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Mouse Math
 
Mouse Math is a
verbal mathematics drill program that gradually uncovers whimsical
photographs as answers to spoken problems are clicked with a mouse.
Setup options allow you to select problem ranges appropriate for young
children, older kids and teens.
Mouse Math requires Windows 95 or later. See below for trial
version limitations and instructions for purchasing the full version.
When he was
younger, my son Pete used many commercial basic math programs, some
shareware and a few programs that I wrote for him myself. By the time
that he was 11, much of this stuff was too babyish for him, and so we
set out to write a new program that he would look forward to using each
day. What we ended up with was Mouse Math.
Although Mouse Math will work in text mode, my primary design goal
was to improve Pete's mental math abilities in the area of spoken math
problems. In school, math problems tend to be written rather than
spoken, and students are encouraged to use paper and pencil to solve
them. That is fine, but, in the real world, the person who can hear a
problem and spit out an answer often has a distinct advantage. Mouse
Math strengthens this ability and also is an interesting alternative
method for drilling younger children on basic math facts.
I have included setup options within Mouse Math that make it
effective for children as young as 3, as well as for teens and adults.
The whimsical pictures that you select in the main Mouse Math menu and
that appear in full as you do the drills seem to kept Pete interested in
using the program for many months.
He did a drill a
day for most of that summer, and enjoyed showing the program to his
friends. At the end of the summer I tried him on standard flash cards
and we were both amazed at how much faster he had gotten
The trial version of Mouse Math is exactly like the real
thing except that
only 5 problem pictures are provided instead of the 15 in the full
version and
you can only do ten problems. After that you must buy the full version
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