Monday, May 21, 2012

Ahoy Maties! Get Ready for CapJaxMathFax!

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Ahoy there maties. Welcome to CapJaxMathFax. Captain Jax - CapJax for short - has developed a fantastic game to help you swabbies learn your math facts. After you swab the decks and hoist the sails you can be learning your addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. It's real easy to sail on this here boat. All you do to get you sea legs under you is register your name and you're all set to go. After that you just choose which facts you want to work on, then choose how hard you want the problems to be. If you pick the first level with addition or subtraction then the problems will be 1+1, 2+1, 3+1, if you are working on addition or 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, etc. if you were working on subtraction. With level two you would be working on 2+1, 2+2, 2+2, or 2-1, 2-2, 2-3 and so on. I think you get the picture. Each time you choose a level you have the option of only working on that level, or working on that level and all of the levels below it. It's really easy and I promise they'll be smooth sailing...

Oh for Pete's sake I'm going to stop the nautical terms. I'm too tired and I'm getting sea sick just thinking about it. Actually CapJaxMathFax is just as I described above. A very simple and easy to use program to learn you basic math facts. Joshua has loved it. You can set it on practice mode where you just practice whatever facts you want to practice or you can set it on the "Play for Rating" mode. When you play for rating, you, again, get to choose what facts you want to practice, but only 10 come up in a row. The clincher is that you have to answer within 3 seconds to get credit for mastering that fact. The 3 second time can be adjusted higher for younger students or with students that are having a hard time or lower to give more of a challenge to quicker or more advanced students. You then see your rating on a chart. Joshua is working on his addition facts right now in order to be able to spout them off more quickly without using his fingers. He kept advancing up the chart (your goal is to get to 1000) but has now plateaued and is not advancing much. I'm thinking about adjusting his time limit to give him more of a chance to see success.

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There are also other ways that you can challenge a child. For example, you can click the 12's box and work solely on 12's using all four processes. For example, the problems may include 12 x 8, 12 + 8, 12 - 7 or even a division problem using 12. Or, you could click the "Word Thinkers" box (not shown above) where words show up instead of symbols - 3 increased by 7, 8 multiplied by 9, 12 minus 4, etc. You can even click a box and have your high schooler - yes, this is for all ages - study negatives. The problems might look like this (-8) x (7), or (144) / (-12). You can see how the whole family can benefit from working with this program. I even set an account up for myself and was challenged.

There are charts and graphs so that the parent/teacher can easily see what progress each child is making and even print out for each student, or even for the whole family/class. There are even printable blank charts for a child to fill in with color markers or crayons to show how he is advancing. Really this is a very simple to use, no frills program that has no extras like flashing rewards or fancy graphics, but it is well put together and packs a lot of flexibility into one program. This program would work well for a any child but especially a student that is easily distracted by a lot of extras like graphics etc.



I really like CapJaxMathFax and the price is unbeatable. For $29.95 you get a license for the full downloadable program that can be used on Windows or Mac OS X. Or for $5.95 more for shipping and handling you can purchase the CD version. There is even a full program trial version where you can try the program out with you children before purchasing. Just click here or on any one of the hi-lighted links above to get to the CapJax website.

As usual other members of the TOS Homeschool Crew reviewed CapJaxMathFax and you can find what they had to say by clicking here. Happy Sailing...err...I mean...Happy Homeschooling!

Disclaimer: As a member off the TOS Homeschool Crew I was sent a free download of CapJaxMathFax in order to try out and give my honest review on this blog.

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