My latest review was sent to me from The Trigger Memory Co. I was provided with a digital version of Times Tales to use in our home school. Captain has been the one using this program, although my big kids have watched it as well. Our goal of course is to learn our multiplication facts.
Captain is a very visual learner and so I knew this would be perfect for him. The videos are mnemonic based and really appealed to him. He watched it numerous times and I have definitely noticed a lot of improvement in his math fact speed. The multiplication facts covered are;
Times Tales works by using cartoon style characters that are put together in story form to help teach multiplication facts in a fun engaging way. I actually hadn't started teaching Captain his times tables yet but I had heard a lot about this program and I was intrigued. It seemed a really good way to teach something that is often considered stressful and difficult for children in a fun way. Captain loved the cartoons, he remembers the stories and without much work has started to remember the facts behind the simple 'tales'.
The program is a large file to download. I had no problem with this as we have extremely fast internet and although it took longer than some downloads it went without problem. I was a little sad that I couldn't load this onto my son's kindle or my android pad as that would have been ideal as Captain would have enjoyed watching this in the car while running errands. We had a little problem printing the downloadable files but after a couple of trials and contacting the customer support - which are very helpful we managed to print all the supporting worksheets.
The program works by basically hiding the times tables into short stories that the child can remember easily. So much so that when they recall the story they can also recall the related times table. Captain is quite young and we haven't learned them all perfectly, but he has the first half of the program down. We haven't really spent much time on part two as I have been going a little slower. We are just about ready to jump into that. Each half of the program takes 30 minutes to watch but it does recommend watching part one over until the child has mastered the stories.
Captain really liked playing a dice game that came with the printable files. There are also flash cards, crosswords, and quizzes. We really love this program. Captain enjoys the videos and I know that each time he watches it he remembers the stories better! I can't wait till he starts doing multiplication in his math book and realizes he already knows the facts! I laminated the dice paper and then taped them together so that hopefully they can last a long time.
I asked Captain what his favorite story was - he blurted out - "The sixth grade class played musical chairs for 24 hours - because 6 X 4 is 24, the chair is number 4!" Wow just like that!
I really like the this little preview and it shows how it works - watch the You Tube clip below.
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