Math drill. Multiplication practice. Times tables. Doesn’t sound like much fun, no matter what words we use, does it?There are MANY products out there that aim to make basic math facts fun and memorable.
That’s a pretty high goal to aim for, and not all achieve it. Times Alive software by City Creek Press isn’t perfect, but it certainly does an admirable job in being “memorable”.
As I’ve said before, we are saturated in math this year. I don’t mind, as I believe math and reading ability are the two cornerstones of everything else we learn. If we don’t have the framework, the tower of knowledge is pretty difficult to build. With a strong base, Our tower can become anything.
Kids, though, don’t always see it the same way. Though all four of mine are avid readers, they vary in how strong, how “automatic”, their mental math skills are.
This time, my guinea pigs were Doodle, grade 5, and Princess, grade 3. Doodle’s pretty bright, math-wise, but not the type to give a rapid answer to anything, and Princess is picking up math at a crazy rate this year.
They’ve both been familiar with the concept of multiplication since kindergarten, since the math curriculum we were using introduced it then, but I wouldn’t say that either one has the facts down 100%.
Times Alive is unique in that it combines math drill, tests, and coloring pages with animated movies that tell stories for many of the fact pairs.
While I can’t say that my two students memorized every song, they DID go around humming a couple of them for days. (Their older sibs got tired of the tunes very quickly – Times Alive is definitely meant to appeal to elementary ages, and not teens. )
Using Times Alive isn’t tied down to reading ability, so as long as your child is ready to do multiplication, they can do Times Alive. Most of the audio is captioned, but I didn’t find any portions that would have been impossible for a pre-reader to complete.
The music is catchy, and often a variation of a tune we already know. The first song that appears is actually a twist on “Three Blind Mice”, and that has a benefit – it makes it even easier for these songs to get stuck in your head.
And if they get stuck in our heads, we can rest assured that they’ll stick where we want them to, also – down in the subconcious of our children.
Next time they’re working their way through a math worksheet, you might find them humming. I did. And asked why. “It’s the song from that game, Mom! The answer to this one is one and two, so it’s 12.”
No additional purchases are required to use Times Alive, but City Creek Press does offer several additional products to help reinforce what your students are learning. If Times Alive is being used by students who are newly introduced to multiplication, I’d recommend that they move through it at a slower pace, and use other materials to help reinforce the concepts and memory tricks that Times Alive presents.
Since Times Alive is presented in a kid-friendly “game” format, no prep time is necessary, other then scheduling computer time. It’s an appealing alternative to flash cards, and likely to be more memorable in the long-term.
There is one minor thing to watch for, though – when a player is first starting the game, the exact name used to log in needs to be written down. Times Alive does not use a drop-down box or list of current players, so if your student logs in under a different name at a later time, they might think their progress is missing. If this happens, the information can be searched for by following instructions in the user manual.
That’s information that I would have appreciated when we first started using the program, as my kids have a tendancy to switch back and forth between their first names and their nicknames, and no one can ever remember which one they used at any given time.
Despite the minor inconvenience that issue causes, I highly recommend Times Alive. It’s made a measurable difference in the retention of multiplication facts, especially for my 3rd grader, who is consistently getting better scores in her regular math curriculum.
Times Alive may be purchased from City Creek Press:
- Times Alive – Windows (software download) – $44.95
- Times Alive – Macintosh (software download) – $44.95
- Times Alive CD-ROM for both Windows and Macintosh -$48.95
Prices vary for the optional, but related, products in the Times Tables The Fun Way series.
If your students aren’t quite ready for multiplication, City Creek Press also offers an addition series, called Addition The Fun Way.
To see what other crew members had to say about this product, check out the TOS Homeschool Crew blog post, City Creek Press – Times Alive!
**I received this product for free as a member of the 2010-11 The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew so that I could provide you with an honest review of it by our family.**
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