While we take a relaxed and “living” approach to nearly every subject, math is not always one of them. Not because it cannot be done, it has just not been the most successful with my children. They are understanding the concepts and applying them appropriately, just not very quickly. I have one math loving child, one who “strongly dislikes” math and the others who don’t have much of an opinion. Our biggest need is being stronger with the basic facts recall. Does this mean we will be abandoning our fun games and activities to pull out the text and work books? No!
We will be focusing more time on getting these facts down (or getting them quicker). We won’t be doing flash cards (boring!). We will still be using the fun games and other activities but we will be adding something fun to use for drill – CapJaxMathFax. We have begun with 2 of the children already and will be adding the other 2 who are capable this week. The two who have been testing this with me are the children at opposite extremes in their feelings about math.
They both love using CapJaxMathFax. I was afraid that the no frills wouldn’t be enough to interest my reluctant math girl. It couldn’t be further from the truth. She said she likes that it is not trying to be something else. It is simple math practice and that is all. My math lover enjoys going through as fast as she can and trying to answer in as few seconds as possible. I have even adjusted the “super” time for her.
They are both working towards mastery in their operation and then will move on to another. I may not wait until they have mastery in the second operation before I set them up to be drilling with 2 operations. My math lover should have no problem with that; we’ll see how the others do.
So what exactly is CapJaxMathFax? It is a simple software download to your computer (Windows or Mac). I really like that it is not done online. Our connection can be slow and that has caused some difficulties with timed things in the past. Once you download the program and the key, you are all set. It is very easy to set your child up to practice just the type and set of facts you want.
When your child is ready to start, you will choose to play for rating or not. When you are not playing for rating, it is all practice and not working towards gaining mastery (or badges). When you do select “play for rating”, your progress is shown on a small simple bar graph to the left. The different colors designate the different operations. While in the “playing for rating” mode, windows pop up when you complete a set letting you know your achievements. This encouragement is frequent and much appreciated by those children that think they are never going to “get it”.
Here is a shot of the main window. To know all the options to set up, it is easiest to just see the screen.
All of the options are are right in this main window. It is the same window that you are drilling from. I was worried that my math “non-liker” (she is specific that she doesn’t hate math haha) would find it too busy and distracting. I was delighted when she said she didn’t really notice that stuff – only the important parts.
Once the set is worked through, if you want to change any of the options, you choose “reset”. This had me concerned that it would reset all the progress made, but that is not the case. The only complaint I have with CapJaxMathFax (from a mama’s point of view) is that little things like this can be a bit confusing. When signing up and installing, the directions said to simply put the key in the same folder as the program to keep it all together on your computer. I had not completed that part when I opened the program for the first time. It let me know I was not registered but my free trial was started. I thought I would need to enter that key number in somewhere to activate things. The only additional step is moving that key file to the same folder as the program. That is all that is needed- the program does the rest. I kept thinking I was missing a critical step. Yay!! Nothing too complicated (just a little unclear in the directions). Now that I’ve told you, you wont’ have that problem though, right?
For the ease of use and flexibility, CapJaxMathFax is a great program. For the price ($29.95 annual license with up to 10 users) it is awesome! We will be sticking with this (probably 15 minutes a day, every day — to be tweaked as needed) as long as we can and it is still a good fit. Not sure how it would fit your family? You can try it for free and see!
Other Crew families reviewed CapJaxMathFax, too. Be sure to check out all the reviews. You can find them all from this post on the Crew Blog.
Disclaimer: I received a license to this program for the purpose of this review. I was not required to write a positive review; all opinions expressed are my own.