Review: Math Made Simple

I recently did a review for a friend from Hearts at Home.  I thought I'd share it with you guys!  Enjoy!

Math Made Simple Review

We were very excited to be able to review Math Made Simple.  I must confess that math is my son’s favorite subject, so in that way only, our review is slightly biased.  However, my 11 year old is reviewing (with me) the Algebra package, so it was a bit of a challenge. However, after watching the demo, he was hooked and wanted more.  

We found each lesson to be easy to follow, with step by step instructions, adding new, more challenging concepts one at a time.  This gave the opportunity to conquer one thing before moving on to a new concept.  I think my son’s biggest complaint was that the lessons were long.  They are each about 50+ minutes.  We would complete about half of the lesson a day.  It is easy to break down the lessons, because there are “sections” of each lesson which make it easy to find a stopping place. 

The lessons are arranged such that they are made up of mostly practice problems. The teacher (of whom you only see her hand) shows a problem, and solves it, step by step, on the video.  My son would pause the video and try to solve the problem.  Then he could see exactly where his mistakes were and remember to correct that before the next problem.  At the end, there are review problems which mix all the concepts together.  The explanations are also given for these.  The first lesson in the series had a lot of vocabulary which was very necessary for completing the problems and understanding the explanations in the rest of the videos. 

What is nice about this curriculum, is that it can make a great stand-alone curriculum…especially for people who are afraid of higher level math (you know who you are;).  In addition, each lesson is sold separately at a very affordable price so that if you need a supplement, a different person/way to explain a concept, a few more practice problems with explanations, or even just a break from being the math teacher for a lesson or two, you’ve got options!  The packages are a great deal too. The lessons never expire and are transferable to your other children, which makes the great price even better. 

                                                                                               

Thoughts from the student:   The teacher is easy to understand and she tries not to make it sound boring.  I like how they don’t give you a few examples and then give you 100 identical problems to do on your own.  The only thing that would make it better would be if the teacher told some jokes.  Overall, I’m enjoying the curriculum, because it’s math, and it sounds interesting.  

You can check out their website here.  

*It should be noted that the opinions expressed here are my own.  I have not been compensated for this review.  I have been given the curriculum to keep for review purposes.