*The picture has nothing to do with MathGames.com, but it’s one of my favorites*
April 14, 2024
Review: Internet Tool for Math “MathGames.com”
My son is almost 9 years old. He is a new reader. He loves math but it has to be practical to interest him: okay, practical to an 8-year-old boy.
He runs around throwing footballs to himself, keeping an imaginary score. We hear “21 Gators to 6 Bulldogs, oh, and they miss the extra point!” and other such. Basketball. Baseball. Scores. Stats. Boy stuff. He also helps cook and loves to find fractions in the kitchen. Money math is easy for him and he likes to make change.
However: getting the simplest of graphite scratches in the actual math textbook might as well be mission impossible 11! The textbook and Lucas repel each other.
Video games? Ever hear of Star Ocean on PS1? I call it reading practice. It’s like Zork with graphics… but you do have to read to know what the next move needs to be! That and the “secret” Minecraft books that look like user guides have encouraged him to read.
I had an “ah-ha” moment because he had run to the bathroom at gym and there’s my computer sitting there next to the poor copy of “Arithmetic 2” that someone may mistake for a cleaning rag. I remembered that the girls had a math game they loved called “Math King” on the long-ago tablet.
I searched Math King – the results were not what I wanted; nope.
I found “mathgames.com” and after our few weeks of use, I’ve decided to share this amazing find!
Math Games is an online learning tool that has a free version. There is a “subscribe” option that allows you access to the premium games and such, but what I want is included in the free version.
At the main screen, you see a bunch of actual games with math problems added in. I use those as rewards: Lucas can play one after getting so many stars (details below). For the actual work, you can choose “skills by standard, “skills by grade” or “skills by category” from the menu that reads “practice skills” (upper left corner). Or scroll down until you see the “practice math by grade” and “practice math by category” option menus – they will show you PreK to Grade 8 & concepts from counting and number properties to equations and ratios. Select one.
Each section starts with a first lesson. Each set is broken up into 10 questions. Each question has videos with teachers explaining the concept. (The video button is in the upper right corner on each screen with the green “sound” button and the “scratch pad” button.) There is also a green “sound” button reads the problem and the answers while highlighting each one. Lucas is using this feature to help with reading practice. (I LOVE this feature!) As the user answers, a green check mark pops up for a correct answer or a yellow exclamation point for an incorrect. An incorrect response also makes the corresponding video lecture pop up on the left of the screen. The user earns stars by completing the concept; more correct answers = more stars. After each concept set, the program will suggest moving on or repeating said concept set (depending on the percentage of incorrect answers).
Lucas started with “fractions.” Each time he finished one segment with a 9 or 10 score (out of 10 questions) it suggested the next concept. This continued for almost four solid hours! He moved through fractions, decimals, money, “dice” (what he called the concept of “stats”), and anything else that had “grade 2” or “grade 3” to start with. We’ve been using this new tool for a few weeks whenever we are at gym and he chooses to consider the textbook an enemy.
I realized over the course of Lucas’ discovery into this tool that Lucas has an innate understanding of variables in equations. Everything math seems to make sense to him in strange ways. He would reread the equation with “red bicycles” or “Georgia’s score” or “nickels” in the place of the variable.
Jillian (new algebra student currently using “Algebra 1” by A Beka Book) enjoyed working in the “equations” and “geometry” section. The website breaks each concept down into easily digestible bits. The accompanying videos are in the fashion of “teaching textbooks” explanations, actually solving various problems similar to those in the concept.
Even Kimberly (dual-enrollment college student) sat down to try it. She liked the way it moved through the questions and concepts visually. She asked if there was one for biology (the class she’s taking her final in this week).
Just thought I’d pass along my rather “new” tool discovery.
Thank you for reading!
Type at you later!
~Nancy Tart
