DS6 (K) has been given the opportunity to do independent work on the computer during class math time. Any recommendations? I don't do stuff like this with my kids at home, so I'm kind of clueless. I am assuming it needs to be free, though perhaps I could pay for a subscription and have him use the password at school--not sure.
I don't really know his level. I guess he's kind of all over the place, but probably not above 2nd grade. It would be good for whatever he uses to assess him.
Oh, he is an extremely competent reader and works well solo, but he does not love games that test mouse skills rather than actual skills.
Hi Ultramarina,
I'm new to all of this but my DS6 just started using ixl at home. He's an independent reader and has been loving it. It's all drill from what I can gather but it does give you "prizes" to uncover at the end of a skill. It also tells you how many points you have (1-100) per section and my son LOVES to see how his score goes up. I paid 9.95 for a month trial but I know a lot of schools already have memberships.
Others have mentioned Dragon Box, Khan Academy (free- we may do this when our membership runs out), Mathseeds, and some others.
Does he have access to an iPad? DS5 (K) has been using a combination of Xtra Math and Dreambox lately, depending on his mood. I would only suggest Xtra Math if he is getting pretty quick at adding, subtracting, and or multiplying (you can change the settings). It builds automaticity with simple math facts - no teaching. It is free.
Dreambox has a free trial, but then there is a small fee. It is adaptive, so it will adjust to a child's level. DS enjoys it, but your DC may outgrow it pretty quickly. DS zipped through K-most of 2nd pretty quickly, but has been using other things for math the last couple of weeks. I am waiting to see if he shows interest in this again soon, because it is no longer free! I would suggest an iPad for this, though, because it sounds like some little ones have trouble with the mouse and DS handles it easily on the iPad.
IXL is more drill based - I don't know that it gives any instruction. I don't think I would recommend it unless your DS likes to just "quiz himself." DD's school uses it to reinforce what is taught, so we don't pay for it.
EPGY is pretty dry and the technology is not terribly up-to-date, but very solid on the math. We have DD8 using this as enrichment at home when she can find time - I wouldn't suggest this until your DS is a bit older.
My DC have both enjoyed Dragon Box (we have both versions; algebra game), but I have no idea if they actually understood the math they were doing. It is fun, though!
HTH!
No iPad. I do not see IXL on the list of school-offered sites. I am looking at Khan now. Has anyone used it for a child this age? I think he would like to be taught something new rather than doing only drills. (Sounds reasonable!)
He did most of DragonBox at home. I am not sure if he finished it, but if not, then close to. He saw this as a game, not "learning something new."
I've tried Khan with both DS and DD. I think it depends on how interested your DC is in a given topic - DS liked it for a few topics, but then he lost interest. Most of it appears geared towards older students. Still, I wouldn't hesitate to use it if it has a topic we are working on - it is free.
DS is expressing interest in learning new skills, so that why Khan seems good. However, what I watched seemed to move kind of slowly. He is in a weird place with skills, I think. He has a lot of mental math abilities from playing games for older children (can add large numbers accurately in his head using...I guess you'd call it decomposition skills..."1300 plus 850...I know 1300 plus 700 is 2000, so then another 100 is 2100, then the 50 is 2150" ). He could not do that problem on paper in the traditional way, though. And there are definitely holes in what he knows. I don't think he really knows much about fractions, for instance, and he can't tell analog time past the hour and half hour (no analog clocks in our house--oops). Similarly, he randomly knows a lot of multiplication stuff but hasn't been systematically taught anything.
My son used IXL quite a bit early on and it was a very good tool for him to increase his knowledge. The downside is you only get instruction on something new once you miss the problem. Not an ideal way to learn but it works pretty well.
He finally moved to EPGY and it is good up until Geometry which is very poor due to their Proof Environment. EPGY is a good program and is fine as long as there are no issues. They have staffing/personnel issues so if your son has a problem or there is a technological issue it gets real bad real quick. The Proof Environment was his first and only issue and unfortunately they could never sort it out so we moved to Art of Problem Solving.
One thing to consider is if your son is smart and disciplined he can cover a lot of material in a short time and you will end up many grade levels ahead. Be sure to consider how the school will handle this as he progresses.
My DS6 just started EPGY math from Stanford about 6 weeks ago and he loves it! It does seem dry, but it moves quickly and mixes it up enough to make it more interesting. We started him at Grade 1 to make sure there were not any gaps and he has progressed to Grade 2.5 already. It's $95 for 5 months to try it out. He started out doing 20 minute sessions, but asked for more so we had the administrator up it to 30 minutes. There are also two setting to be aware of, regular and gifted. You can have the administrator set it for gifted from the start. It moves at a quicker pace. You can also up the level yourself by 1/2 grade increments if it's too easy for him. It also tracks, in detail, what grade equivalent, topics covered, percent correct, how he did on a particular session day, etc.
I would think it would be easy for him to do this at school as long as he knows how to log in to his account. My son's principal was working on having him do this at school too, but that's a whole other story,
His K teacher would not supplement of give him more challenging math so we resorted to giving it to him at home. He's so happy to be doing something other than adding 2+2 and then drawing picture after picture on a worksheet for simple addition that it was totally worth it!
On a side note he just started the Language Arts component of EPGY and loves it too! It sounds like your son is a big reader so he might enjoy that too!
Does EPGY actively instruct? I think he might be okay with it being dry. It's a bit of a risk, though. Is there a free trial option?
He will get a better curriculum starting in grade 2, but he needs something till then. It would be good to have something in place for next year.
Yes, EPGY does instruct. They have short "lectures", and they also have smaller reminder-type instruction during the problems. Child can repeat lectures whenever they want.
