Review:Math Tutor DVD's

I recently was sent at the beginning of the year 2 DVD's to review for the TOS Crew. They are so different yet both have been useful to my homeschool.

The first one that I choose to write about today is "Young Minds and Counting." This was a delight for my toddler to watch a few times in the last month. He is just learning to read letters and numbers, although has difficulty saying words. This DVD is full of awesome photography of animals, insects, trees, insects as well as trains, dump trucks and even boats. The young child counts the objects on the screen and then it changes to a different picture with the same number. The Learn to Count from 1-10 is actually a pleasure to let my toddler watch in preference to some of the other popular things that are on television these days. My children's TV and computer time is limited so I make sure they watch reliable shows when they do. If you have a 'little person' in your home from 2-5 years old who is just beginning to talk or learn their numbers and ABC's then this is a wonderful resource for you to use. The music playing along with the numbers and pictures is taken from various famous writers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, Brahms and Chopin. I am so thankful that my child is being exposed to this kind of music at a young age. The cost for this DVD currently is $19.99 and well worth it if you have a few little ones coming up in the ranks or you can give it away after you are done with it to bless another family.

The second DVD is called "The Basic Math Word Problem Tutor." This is a set of two DVD's which is an 8 hour video course. The instructor of the course is easily understood as he guides the student through word problems on the screen in an extremely thorough manner. We were able to watch the parts applicable to my second grader which covered adding and subtracting whole numbers. I have viewed parts of the multiplication and dividing whole numbers lessons and they are also covered thoroughly. When my son does get to studying those himself I will allow him to review using this DVD. This 8 hour video course covers the following math requirements in a math word problem format:

• adding, subtracting, multiplication and dividing of whole numbers



• adding and subtracting decimals



• multiplying and dividing decimals

Disk 2 of this set contains this information in word problem format:

• Adding and subtracting fractions



• multiplying and dividing fractions



• Percents, Part 1 and 2



• Ratio and Proportion

As you can see from the above I am sure this DVD can be used for review by a student from Grade 2 through to Grade 7. When the instructor is presenting the information on the screen he does not leave anything to chance but he is clear and repeats things once or twice to make sure he is understood. I like this in a teacher even though it annoyed my son who catches on to math very quickly. Your student will not get lost but might be waiting for the instructor to compete the question before he is finished explaining all the details.

On the website http://www.mathtutordvd.com/ there are other DVDs available for calculus, trigonometry, algebra and physics. The DVDs are priced at $26.99 currently and a companion worksheet CD is available for most of the courses for $24.99 each. The companion CD has plenty of practice problems for your students to work on that are presented in PDF format for immediate printing.

I copy this statement from their website to let you know how enthusiastic the instructor is about his product and why he teaches it:

"I personally get a thrill out of making seemingly complex topics suddenly easy to students. I have found over the years that the easy way to do this is to learn by working example problems, beginning with the easier ones and gradually progressing to the harder ones."

This tells me as a parent that he is wanting your student/child to succeed and therefore presenting the problems in every possible way to fully cover the subject and encourage understanding all the way through the problem is a plus in my book. I am not very wise at math and never have been but with help from Tutors like Jason Gibson my sons should be able to understand concepts that I can not clearly explain to them.

I do not like using computers and DVDs a lot for learning because I think boys need more hands on but have found success with this particular product in the case of my 8 year old kinesthetic learner. If you would like to read some more opinions and reviews from my fellow crew mates on this product please hop on over to the crew blog at this address:

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/HomeschoolCrew/753926/

The above review is my own personal opinion. I was sent this product as a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew for 2009-10. I have not been paid for this review.