Portable Math with Math-U-See Digital Packs

Math is a touchy subject in our home even though one daughter would say it’s her favorite subject, and the other daughter is really good at even though she wouldn’t say it’s her favorite. For our oldest daughter, we figured we would give Math-U-See by Demme Learning a try when it became available for review. She is our daughter who enjoys math even though not all components of it come easy to her.

Before reviewing Math-U-See Zeta, we had never used the program before so it was completely new to both of us. We received the complete physical set for Zeta including the manipulatives, instruction manual, student workbook, and assessment book, and instructional DVDs. We also received the Zeta Digital Pack. The Digital Pack provides 12 month access to the same instruction as the DVDS along with digital manipulatives, PDF instruction manual, and lesson instructions.

Our oldest daughter used the Zeta student workbook and the digital pack during the course of the review.  This made using the program more flexible and required less material for teaching the lessons.

If you have never used Math-U-See, I must tell you that it is not the same as a spiral math program because it is mastery based.  Each unit of Math-U-See focuses on a specific topics. The primary concepts taught in the Zeta program are decimals and percentages.  This doesn’t mean that multiplication, division, and so on are not represented in Zeta, but it does mean that the computations are expressed primarily as decimals and percentages. One does have to have solid understanding of foundational math which leads up to decimals.

The instruction for the program is video based meaning I do not have to teach her although I docheck for understanding before sending her off to do the daily assignments.   Zeta is comprised of 30 lessons beginning with Exponents and ending with Angles.  My daughter began each lesson by watching Mr. Demme using the online digital pack on an android tablet.  The digital pack works best on Firefox or Chrome.  She uses the Chrome browser on her tablet.  This also makes it possible for her to do math wherever she wanted since the premise of Math-U-See is to help learners build understanding by actually seeing the math happen.  It is important for her to have access to the manipulatives. 

My daughter is not a fan of manipulatives or illustrating her math.  This has been a struggle since forever.  This is also something that she actually needs to do to help her to build her understanding of specific math concepts. She has a desire to just know it, but there are some things that she just has to work at understanding.  Because of this struggle, I am grateful that the manipulatives are accessible in digital format because she was more likely to use them.  I can say by using the manipulatives it has helped her to slow down and think about why she is doing what she is doing versus answering from memorization or rote behavior.

Math-U-See Digital Pack is a great addition to our math arsenal. It has helped my daughter to gained deeper understanding of math concepts without forcing her to use physical manipulatives which are her least favorite.