Product Recommendation

I have struggled to get my 4 kids to memorize math facts, especially multiplication. I am not a home school mom, but I am a mom who schools her kids at home...lol...which means I send my kids to public (albeit a charter) school. When they get home or have holidays (we are on a 3 week one now). I take opportunity of the time to reemphasize things I see that are lacking.

I started yesterday and had a plan...girls Science (using school curriculum and solar system). I was the earth and we orbited my kitchen dining room and the light over the stove was the sun! I will have you know I was also rotating on my axis. I almost puked from being dizzy, next time I will be Pluto! ha ha The girls were so cute following me in the orbit! We had a blast.

Now in between my 2nd son, Gman was STRUGGLING again with 2 digit multiplication. We have gone over and over this...I mean pages and he would get it and out the ears it would go! I have him do the problems on graph paper due to his horrible sloppy math writing. (this I really believe was due to his eye problems, but we have a handle on that now, so I am a task master now). After going over a few problems, again and again. We broke it down by steps and he knows the concept, the main problem being his multiplication! It it is 7x4, he writes out 7+7 til he gets 4 times? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, no way Jose'! I told him and the girls, and my oldest if he is game(he is 12 and has a good handle, but could use the help too) that my goal is by Jan 12, 2009 (back to school day) they would know their multiplications.

I went to my hubby and asked for money if it is needed...he totally agreed! I started searching on line...saved lots of worksheets (which I will still use) from Math Drills. Than I found this amazing site. The whole reason for this post.

BigBRAINz is the site, and it has a game for learning multiplication. The game is TimezAttack. There is a preview for the game...oh my gosh....I had Gman sit next to me to watch the preview! He was glued to it! There is a full game you can buy for $39.95 (if you refer 4 people (on honor system) you get $10.00 off. I have linked the picture or go to BigBrains

But wait.......................................

There is a free 30 day demo! FREE and full demo, the one that cost has some extra features and things to do for fun, different rooms etc. We downloaded last night. It goes from numbers 2-12 and Gman and the twins all conquered the 2's. (my oldest has a tummy virus, so he is a bit blah, but is going to challenge the levels to see if he can do without doing the actual game, but has to wait til we get to the numbers he is weak in).

This is a fast moving game, hilarious...the orge scratches his butt, which sends my kids into giggle fits. It works long term and short term memory and it is fun, my hubby and I watched Gman thru the whole first level. I wanted to recommend to you that struggle with this for your kids. It is free and it is so fun. We told the kids if they beat all the way to the 12 orge, we would buy the whole game with the added things which they saw in the video, lava room, big crawlie spiders and adventures!
We are on to 3's today, 4's Christmas eve and I told them, if they are good they can play it on Christmas and try the 5's but that depended on how the day went....they want to play this game! Please at least look at the preview game with your kids next to you...
When my son Gman yelled yes after getting the answers right and was mumbling the right answer after he got the answer wrong....I was sold!