Homeschool Crew Review: Elephant Learning Math Academy

We received a 12 month subscription to Elephant Learning Math Academy to use and review.


Elephant Learning Math Academy can be used with children as young as 2 through teens as old as 16.  They cover counting to algebra concepts. Elephant Learning uses a series of game like puzzles that help students learn how to solve math problems.  The program tests what your child knows and tailors their questions.  Elephant Learning can be accessed using a web browser or an app on a smart phone or tablet.  There are also worksheets you can print.  Their website states that by using their program 30 minutes a week for 12 weeks students will gain one year of math. 


We log in to Elephant Learning Academy using Google Chrome as a web browser.  Our family log in takes us to a dashboard where I can see reports for my students and have each of them log in from there.

When the student is logged in they go to a screen where they can choose the theme of their "game" play that day.  There are several different choices that will appeal to both boys and girls and younger and middle grade children.  Choosing the theme does not affect the questions they are asked, just the types of characters that are on the screen when the questions are asked.

 

Then they go into their questions.  The game says the child's name frequently during the time they use it.  It will say things like "Good Morning Christian" and then ask them the question.  The voice and the accent changes throughout the course of their time playing. 

Elephant Learning Academy does not teach concepts.  Instead it gives questions and asks your child to figure them out.  Here are some examples of the types of things they will see.

They are given different numbers on a number line and asked to move the character close to or on that number.

They will be given a certain number of something and asked to find a fraction of them. 

They need to select a certain number, fraction, or percentage of something.

They have to put a certain number of items in the center but cannot take items away.

 There is not a stopping point.  Questions continue to be asked until you decide to stop for the day.  There is a little timer that shows up that will show how long you have been playing each session.

I had my children use Elephant Learning Academy 3-4 days a week for 10 minutes per day.  I liked that I could easily see everything from one dashboard and could get them logged in and ready to play.  They liked the different themes for the games.  Emmie would choose some of the cuter more girly things like polar bears or ponies while Christian stuck with things like knights, soccer, or the anubis. They struggled with some questions because it doesn't teach you the concepts.  You have to figure out how to solve the puzzles.  My daughter who is more math minded did very well with that and I was impressed at how she worked the problems out, even things she had never seen before.  She did have trouble with counting questions that only showed you the items for a minute or two then covered them up and wanted to know how many there were. My son who really struggles in math had a harder time with it, especially in things like what I would call logic statements because he had never seen those before and didn't understand how to answer them and he became very frustrated.  The program really makes you stop and think and work things out rather then just having children memorize facts, which is a really good thing.  After using the program 3-4 days a week for several weeks, it became monotonous.  The same types of questions asked in basically the same order every single day.  We saw only a small amount of growth (.2) in their Elephant Age in the weeks we spent using the program. 

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!