I do recommend that you sign up for the open enrollment option, which is MUCH cheaper. It doesn't include a tutor that you can call, but its not like your son will be able to talk to a tutor during class anyway. There is a thread somewhere on this forum where someone offered to be an administrator, which you need to sign up for the open enrollment option.
I recall from another poster that individuals can now register as "groups".
http://epgy.stanford.edu/for-parents/epgy-open-enrollment
DS is expressing interest in learning new skills, so that why Khan seems good. However, what I watched seemed to move kind of slowly. He is in a weird place with skills, I think. He has a lot of mental math abilities from playing games for older children (can add large numbers accurately in his head using...I guess you'd call it decomposition skills..."1300 plus 850...I know 1300 plus 700 is 2000, so then another 100 is 2100, then the 50 is 2150" ). He could not do that problem on paper in the traditional way, though. And there are definitely holes in what he knows. I don't think he really knows much about fractions, for instance, and he can't tell analog time past the hour and half hour (no analog clocks in our house--oops). Similarly, he randomly knows a lot of multiplication stuff but hasn't been systematically taught anything.
Your son sounds like mine - does quite a bit in his head and LOVES to be quizzed on math that the older kids are doing ("ask me a times table!" "Ask me a square root!" He thinks it's fun!). One of the reasons we started Xtra Math was that he was clearly learning times tables by osmosis or something (DD had learned them), and I was frightened that he might be doing it without mastery of addition and subtraction facts. Xtra Math is actually a bit of a challenge because you need to answer in less than 3 seconds and it is a challenge to even type that fast! So this might keep him busy...for a little while.
I think you will need to experiment a bit to find out what he likes - I think at this age you want him to enjoy whatever he does, so if he won't mind the drier format, go for it! I agree that you should try open enrollment and try to get it set on "gifted" settings if you use it, though. I haven't tried it with DS yet, because he still feels like math is just FUN! When I hear DD doing EPGY - it doesn't sound like much fun (sorry, EPGY!). Truthfully, EPGY's lecture-style just will not appeal to every bright younger child, but some younger children would probably be fine with it. You'll have to experiment and see what your DS likes - I think flexibility with these kiddos is key, because they learn and change so quickly!
We use Dreambox and the kids and I all love it. It instructs only when needed, it does unit pre tests and then you get to skip those sections. You can move ahead to the next grade in certain areas and not in others (if that is what is needed). There are enough games and fun visuals to keep it fresh and fun and enough practice problems to ensure a full grasp.
If your son loves to read, what about the Life of Fred books as well?
We tried to form a group last summer. You can form a group, but we had to have a min number of children, which we could not get in our area during the timeframe of interest. I would call because if you can be a group of 1, that would be pretty nice. (Thanks Aquinas! I'll be checking when our current session runs out).
I'm going to give them a call to inquire directly because the main page I linked for open enrollment doesn't state a minimum number of students per group.The only comment is, "Students can join a pre-existing group (where students in your community have already joined) or create a new group that other students may join." Under FAQs for open enrollment they say, "The Open Enrollment program is available to anyone supported by an adult volunteer who will serve as the School Support Associate (SSA)."
DS's first grade teacher puts him on Adapted Mind Math most days. It is similar to ixl.com but it has optional videos with some/most of the lessons (some of them stolen from Khan). They also can move through it much more quickly than ixl, in that ixl tends to drag kids through tons of questions for each skill. There are also worksheets that can be printed out from each topic. We have the password so he does it at home as well. I was shocked one day when the teacher emailed me and told me to tell him that he needs to use scratch paper because he makes too many computational errors. She was checking his account on her end.
The school paid for the subscription for all the kids in the class. We had an ixl.com subscription for a year but the kids lost interest in it after a few weeks when the novelty of the prize board wore off. They did still do it occasionally after that but it involved bribery. It's really just like online worksheets, it's not a game or particularly interesting in any way. Adapted Mind Math has cute "badges" that kids can earn, but if I didn't have Adapted Mind free from DS's school, I probably wouldn't bother paying for a subscription because Khan Academy is not much different and it's free. It doesn't seem like it's worth the extra cost for not many more features. Same with ixl. Adapted Mind might be better than Khan in terms of keeping kids on task because you can set it to adapt to the child, so the child doesn't have to choose anything. It just keeps going through topics in the correct order based on whether they are answering correctly or incorrectly until the child exits. Unfortunately DS has discovered how to switch the settings and he now picks his favorite topics rather than doing things in order.
If it came down to a choice between paying for another ixl subscription or Adapted Mind Math, i'd choose the latter. DS seems to be much more cooperative with it because it moves faster and there are optional videos. I think they are around the same cost.
DD's (age 8) school doesn't use Adapted Mind Math but she likes Khan Academy and sometimes does it at home. DS sometimes also watches the videos with her. Both of them really like the videos for some reason and DD pokes fun at the guy and makes sarcastic remarks. She goes to the grade level I tell her to go to, and pulls up a list of skills for that grade. They have to get 5 in a row correct (I think Adapted Mind is 6) before passing the skill.
DS took the Khan pretest and scored higher than I thought he would. I am not sure he is ready to learn independently where it placed him, but I guess we'll see. His teachers have been giving him some different written work anyway. They are awesome. But I heistate to ask for anything requiring a subscription, as funds are very limited and DS is not tested yet and has no formal accommodations in math.
DD tried just going along with what it threw at her but it was so random and all over the place. One question would be something from high school Algebra (she's in third grade), and then it would ask her to calculate the perimeter of a square, which she knew already. So I just click on "Learn" and then "Math" and then 4th grade and we are going through it section by section, skipping things that are too easy.