Larson's Leapfrog Math

Meridian Creative Group has recently released a new mathematics instructional series. CD's are available for grades 3, 4, 5 and 6 and will shortly be available for grades K-2. "Leapfrog Math" teaches basic math skills required at each grade level in a sequential manner which assures your child has mastered one topic before moving on to the next.

"Leapfrog Math" is set up to follow the typical schoolroom method of 'teach, test and re-teach.' Your child will first sign in so that accurate records of his or her progress can be kept. This record keeping requires a floppy disk drive as well as the CD-ROM. Approximately one dozen topics are covered at each grade level. In the Grade 4 program your child will cover geometry, multiplication, division, fractions, adding and subtracting fractions, bar and line graphs, whole numbers and decimals as well as adding and subtracting of decimals. Your child will progress from "Rookie" through five levels until he reaches the rank of "Master." At this point he will be tested again to make sure he has retained everything taught in previous levels. Your child can choose to progress from Rookie to Master in one subject at a time, or complete the Rookie level in all subjects before advancing to the next level. This allows some flexibility as to how you choose to use the program. I would suggest covering all subjects at each level as many skills begin to build upon each other in upper levels.

In each level a video is presented which teaches the applicable skill. These are short animated videos which are fairly well done in most cases with a few notable exceptions. Once your child has watched the video clip, he will be asked to answer several multiple choice or fill in the blank questions in order to demonstrate mastery. The testing section seemed a bit too short in my opinion. A few of the video clips such as the one introducing fraction simplification and multiplication of two and three digit numbers were poorly done. They were too "wordy" and I feel many children would feel overwhelmed. Even though I already knew and understood these concepts, I felt a little bewildered. More visual input and less auditory input would have been helpful. Keep this in mind if your child is a strong visual learner. Although the instruction is on the screen in front of them, it is very auditory in nature.

This program will see to it that your child learns everything that would normally be taught at a given grade level. Although it is more engaging than a textbook, I don't feel this is a program your child will rush back to on his own. This is a program which will need to be assigned to your child and followed through with on your part. It will do an adequate job of covering the basics. It lakes creativity and active participation however, and much supplementation should be used. I don't think most kids will work through this program and come away with a love of math. You will need to use other games and activities to reinforce the enjoyment of math. If you are looking for something that is close to a computerized textbook but with a little flair and multimedia pizzazz, this program will fit the bill. It is very expensive in my opinion and should be purchased for classroom use or for a home where the parent is looking for something very sequential in nature.

Larson's Leapfrog Math Grading:

Educational value- 4
Entertainment value- 2 1/2
Use of medium- 2 1/2
Age- K-6

You can purchase this product directly from the manufacturer at http://www.meridiancg.com/