TOS Crew Review: Mad Dog Math

Mad Dog Math  is a fun math drill program developed by Julie Kotoff who has been in education for 30 years. She first developed this program to be used in her third grade classroom to help master multiplication and division facts. She soon added addition and subtraction as well.  

In order to learn math easily and effectively a student must have mastery of their math facts. This can sometimes be a hard thing to do. I know. I have three boys and my two oldest are still struggling somewhat with learning these pesky facts. However, Mad Dog Math makes it fun and easy.

Mad Dog Math helps a child gain confidence while learning their facts. It can be used with any math program and it's a great way to help make math drill a little more fun. While Mad Dog Math is geared towards K-5 students, it can be used for higher grades especially if there is a need to reinforce math fact memorization.

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew I was given a chance to try out the Mad Dog Math - At Home 2.7 version of the program. The original Mad Dog Math program was pen and paper drills. This is a PC based program that allows your student to practice their drills as well as track their progress. Either a 32-bit or 64-bit version can be purchased. They even help you figure out which version you need for your computer.

There are four levels included:

• Level 1 addition/subtraction  focusing on 0-18 families
• Level 2 addition/subtraction more focus on 10 – 18  families
• Level 3 Multiplication and Division
• Challenge Level mixed operations drills

I really like how I can check on the progress of the boys as well. It's super simple to log in, just type your name (I love that we didn't have to remember passwords!). Then click on the dog bone that says "progress" and it will show what facts have been mastered. A child isn't moved to the next set of facts until mastery (missing two or less) is shown on the current set.

This felt like a great "no frills" way of learning math facts. The fact that it's called Mad Dog Math certainly had some appeal to my boys as well. None of them balked at using it and (gasp!) some actually asked to use it! This is huge as math is not a favorite subject around here. I could definitely see us continue to use this program.

You can purchase a one year license for Mad Dog Math for $19.99, a two year license for $29.99 or a perpetual license for $39.99. This is a "download-to-computer" program. No actual CD would be mailed to you.

You can try it out for free by heading to their download page and scrolling to the bottom. This will let you try the first fact family in each level so you can get a feel for how the program works.

Be sure to head over to the TOS Homeschool Crew blog to see what other Crew members had to say about Mad Dog Math. 

Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review.  All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.