Mathletics ~ A 3P Learning Review

An international online educational innovator, 3P Learning is the home of Reading Eggs which has been instrumental in teaching Xavier how to read.  Both boys tested out of the Reading Eggs partner site, Mathseeds back when it was new.  They loved it and wanted to subscribe even though it was below their abilities.  I wanted them to be able to play fun, educational math games online, so the chance to review Mathletics online math came along at a great time for us.  I was happy to volunteer them for this curriculum.

Over 4,000,000 students access Mathletics through public, private, 

and homeschools around the world.

The first thing I want to get right out of the way.  This site is HUGE, like unbelievably so.  I will not be able to tell you everything from this site in this one review.  Why?  Well, we only did second grade and it was so in depth there is just no way I could tell you about everything that is available from K-12 grade.  I highly recommend gong to the other Schoolhouse Crew Reviews and checking the linky for information about the grade(s) in which you are interested.

I was sent several PDF files with instructions and need to know info about Mathletics.  The first was a Welcome to the Family Guide which showed me how to set up the parent account and manage the student accounts.  Another Mathletics guide was an instructional manual for the primary student console/control panel.  Here they learn basics like logging in, setting up their avatars, and all about earning points and gold bars.  All of the most important parts of the console are explained and illustrated.

After logging in and setting up accounts for Mal and Xav, I needed to select a grade and course for them.  In the US, for grade two the options for a course were

• Common Core State Standards (which is selected by default) 
• CA
• DoDEA
• FL
• IL
• TX TEKS
• VA
• WA state

There may have been a few more, but my head was swimming from all of those options.  I had no idea what to choose.  Whatever I chose seems pretty difficult for the beginning of second grade (to my mind anyway), but I don't dare change it since you are allowed to make up to six changes per year.  I need to ask around a bit and see if I even want to change it.  I'd guess that those courses mean way more to public school teachers than to a homeschool family.  We are working our way through things and just trying to get concepts down. 

You can select easier or harder buttons on individual activities without changing the grade.  They will show similar content about one year behind or ahead.  There is also a ? button to select for assistance if you are stuck.  This help section walks you through the steps to solve every type of problem on this entire site.

Once we were chugging along, we accessed some of the printable workbooks that are available.  There are over twenty student workbooks for second grade alone.  Add in the teacher's answer booklets and assessments, and you have one incredible workbook curriculum.  Sorry, kids. You can't earn gold bars for those pages!

A workbook page, a help screen, and Monkey Math from the Problem Solving section.

Rainforest maths is a colorful extension of Mathletics.  Grades K-6 have access.  Rainforest Maths covers numbers, algebra, space, and measurement at grade appropriate levels using fun, jungle critters.  Xav had to start learning division the other day solely because of the dragons eating the bugs.

Second grade homepage

Other nice additions include the Animated Math Dictionary.  Here, under the Concept Search section, we can look up any concept and see an example drawn or written on the screen.  At the primary level are the Times Tables Songs.  Xav loves to sing.  These will be super helpful for him.  I think Mal will also benefit from hearing them all the time!  Another part of the Problem Solving section has a fun area lab.  Xav liked this one a lot.  There are tons of activities in that section.

Animated Dictionary, Times Tables Toons, Area Lab

Concept search is another alphabetical math search engine.  I liked this one because it showed several ways to say/do the same thing.  The 24-hour clock showed the time in digital, analog, and 24-hour display.  For "more than" you could click four buttons illustrating more than, less than, most, and least.

More than and the 24-hour clock.

Mobile
We downloaded the Mathletics student app onto our Kindle Fire.  Mal used the app more frequently while Xavier used the laptop.  A few times, we would select an activity and get a message that the activity was not available on mobile.  Once, all three of the bars I had assigned to Mal had the message.  That meant he could not go further because assignments have to be completed before anything else.  I needed to log into the teacher/parent account and edit the tasks I had assigned to him so he could complete things, then I logged back out and logged Xav back into the laptop.  Other than that, we had very little trouble using the Mathletics app.  I do love having two ways for them to do math, so no one had to be waiting for their turn to use Mathletics.

Reports
Back when I set up the accounts, I selected the box "email weekly report" and I receive one for each boy every week.  A lot of information is included in this report.  I can see how many times they logged in, the total time spent, and points earned.  A Did you know? section offers helps you might find interesting.  I can also see how many gold bars were earned, what activities he did, and how he scored on each one of them.  I was even able to see when Xavier had logged in and monkeyed around while I had Language Arts with Malachi.

How many times logged in, time spent on the site, points and certificates, activities with grades, and how many precious gold bars.

Mathletics is intended as a supplement, but I think with all of the workbooks, extra sections, and the ability to change grades when needed, you could get a complete math education, at least in the primary grades.

Age: K-12
Price: $59

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