Our Homeschool Studio

Mar. 29, 2010

Galaxy of Education

Galaxy of Education-Math Galaxy
http://www.mathgalaxy.com/

Each CD containing either "Whole Numbers Fun", "Fractions Fun", "Decimal, Proportions, % Fun", "Word Problems Fun", "Pre-Algebra Fun", "Algebra Fundamentals", "Whole Numbers Worksheet Generator", "Fractions Worksheet Generator", "Decimals, Proportions, % Worksheet Generator", or "Algebra Worksheet Generator" is only $29.95. This is software to install on your computer-either Windows or Mac. For $14.95 you can get the e-book for either "Whole Number Riddles" or "Fraction Riddles" which is a portion of the worksheets (riddles) available via the worksheet generators. Our family received free access to download our choice of any of the above offerings. We chose to use "Whole Numbers Fun" and "Whole Numbers Riddles" for the purpose of this review.

Both downloads came through without a hitch and set themselves up smoothly. They came as a zip file. I love using our Mac which unzips everything automatically. I always had difficulty with this on our Windows PC. The Riddles book is easy to use. Just choose and print. My children enjoyed the riddles--especially using the 'code' to fill in the answer. If you need them, the answers are also included right with each worksheet as the next page in the e-book.

When we started using the "Whole Numbers Fun", I was underwhelmed with the graphics. They are very simple and not very 'wow'. What is 'wow' is the way in which my children loved using this. You can choose to answer step by step or just give the final answer. This works great for children who may have different abilities of mental math. You (or your student ) accumulate robots for correct answers. You then can play some games, which are the choices at the bottom of the menu. We only played one of the games--Labyrinth. We chose it first and liked it so well, my children did not want to try any others--yet.

With all of the different types of problems that can be worked with whole numbers, this will work for many of my children for many years. My only problem with the "...Fun" was that it opened filling the whole desktop--like a wallpaper. The dock was on top. The buttons for answering are at the bottom and were nearly hidden by the icons on the dock. This did not come up re-sizable like a separate window. I can fix this by hiding the dock before we open the program--if I remember. I really like that this can work completely off-line. Our internet can occasionally go out and it is nice to still be able to use this. Some of the other math helps we have had this year have been solely on-line. My math-phobic daughter likes doing math on the computer so I would like to let her any chance we get. :)

To read more experiences with Galaxy Math, check out the Crew blog here http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/HomeschoolCrew/773387/

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