I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
Math is a tricky topic in my house. I love math, and it was my favorite subject as a child. My children cry about math. Finding a math curriculum that they enjoy doing has been a hit-or-miss experience. We had the opportunity to try a 12-month subscription to CTCMath. I wasn’t going to stress if this didn’t work, but I was pleasantly surprised by what my kids had to say!
CTCMath is an online math curriculum for grades K-12. You will need a computer and internet access to use this program. Once your child is set up, they log in and complete their lessons each day.
Each lesson starts with a short video that explains the topic they are learning about. The students get to hear how to do the assignment and see visuals of what is being taught. This teaching style reminds me of sitting in the classroom and seeing what the teacher was talking about, not just reading or hearing what I am supposed to learn.
Once the video is done, the students are given some questions to answer. My kids loved doing these questions online and getting instant feedback on whether they solved it correctly or had it wrong. You also have the option of printing a worksheet and solving the problems with a pencil and paper. I may use this as they progress into more complicated problems, but right now, the kids love just doing the questions online.
Now, there are two ways for your child to know what to do each day. The first way is that you assign them weekly tasks with due dates. They would log in and see what needs to be done and complete them. The other way is to let them pick the topic they want to learn about that day and complete it.
I opted to let my kids pick the topics they wanted to learn about each day. I wanted to give them some freedom over their math lessons, which was the perfect way to do that. I keep them within their grade level at this time and just let them pick. So far, they seem delighted with this and have not argued about doing math each day.
When you are looking through the different topics within each grade level and feel that your child may know all of this already, you can have them take a diagnostic test on the material. There are three different levels to these tests. If they complete and pass the test, you can allow them to skip the topic. I used this to see what they knew within each topic and guide them to work on the lessons they struggled with.
Within my parent dashboard, I can see when each child last logged in, what lessons they completed, and their score. I can also assign the tasks if I feel like doing that on my parent dashboard and seeing how many lessons they have completed and their overall grade.
Another benefit with CTCMath is the reports that you can print up. I can go into each student, see the detailed report of what they have been working on, and print them up as a record for their math for the year. I don’t have to worry about keeping all the details because CTCMath does it for me.
One aspect of CTCMath that we have not used yet is the games. They have Speed Skills, Times Tables, and Swap Pieces. These games allow your child to practice different math skills. Swap Pieces is the most difficult of these games, but it also looks entertaining to me. These games will be something we add to our weekly math time.
While I did not have any expectations for CTCMath with my picky kids, I am thrilled to see them enjoying doing math lessons again. Not only are they enjoying math, but I also find it easier for me to keep track of their math grades and progress each week.
We were not the only family to try CTCMath in our home; check out these other reviews.
