Learning Math With ALEKS

I keep this blog for me as a reminder of our days and weeks and months and years. It is such a delight to look back over the photos of my precious children and reminisce about their unique, creative learning processes.

I went to college to become a math teacher hoping to change the world for good by helping students ENJOY math and see it in all its' practicality. My husband has a BS in Math so you can see that we LIKE math in our house. I find that I'm attracted to crafts that involve lots of math...formulating recipes for soy candles and lip balm, crochet, sewing and quilting. It is a good day in my mind, if I have to use algebra to solve for an unknown in my measurements!

Basic life skills include communication and computation. At the core, communication requires reading and writing and computation involves basic mathematical functions. In the grand scheme of life, a person needs these tools to move their education forward. The how and when are debated feverishly throughout humanity. 

We started our homeschool journey under the heavy load of a lot of curriculum which included a math curriculum. Recently, I realized the repetitive worksheets were really just busy work and set them aside for a time.

Shortly thereafter, a friend mentioned ALEKS. I'd heard about it when some friends used ALEKS to pass required college level classes so I thought it was only for advanced math. I was so wrong! I just wanted to post about ALEKS because though I limit screen-based activities, this is really worthwhile in my opinion.

I signed up for the 60 day free trial. I told Daniel the only requirement for the 60 days was to visit ALEKS everyday and do a minimum of one problem. He has done that-and MORE. In a few short weeks, he's spent over six self-motivated hours of interactive, self-assessing math with a high level in enjoyment.

Here's what I like about ALEKS:
-FREE 60 day trial (thank you!)
-student decides what to work on
-knowledge base divided into "pies" (student selects topics to explore)
-no boring explanations or lessons (if the student misses a question, they click the HELP button to find out how to get the right answer, "reverse engineering" is a great way to learn!)
-no lifeless, repetitive drills

I expect to sign up for the paid subscription when the trial is over. ALEKS offers a way for homeschoolers to master math concepts in a student-directed way that I appreciate.