A Favorite Verse

Sabbath’s sermon had this verse in it-Deuteronomy 30:19
“I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore CHOOSE LIFE, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
Pretty simple-choose life and live, choose anything else and die. In choosing nothing, you have made your choice. What is your choice?
Joshua 1:9 “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve, but as for me and my house, WE WILL SERVE THE LORD.”

Math Rider-Galloping Toward Math Retention

MathRider was born out of a father’s need to help his son learn math facts. This downloadable computer game allows each child to perform at his pace. The student chooses between addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division . Then, the choice of easy, medium, or hard quest must be made. Once the hard quest is completed, a master quest is also available. For my quest, I chose multiplication then began jumping my horse over hurdles as I answered correctly. I passed lovely scenery, but was too busy answering problems to notice much. My son did notice faces in the trees, rocks, and mountains. This program has the ability to give problems faster or slower depending on the student’s speed in answering. I tried answering slowly and sure enough, the hurdle problems slowed down. This was helpful to my daughter who gets stressed in games. She actually liked this game, especially the fantasy storyline within the game. The storylines are the same for the different operations ( +, -, X, / ).

The company suggests starting the child off with the easy quests and allow them to work up to the harder ones. This is very important as students could become frustrated otherwise. The focus is to rate the highest mastery possible. The rewards are animated based on the percentage of mastery. A scoreless than 75% receives the award without animation. This seems a fair way to encourage mastery learning. The award for the medium race was an elven gem. Another reward was a magic flower The more hurdles or obstacles cleared without a mistake, the more extra credit points are received. Extra points help to complete the quest faster.

A statistics screen allows the parent and student to visualize which problems have been mastered by turning the fact green. The yellow facts still need a little work-perhaps were answered more slowly. The red facts were missed again and again. In just a minute, the parent views just which problems give difficulty.

My 2nd grade son, who is actually doing 3rd grade math, did not care much for this game. The problems he did not like are 12 + 6, 13 +3, etc. He said it confused him. The regular problems like 4 + 8 were fine. I would rather they focus on addition facts from 0 -10, because mastery of those helps solve the rest. Because he was on the quest, he did not stop to think of the problems that way as he does when he sees them on a math worksheet. My oldest son thought it great fun, but he knows all his multiplication facts well, so it was pretty easy for him. His multiplication time score ranked him higher than me. Grrrr.
MathRider can be bought for $37 and is downloadable immediately to your computer. Purchase at www.mathrider.com I still have not decided that I will purchase this, since my younger son is the main one who would use it. The rest of us use it for fun or practice our mastery. I do like that the simplicity of the game encourages me to complete my quest, yet does not have wasted game sequences like so many math games available. This game should help a child learn his math facts.
View this youtube video to actually see the game in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNtyRyHFOXs
I received MathRider as a member of the TOS Crew to use and review. I received no other compensation for this review. I give my honest opinion. Find other crewmembers reviews of Math Rider at http://homeschoolblogger.com/homeschoolcrew/783766/