I was compensated by CTCMath to write this review, all opinions are my own
I am not a math teacher. In fact, it’s one of the subjects that made me nervous to teach in our homeschool setting. I’ve gone back and forth with workbooks, and modules, and just felt like my children weren’t connecting in a way that they could have been if I knew what I was doing.
**One reader of the blog will win one year of CTCMath with an extra 6 months tacked on!**
I mean, teaching elementary math should be easy right? Right. It should, and it can be if you have the right system in place. I’ve only tried two, and today, we’re going to talk about CTCMath, and why I’m using them this year for homeschooling all three children.
CTCMath Curriculum Cost
Let’s go ahead and get the general questions out of the way. A single membership of CTCMath is currently $11.97 per month or a little under $79 for the year. A family membership is $15.97 per month or a little under $119 per year. As of now, this is reflective of a 60% discount, so I’d hop on that right away if you’re reading this after the giveaway ends. Those prices pop up to $29.97/$197 per student or $39.97/$297 per family. You really can’t beat either price, but it’s so much sweeter at 60% off.
Setting Up CTCMath
The parent portal for CTCMath is easy to follow. Going to the parent user guide will give you six videos that will take you from setup of student to creating tasks and reports for your students. It’s a great visual, and I appreciate a curriculum that makes me feel like I’m in complete control of our lessons and learning. No more searching for lesson plans that I left on the kitchen table and accidentally spilled dinner all over – don’t look at me like that – you may have done it too in your earlier years of homeschool.
Adding tasks allows me to create their lesson plans for the week or month, and not have to worry about them if I do travel out of town for a press junket, or farm tour. While I am a stay at home mom, I do work from home and out of it, and need to know that anyone else in charge of my children will be able to at least get them done with lessons for the day.
CTCMath is a progressive curriculum
My greatest fear with teaching math was not going in an order that the kids would understand. I love the fact that CTCMath is taught with a video lesson, and problems to make sure the students have mastered each level. The lessons don’t disappear after they’ve been completed. If you feel that your student needs to try again – or in the case of Lil Miss – THEY feel that they need to try again, you can go back through to redo your work. After completing each lesson, it shows up on the parent dashboard as completed. It took us a while to grasp that, and I may have told children that they hadn’t completed work when they had indeed just tested out of the lessons. I told you folks that I’m not a math teacher.
I had each child start in their age appropriate grade to do placement testing. From there we tweaked where they should be, and moved on daily from there. I can’t believe that I’m about to type these words out, but I actually have to stop them from doing too many lessons in a row. While I love the silence on most days, I don’t want them completing things too fast, and not really processing what they are learning. I did just write that didn’t I?
CTCMath Answer System
While you are working through problems from each lesson, CTCMath lets the student know immediately if they have gotten the answer right or wrong. We did run into some frustration in interpretation of answers in the measuring unit for the younger kids. Since I’m the teacher, I let them know that their answer was right, as long as they were able to properly explain why. However, on questions like what’s listed below, there is no way to explain out of the answer since graphing is clear and concise.
For my children, being able to get a response right away as to whether their answer was wrong or not, allowed them to move forward with confidence, instead of being afraid to see their answer sheet at the end of the comprehensive exam.
With CTCMath, the children have learned that they can go back and try with their lessons as often as they need to, until they are comfortable with the concepts in each unit. Overall, it’s a good fit for our family. Here’s a little bit about the program.
You can enter to win your own 12 month subscription today! Just enter through the link below. If you don’t win, you can enter on CTCMath to try their free trial.
