Math Trek 1,2,3 - A NECTAR Foundation software

Math Trek 1,2,3
From the Nectar Foundations

What is the NECTAR Foundation?
The NECTAR Foundation is incorporated under the Ontario Corporations Act with Letters Patent issued to NECTAR in 1990 by the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Affairs of Ontario. The New Era Classroom, Technology and Research (NECTAR) Foundation, is dedicated to the development of innovative educational programs featuring the integration of interactive technologies and the individualized student programs.

The NECTAR Foundation, with its partners, develops and markets innovative, state-of-the art curriculum-based multimedia software. Its products are marketed and used around the world. A number of its software programs have been licensed for use by large educational jurisdictions such as the province of Ontario, SchoolNet India, South Africa and large counties in the United States

NECTAR develops curriculum-based educational software programs for kindergarten to grade 12. It focuses on Mathematics, Language Arts and Literacy, and Science curriculum.

Visit their website at http://www.nectar.ca/

My Thoughts on Math Trek 1, 2, 3
If you have a child in grades K, 1, 2, or 3 and you are looking for a program who will complement your Math curriculum, I strongly suggest that you enter a toy store own by Fibonacci. Did you know that Fibonacci was a mathematician? I didn’t and it made me curious to learn more about him which is the reason I went on Wikipedia… He is best known for spreading the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Europe as well as a number sequence named the Fibonacci numbers which he used as example in a book titled Liber Abaci.

Let’s return to the review of Math Trek *grin*. This program is geared for students in grades K-3. Yes even if the title is Math Trek 1, 2, 3 you will find activities for kindergartens in there. Fun activities all linked to mathematics!

As I mentioned before the student will enter a toy store to find mathematics activities which are all presented in a form of a toy. How cool is that? This program features patterning and algebra, number sense and numeration, data management and probability, geometry, and measurement. For each of these features you will find a bookshelf and each shelf of it is geared to a specific grade. So as your student completes the activities, you can also track his progress.
The creators of this program made sure that the student would get a clear explanation of the activity before they jump on it. Fibonacci himself, the bear not the mathematician, gives the instruction. Each activity is in fact some fun games to understand math facts. The animation is quite interesting and I find it attractive for the kids. You can see that a lot of work has been done to make it interesting for the young students.

The animation that appears to congratulate my son after completing an activity is something that he particularly likes. I guess the fact that it is different for each activity does help! He already started exploring the toy store and he is quite excited about it. I’m quite satisfied with it since it permits my son to apply what he learned during his math lesson to activities that are realistic like telling time with a clock, calculating how much money you need to buy something, multiplication with bags of marbles and so on…

I haven’t realized that the program all had activities for kindergartners when I asked my oldest to use it. Now that I know I will put my second oldest on it too! He just loves playing on the computer when he has completed his schoolwork. This program will be perfect to apply what he learned.

Math Trek is available directly from Learn with Trek website. It is available in both official languages. Here’s the direct link to this software. http://www.learnwithtrek.com/lwt_mt123.html