Mighty Math: Zoo Zillions

Edmark has added yet another smash hit to it's Mighty Math series! Zoo Zillions is the companion program for Carnival Countdown. This program is for kids ages 5-8 and covers all basic skills through second grade. I have been thrilled with this series so far, and this new program meets all of my expectations.

Five areas allow your children to learn skills related to numbers, money, 3-D shapes and basic computational skills. Every problem in the program is hands-on in nature and virtual manipulatives abound. It is much more effective to learn how to count money when you can pick up and move real looking coins. Granted, this is one step away from touching them with your fingers, but it is a far cry better than those mimeographed worksheets I used to pass out in my teaching days!

In the Gnu Ewe Boutique your child will help Allison the elephant run her store. Your child must learn to recognize coins and money values, add and subtract amounts to $9.99 as well as choose items for the customers to purchase. This has been a great exercise for my five year old who is just learning money value. In one activity a customer walks in with a given amount of money and asks your child to help him decide which item he can afford to buy. There are few programs on the market which teach money, so this is a great one to add to your arsenal.

Hop on a virtual train and your child becomes the engineer. There are passengers to be picked up and dropped off up and down a number line. At first they are simply learning to move around the number line. After their skills improve they will be asked to make trickier transfers. At one point they may be at stop number 710 and be asked to travel 11 stops forward, or 15 stops backwards. A question and answer or free explore mode are available for this activity.

Eddie's Aquarium was one of our favorites in that we are currently building a real aquarium at our house. Story problems are usually just that... "problems." Here Eddie calls them "fish stories." Various fish are added or subtracted from the aquariums. The problem is then shown to your child both as a written "story" and as a number problem. Skills such as basic calculations through simple multiplication are taught by Eddie. A question and answer mode is available as well as a free explore mode. In the free explore mode your child will be able to create his or her own "stories." This is a great activity.....I wish our own aquarium was as easy!

In the 3-D Gallery your children will learn spatial relations and shapes. While playing with the Otter Twins, they will use a 3-D stamp pad and watch video clips. This is a great start in basic K-2 geometry.

Last but not least is the Jungle Trail Game. I would not recommend having your child start with this activity. The board game seemed like a great reviews, but the skills moved too quickly for my smaller children to keep up with. Try to get your kids to save this game for later. One or two players can play this game as they move around the jungle. After spinning the spinner they must answer a math question correctly to continue down the trail. Many of skills learned in other areas are reviewed here as well as rounding, mental math, skip counting and odd and even practice.

Zoo Zillions is a wonderful program regardless of your teaching method. It can be used very casually or can be used with the monitoring devices included. It is easy for a parent or teacher to see exactly which skill is being worked on and what skill will be taught next. The program will increase in difficulty automatically. A parent can step in and adjust the skill level on any game very easily. This entire series is well constructed and follows very sound math teaching principles. It comes highly recommended from our house!

Grading:

Educational value- 5
Entertainment value- 4
Use of medium- 4
Age- 5-8

While Amazon does not carry this program, you can get it directly from Edmark at http://www.edmark.com/prod/math/zoo/