In October, last year, I shared our introduction to the Steps 4 Kid’s company and their excellent Handwriting DVD’s.  We have had such a positive experience with the handwriting DVD’s and will continue to use them for practice sessions, this school year.  So, you can imagine that I was thrilled with the opportunity to work with the company, again, reviewing their Multiplication DVD.

Steps 4 Kids to Multiply doesn’t bog down the teacher or the student with the need for lots of gizmos and gadgets.  It teaches multiplication facts and rules the way they were taught when our educational system was strong in the U.S.  I love that they understand children learn best when we give them the respect not to dumb things down or convolute the process with new “methods” or expensive and unnecessary extras.  The Step 4 Kids to Mulitply DVD program does exactly what you would expect.  It teaches the multiplication facts, from zero through twelve, and the mathematical rules for the zero property, the identity property, the commutative property, and the associative property.  Students learn to use a times table to check the accuracy of their work.  They also practice the facts in both horizontal and vertical styles, to become familiar with both.

The DVD also provides teacher helps and ideas for helping your math students succeed, plus an entire section on special math shortcuts and tricks.  Some of the shortcuts were familiar, but some were new and even I learned some exciting new ways to speed through certain multi-digit multiplication problems. Throughout the DVD, special clues and tips to help students multiply are incorporated.  Some are as simple as looking at the times table and recognizing that all the multiples of 6 are even numbers, while others provide an actual shortcut method to the answer, for instance being able to multiply any number (even multiple digit numbers) by eleven with an excellent shortcut!

The audio on the DVD is great; and the visuals are engaging enough to hold a student’s attention without distracting them from the task at hand.  Set up to be done as individual lessons, the DVD is not meant to be watched in a single sitting.  It is recommended that students proceed through one multiple at a time until they have mastered it and then move on to the next.  The recommended order for teaching the multiplications facts is: 0′s, 1′s, 10′s, 11′s, 2′s, 5′s, 9′s, 3′s, 4′s, 6′s, 7′s, 8′s and then 12′s.

Steps 4 Kids to Multiply is going to be an invaluable tool in our homeschool, this fall, and I’m guessing it would be a great asset for your own family, too!  We’re big fans of the Steps 4 Kids company; and we can’t wait to see what may be coming next in their excellent educational products line-up!

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Giveaway Rules:

You must be 18 or older and a US resident to enter.  Mandatory entry must be completed before any optional entries will be counted.  Winner will be selected in a random drawing using random.org.  Deadline for entry is midnight (CST), Sunday, August 28, 2011.

Mandatory Entry:

Leave a comment below telling me how you would use Steps 4 Kids to Multiply, in your own family.  Do you homeschool or would you use it as homework reinforcer?

Optional Additional Entries:

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7. Tweet this giveaway (maximum of 1x per day, please).  Win a Steps 4 Kids to Multiply DVD for your family! @busyathome http://busy-at-home.com/blog/steps-4-kids-to-multiply-review-and-giveaway-for-back-to-school-roundup/   Leave a comment below with a link to your tweet.
8. Post this giveaway on your Facebook page.  Win a Steps 4 Kids to Multiply DVD for your family! @busyathome http://busy-at-home.com/blog/steps-4-kids-to-multiply-review-and-giveaway-for-back-to-school-roundup/   Leave a comment below with a link to your tweet.I received a Steps 4 Kids to Multiply DVD, in order to test it and conduct this review.  No monetary compensation was received and a positive review was not required.  As always, at Busy-at-Home, the views and opinions expressed are wholly my own.