Math Rider Review

This past month we had the wonderful opportunity to try out an online maths game called Math Rider.

{ About the product }

     Math Rider is "an intelligent maths facts game" designed to help your child increase the speed at which they can recall their basic math facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

     Imagine - from a child's perspective - playing a computer game to practice learning your addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division - much more appealing to a child than a worksheet.  

     When we received our copy of Math Rider I initially set up a log in for both Chloe { 8 } and Phebe { 6 }.   Since then I also made one for Hannah { 4 } and myself.  Hannah would watch the girls play their games and really wanted to try it out for herself.  The girls love horses so the game was very appealing.

     Once the program is installed it is simply a click and play.  Have each child log in with their individual user name and password.  When logged in the screen will show you how many rides have been done, and how many quests have been completed.  It even shows you percentages for the strands that have been practiced as well.  On the right hand side there are clickable icon links to view "my statistics", or to go to a "practice run", or to start a "new quest", and if you look down below there is an icon link to "continue current quest".  For additional motivation they also provide a quest map to show the child a visual representation of their journey.   It has audio and music in addition to the visual representation of the game.

     Basically the game centers around mini quests where you ride your horse called, "Shadow".  As you ride you must answer all the math questions provided.  It is timed with a set amount of questions for each section of the quest.  The program keeps track of what the child knows and needs to practice, thus enabling the child to practice what really needs to be practiced and passing over already mastered questions.

     There are 4 different areas in which to do the quests.  Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division.  So depending on what you want your child to practice you could just select any area.  To choose what strand and level of difficulty just start a new quest.  The program will also keep track of the play count, the rides count, and the master level in percentages.

     One of the great things about the program is that it allows the parent to see immediately what areas the child has mastered and what is still needed for practice.  No worksheets, or marking, or parental work / teaching needed.  The program does everything and keeps track of everything.  This is the type of product that you could easily replace mental math drill workbooks with.  

     MathRider uses Adobe AIR runtime.  So both Windows and Mac users can use it.  Your computer will also need about 80MB of disk space, and your monitor and graphics card will need to be at least 1024 by 768 pixels.  To see their full requirements just click the little MathRider box below.

{ What we thought }

     Both Chloe and Phebe quite enjoyed using the program.  They still ask to play it.  Hannah, my little just turned 4 year old decided that she needed to try it out too, but yeah, it was a little out of her reach academically, but I can see her using it later on.

     It made doing mental maths work much more appealing and enjoyable, this was clearly seen by witnessing the girls reaction to it.  I also think that it increased response times for their basic math facts as well - especially the addition because that is what they mostly worked on.  The girls are quite keen on continuing with this product - so when you are talking about maths, that means something in our home.  

     It does weave the basic concepts of a fantasy land with magical  elements within the story, but one can easily skip the story component with a click of a button.  We aren't big on fantasy at my home, and we didn't have any problem skipping this area.  It didn't affect the game play at all.  I think they just put it in to make it more appealing to children.    

Check out this short presentation to really get an idea of what MathRider is all about.

   Interested?  Then try their 7 day free trial.  Just sign up with your email - no need for anything else.  Download the full program and try it out fully featured.

{ How much does it cost? }

     For a life time use of the product it's pricing of $47 is an awesome deal - especially since you can use it with all your children in the family { or keep up to 8 of them with an account }.  Oh and it also includes free software updates for LIFE too.

   Thanks for visiting, and don't forget to tour Math Rider for additional information about their product; oh and check out some other awesome reviews on Math Rider as well.

"The Intelligent Math Facts Game"