Facts First – TOS review

As part of the TOS crew, I received a three month subscription to Facts First.  I have been blessed with several math programs to review as part of the TOS crew recently.  At first I was overwhelmed but then I realized that this is a great place to be when I have a child who is struggling with a certain area of math.  Facts First is an online subscription program.   If you haven’t heard of it, I’m sure you have heard of the company that makes it.  It comes to you from the makers of Saxon which a huge name in math for homeschoolers.  

The student begins by creating their character for the game.  This was definitely my kids favorite part of the program.  As you earn points by finishing levels, you can buy different items for your character.  Bella bought a guitar and Griffin bought crazy hair.   

The lessons consist of five basic segments; new facts, commutative property, practice, quiz, and scoring.  New facts are introduced very gradually.  My kids honestly got bored with the repetition of the same facts over and over.   There are two new facts in each unit.  Your child has to achieve mastery before going on to the next unit.    There are more than 360 activities to help them learn their math facts. 

After each lesson, your child gets to play in the arcade for a set amount of time.  My kids really liked this aspect.  The only thing that they didn’t like was that even during the arcade time you have to answer math problems and it takes away from your time to play.  With only a few minutes of arcade time, the review shouldn’t count toward this.   Both of my kids favorite game was the Find the Difference game.  You have to find 5 things that are different in two pictures.   I had a hard time finding them at times but the kids loved this. 

I liked that there is a matrix that for parents to keep track of what the student is mastering.  The kids also like to see this chart filling up as they learn each fact.   We had a lot of fun playing with this program.   The parent section was very easy to understand.  You can practice addition, subtraction, multiplication and division so this is a complete practice program for fact mastery.   This program is a great complement to any math program you are using.    For $49.99 you will receive a year’s subscription to the online program.  You have up to four children for this amount which I feel is a fair price.   Please check out their website to see if this might be what you are looking for to help your child master their math facts. 

**  Please note **  I received a three month subscription at no cost to Facts First in exchange for my honest opinion in this review.  No other compensation was given to me.

Please click here to see what my fellow crew members had to say about Facts First.