Freemples received product to review,
but shares opinions & information honestly.
I'm a little delayed in sharing my review of the web-based computer program,
Splash Math, with you. If you'll remember, we first
introduced you to Splash Math right before Christmas and were looking forward to giving it a try. In this instance my procrastination is to your benefit as I can now say with for certain that the game has staying power...
I should start by telling you that our kids are math lovers. This is bizarre for my husband and I-we both struggled in math all the way through college-but, hooray, go kids that don't know math isn't supposed to be super easy! Loving math is not a prerequisite to loving
Splash Math, though. The only requirement for that is being a kid who loves a talking hippo...what kid wouldn't think was fun?
Math lovers or not, as a parent it's hard to tell a child his screen time is over when he's pleading with you, "No, Mom, just let me do 20 more problems!"
But
Splash Math is not just a game, and this is what I love about it. During set-up, you select your child's grade level. It was encouraging to find the scope and sequence follows very closely with what my 2nd grader knows how to do and/or is learning. As homeschoolers, that's been great because I can let him play knowing it's not too easy or too hard. But if your child is in the school system, it's also a great way to look at what they're learning at school and then give them extra practice on that math topic at home. Once logged in, you can work from the beginning and go straight through, or pick and choose which problems you want to work on.
This short video will give you a better look at how the program actually works...
As you could see in the video, there is a game aspect with each question answered correctly earning points that can then be used to purchase animals to play with in an aquarium or the jungle. Honestly, that's the only part of the
Splash Math program that underwhelms me. My 7- and 4-yr-old love it and race through their 20 questions to get to play with the crabs and giraffes again. But it's pretty elementary, and I can't imagine it stays entertaining forever. I especially can't imagine that someone using the whole program, K-5, would care much at all about that part once they were in the upper grades. Also, our introductory session on
Splash Math had a 20-question limit per day. While I love my kids being able to do as much math as they'd like each time they play, I have to pay more attention that they aren't hurrying through their questions, playing in the jungle, and then forgetting to go back and do more problems.
Overall, we LOVE
Splash Math. I'm certainly not going to be the ones to tell my kids that they're really do school work every time they play. You should let your kids give it a try!
