Math is often a struggle in my house. Not so much for my daughter, but my son, currently wrapping up fourth grade, has spent the last several months wrestling with things like word problems and fractions. I do my best to help, to encourage, to elucidate, but the plain truth is I’ve never been much of a math guy myself.
With the long summer looming ahead, I’ve been looking for an effective way to help him continue to hone his math skills as well as–and I’m thinking positively here–maybe even work forward a bit into a fifth grade math curriculum. The more traditional books and games seemed to fall flat, so when I was approached by LoveMath™, GeekDad’s newest sponsor, I figured it behooved me to investigate their program.
GPA Learn’s LoveMath™ web-based math program gamifies the learning experience for grades K-5, with each grade featuring 150 lessons and over 10,000 practice problems. Your child is guided by an animated learning coach that both instructs and gently motivates. There’s even an integrated reward system that allows students to earn prizes for successfully completing activities. You can adjust reward frequency and even tailor them to fit each child’s individual interests via a simple, intuitive browser interface.
This same tabbed dashboard also allows access to each student’s Lesson Summary, an easy way to chart their relative success through each series of exercises. LoveMath™ even provides regular email updates; in addition to a weekly digest message, I routinely receive emails upon lesson completion or, occasionally, updates that indicate my son could use a little additional help with a specific mathematical skillset.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing updates as my own child works his way through the LoveMath™ system, as well as delving deeper into the nuts and bolts of things like its visual progress tracker and reward system. Of course, if you’d like to experience the program firsthand, now’s definitely the time to do so; LoveMath™ is presently offering a $30 discount on the yearly subscription with the code GPAGKDAD15.
