Our latest homeschool product review has been the 12 Month Family Plan by CTC Math. This is a math program that can be done completely online for grades K-12. That’s right, the subscription is good for students from kindergarten all the way to high school!
What Is Included With CTC Math?
CTC Math covers K-12 math and is a complete online curriculum. Each lesson begins with a short video (less than 10 minutes long). Then, the student will either complete online questions or a worksheet to demonstrate their knowledge and comprehension of the content.
The work is scored, and a one-sheet summary is provided. This would be great to print and put into a portfolio, if you are keeping one, as it is very comprehensive. For any incorrect answers, the solutions are shown to help teach the student how to achieve the correct answer if it is encountered in the future.
The program is available any time, anywhere you have internet access. Simply log in, and the student’s progress is saved from their previous sessions. There are many visual cues to help a student to see how close they are to completing a topic, or how well they are doing. As they complete a topic, there is a bar that fills up with color to indicate completeness. Looking closer at individual topics and lessons, it tells them if they are working at a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum level. Students earn and have access to certificates as they complete lessons.
Students can also practice speed skills at any time. For my 3rd grader, there are 4 levels of difficulty, and it goes all the way from just addition facts up to division with remainders and order of operations problems. They can answer as many questions as they can as they race the clock.
If for any reason the student needs to take a diagnostic test on the topic, perhaps to see if they already have mastery in an area before going through the lessons, you can have them take a standard test or a comprehensive test. Again, you will get comprehensive results to this that would be great for a portfolio.
Students get their own log in information, and multiple students on the same family account can work at the same time on separate devices.
There is also a parent log in, with many great resources. For those keeping records, there are printable reports available (either a summary or detailed version) that tell you what topics the students are working on, when and how well they mastered it, their progress with working through the topic, and more. This would be excellent for a portfolio. Parents also have access to certificates that their students have learned. Parents also receive a weekly email for each student with a document detailing what the students have been working on all week, and the results of their efforts.
Here is a video that walks you through it even more:
The Cost
Homeschooling students, and really anyone that needs to brush up on their math skills, can benefit from this online math program. It normally retails for $297 for a 12 month family subscription, which includes 2 or more students. It is on sale right now for just $118.80 for an entire 12 months. That’s under $10 a month for all of your school-aged students.
How We Used the Program
I had my children complete 1-3 lessons per school day. Two seemed to be a great number, and it never seemed to overwhelm them. We used it as our full math curriculum for the past month and a half.
If there was a specific topic I wanted them to work on, I would assign my 1st grader and 3rd grader specific lessons. However, on many days, I would let them choose. I was often surprised at what they wanted to work on, but pleased with how well they did!
My 7 year old son has done well with the video lessons. He has never learned math this way, and was impressed with how much easier the lessons seemed when he had someone walk him through them. So far, he’s only gotten “stuck” on one topic, months of the year, and we’re continuously working on that one with him. It talks not only about the months’ names, but also how many days each month have, and that’s tripping him up a bit.
As far as their reported percentage correct goes on a topic, the score of their last 3 attempts is averaged on there, so I’m having him attempt that lesson each time he does math before the other lessons. He’ll get it!
My daughter is doing the 3rd grade math and has appreciated the videos as she is used to much briefer lessons that don’t necessarily fully explain things. This program has helped her to grasp the specific concepts very well. She loves bragging to me about her high scores, or retrying when the score isn’t high enough for her liking.
My 4 year old enjoyed this program, as well. We used it as a fun extra for him. Since he isn’t a reader, I had to sit next to him and help him with the lesson instructions, but he was breezing through the kindergarten curriculum. He is a complete math whiz, so I wasn’t surprised at all!
That’s the cool thing about this program. You have access to all of the levels. If your student masters one grade level, you can easily move them on to the next!
Final Thoughts
I loved the weekly emails that I got. It was nice to double check when the kids were logging in and what they were working on. At a glance, I was able to see what was giving them trouble.
My kids have enjoyed the program, and we certainly plan on continuing. While I don’t think they can breeze through the whole program before our regular school year is over, I think this is the perfect program to help keep their skills sharp over the summer. I’m confident that by the time they start their next school year, they’ll have the topics in this one mastered, and it’ll be fresh on their minds.
The videos to teach the concepts were very helpful. I like that there are many diagnostic tools, and tons of printable results and certificates. We don’t keep a formal portfolio for the state, but I would like to keep an informal one just for my own purposes. This fits the bill perfectly, and doesn’t take up a ton of paper in the process!
I highly recommend this program to other homeschooling families or any family with a student struggling in math. It just works!
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