try to do some math to keep our skills fresh. Sometimes we do a little bit of book work or play math games, or sometimes we do some work online. Over the last several weeks, Christian has had an opportunity to use and review Matific Galaxy, an online math resource.
Matific Galaxy has hundreds of mathematics games and activities designed to help children in grades K-6 boost their confidence in math. It can be played on your computer and they also have apps for Android and Apple devices. Children work through the episodes and activities at their own pace, repeating skills as needed. Parents can easily log in and see what their children have been working on in the parent zone. Matific is available in over 40 languages and can be used at home or in the classroom.
Christian (12) has been working on the 5th grade math skills. Math is his most difficult and dreaded subject so I started him down a grade level. In the 5th grade there are 44 skills in the areas of : division, mixed operations. basic fractions, decimals, arithmetic with fractions, geometry, coordinate planes, volume, measurement, data analysis, and problem solving. We have been using the program on our computer for around 15 minutes a day 3-4 days per week.
When Christian logs in he sees a screen like this.
Our internet is pretty slow so it takes some time to load this page. Next he sees this screen.
And once he hits play gets to the screen that shows which planet he is on.
Even though he has played all of the games on this planet, he cannot move on to the next planet until he plays the ones he didn't get enough stars on again.
You click on the game to play.
The instructions are in the bottom left corner. In this game he was supposed to tap the shapes the game told him to. By clicking on the question mark over the word parallelogram he could see the definition if he didn't know what it meant. On this game he was a bit confused because he didn't realize he had to hit done when he had clicked all of the parallelograms.
When you finish your game you see how many pixels you have earned from that game. Then you can go back to your planet and choose another game to play.
In the Parent Zone you can see reports on what topics your child has completed, their weekly activity, the percentage they have completed, practice results, and suggested games.
Under reports you can see results by topic and results on the specific planets. You also can see the total trophies they have received.
Emails are sent to parents notifying you if your child has not met their weekly time goal to work on the game or if they have met their goals. Weekly progress reports are also emailed to parents.
We thought the games were fun and interesting and used a lot of relatable examples to teach the skill. For example in a percentage game there were birds sitting on a tree and a birdhouse beside them and you had to put a certain percentage of birds in the birdhouse. There is a good variety of activities and skills for the different grade levels. I do think on some of the games that there needs to be more directions that what is given. To get a better feel for the program I sat down and played a few of the games on my own and there was one that I had no idea what they were asking me to do until I started clicking on some things to make a mistake so I could figure it out. Parents do not have the ability to assign specific tasks or print worksheets, those features are for classrooms only. The reports were thorough. I could easily see what Christian had been working on and what he had trouble with.
To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!
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