It has been my pleasure to review Root 7’s math products over the past few weeks.  I received two flash drives from Root 7:

• Drive one had Math Starters and Problem Solving.
• Drive two had Coordinate Pictures, Problem Solving Strategies and Pattern Blocks.

My son thoroughly enjoyed his chance to work with these fun math products.

Who doesn’t have fun playing with pattern blocks?  They are entertaining and the creators of the pattern block challenges encourage teachers to allow their students time to be creative with the pattern blocks before giving the students their own challenge.  These puzzles help children learn geometry, measurement, fractions, patterns and transformations.  The puzzles vary in complexity from easy to hard, each designed to make the student think, and to realize an important fact: people can have the same answer and arrive at it in different matter.   Five chapters with numerous problems in each one. 

Coordinate Pictures. I have to admit, I found these a lot of fun to do as did my son.  This is putting dots on a grid using a series of coordinates. If you did it correctly, you make a picture of an object. One thing we would love to see the company consider is the element of surprise. It would be fun not to know the object from the beginning. There are 18 pictures in all to discover.

Problem Solving Strategies. This program involves using eight different problem solving strategies to work through the different questions. The problem solving questions are divided into those eight areas or you can mix them up. Each area provides a tutorial, a problem with hints to solve it, as well as a problem with a solution before you get to the actual questions that should be answered.  As I worked through some of these problems on my own, I thought what fun it would be to challenge a group of math loving children with these questions.  I loved how hints were provided to work through them, as well as the answer so you could check to see how you did.  Eight strategies with six problems each, plus 30 problems where a decision as to which strategy to use is part of the problem.

Math Starters. These are thought provoking questions to get children thinking about math.  Divided into numerous categories, like whole numbers, algebra, statistics, geometry and more.  Over 200 questions to challenge and delight your math students. Some are easy—just to get the brain thinking—and others are more of a challenge. My son (age 11) really enjoyed this section. He liked being able to jump around from one area to another. You could chose a specific area that needed to be worked on with your child.

Prices on the website (www.root7.ca) are in Canadian dollars, many of their products are also available on Teachers Pay Teachers: (www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/math-by-Jim-at-Root-7). Prices are in American dollars ranging from free to $17.00.

In Canadian Funds for complete units:

Pattern Blocks $62.50 Individual units $8.50-21.00

Math Starters $39.50 

Problem Solving $39.50   Individual units $4.50

Coordinate Pictures $6.50

I have tell you this, I love this product. Seriously, it’s a whole lot of math fun and learning.  My lad and I have thoroughly enjoyed using this product (other than not wanting to know the name of the item we are trying to discover when practising coordinates).

Finding a way to make it work for your children would be easy to do. Even though the first couple of Math Starters were quite easy, my 11 year found most of the problems sufficiently difficult to make him think. Even through in the easy problems, we had a great discussion about different ways to think about math and talked about math strategies.  You see, it all fits in together if you take the time to let it.

It’s a fun great program, and easily transportable because of the flash drives. You do need to print off the pattern block pages, but much of the rest you could do using graph paper or scrap paper.  Do math, have fun, and continue to learn!

-Product review by Annette Vellenga, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, November, 2016