Learning Through Play: A Review of Matific Galaxy

Our son has been having a blast practicing and reviewing his math skills using Matific Galaxy—an online math resource for grades K-6. He has been working his way through unlocking ten different planets in the Matific Galaxy. This allows him to practice a number of different math skills through a variety of games.

For each level, our son needed to complete online math games in order to collect all the pixels necessary to unlock characters. Once the characters were unlocked, our son was able to dress the characters using the different outfits he won as prizes as he continued working through the different math games.

What is Matific Galaxy? 

Matific Galaxy is available for both the desktop and as an app for electronics such as tablets and phones with hundreds of fun math games. There are over 1,500 activities available across grades K-6. You can even try out Matific Galaxy before you purchase to see if it is the right fit for your homeschooling family.

In general, Matific Galaxy can be used almost entirely independently by your child. Our son was able to navigate most of the learning games without help from me. There were only a few activities which he had to ask me about and a few games where he needed assistance multiple times (example: Lucky Stars and Draw A Line). There are also audio and written instructions to help your child work through the planets, activities, and information by themselves. So, when our son let his sister take a turn, she could figure out the instructions even though she is not able to read everything yet.

I quite liked helping our son play this game. It is a lot fun to figure out which cards to use to collect the stars.

Be sure to check out the FAQ page if you have any questions and visit the site to try some of the learning games for yourself. When we were first told about the possibility to review Matific Galaxy, I asked our son to check out the site and try the games for himself to see if he liked it. After only a few minutes, he said he would like it if we got to review Matific Galaxy.

What Topics Has Our Son Been Practicing? 

The first grade topics practiced and reviewed include 60 different skills:

• Dusty: counting, addition 
• Kai: geometry
• Jung Jung: counting
• Blaze: counting, addition, basic fractions, subtraction 
• Rocky: counting, addition, numbers measurements 
• Icy: addition, counting, data analysis 
• Sweetie: measurements, counting, subtraction, patterns, numbers, addition, basic fractions
• Nickel: addition, problem solving, measurements, counting, subtraction 
• Sir Goldy: numbers, subtraction, addition, mixed operation, geometry 
• Queen D: addition, numbers, geometry 

The motivational messages are fantastic!

What Did Our Son Think? 

Since first playing, our 6-year-old son asks almost everyday if he will have a chance to play on Matific Galaxy. In addition to working on my laptop, I also let him play via the app on my phone. He will happily sit solving math problems and practicing his addition and subtraction.

"Turn Screen Time Into Learning Time"

Our son had so much fun the first day after we set up the accounts, he played for quite a long while. And when we downloaded the app to my phone, he was ecstatic!

One of his favorite learning games was with the first planet—Dusty: Get the Picture. He needs to correctly assign the bows, necklaces, and glasses to characters in a line by following ordinal directions. When everyone is wearing the correct article, a photo is taken of the Class of 2019.

Another favorite was Robot Lift-Off, where students need to add the number of robots (there are two different kinds). When the amounts are chosen correctly, the robots go onto the space ship and take off. Before this, they do a little dance, which our son likes seeing.

When our son completes all the first grade activities, he will receive a certificate. He is motivated by the prizes and achievements, so this is a perfect online learning opportunity for him.

My Thoughts 

I love that our son can work at his own pace. He can repeat games multiple times as he works on mastering skills and returns to play things again for more practice. The background music is also nice. So, if I am working at the table with his sister on something else while he is completing his math assignment, his playing the game is not distracting.

Another great aspect of Matific Galaxy is the Parent Zone. When I look at the Parent Zone, I can quickly see where our son's strongest subjects are and what areas he needs more practice in (geometry). I can also easily send him one of three motivational messages (which he enjoys).

Summary reports are available to be emailed to you once a week (or not at all, if you choose) or you can view them through the Parent Zone. I can view data based upon all-time, 3 months, one month, two weeks, or just the last week. The results are also displayed by topic with our son's score and the Matific average score.

And, finally, results are broken down by assignment. So, I can see how our son did on Dusty's planet, Kai's planet, or Jung Jung Planet's. After viewing these scores, I was able to ask him to focus on certain planets and games to practice certain skills as recommended.

The last thing in the summary report is the All-time Achievements which shows how many trophies our son has achieved during this time working with Matific Galaxy. I really like how easy it is to understand everything in the Parent Zone.

The only detraction I can find is that the progress from the desktop does not seem to transfer to the phone (they are not synchronized across different platforms). So, while our son is happy to repeat the same steps on the phone or tablet app as he had upon the desktop, I think maybe other children would be annoyed with having to repeat things.

Even though our son has everything unlocked on the desktop, they are still locked on the app.

We will continue to use the one-year subscription we received to review from Matific Galaxy through the rest of the year. Our son really enjoys it and I see it as a fun break to review and even introduce new math skills.

Do You Want to Learn More about Matific Galaxy? 

Website – Facebook – Instagram 

If you wish to read more about the other levels—since our son worked with just the first grade level—be sure to read the other reviews!

Reviewing Three Books from Weigl Publishers

Are you looking for interactive literature that includes links to multimedia like videos, audio books, activities, and slideshows? Weigl Publishers offers media-enhanced books as part of their AV2 collection – added value and added visual – and our family had the privilege of reviewing three of their works. Our children and I reviewed the following three books:

• A Lion's World – part of the "EyeDiscover" Series 
• There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant 
• Glaciers – part of the "Earth's Water" series from the Lightbox imprint 

Within each book is a digital code that unlocks multimedia content such as audio, video, weblinks, slideshows, and activities. The multimedia content varies from book to book and appears to differ based upon the age level each book is geared towards. There was significantly more multimedia content for Glaciers than there was for A Lion's World and There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant.

The AV2 (edit title) collections include several different collections - from the Let's Read Collection to their High Interest Collection - there is sure to be something for your reader. The Let's Read Collection consists of 47 AV2 titles geared towards ages 5 to 7. The Science Collection features books like Glaciers from the Waters Science series and other topics on animals, machines, and the five senses – to name a few. The Social Studies Collection features over 150 titles with videos, embedded weblinks, quizzes, and more to teach children about the 50 states, American celebrations, icons, and more. The High Interest Collection features books to engage reluctant readers. There are a variety of books including those on sports which are sure to grab the interest of any child since they range in topic from field hockey to football to cheer-leading to biking.

Our four-year-old was very eager to check out all the features available for each of the books.

A Lion's World

In A Lion's World, children are introduced to lions in Africa with facts about this magnificent species  of big cat.

For younger children, A Lion's World is a perfect book for an introduction to the study of lions. I could see families reading it together, listening to the story online, and then working on a lion-themed craft similar to the one we made. Both of our children's favorite part of A Lion's World was hearing the lion roar. This really brings the book to life!

I loved our daughter's reaction to the lion. Getting to actually see and hear the lions when reading A Lion's World is a great advantage to using digital books. 

Reading and listening to A Lion's World provided the perfect opportunity for our children to make their own lions and for us to talk more about the big cats. We talked about the difference between male and female lions after looking at the photos and videos in A Lion's World as well as where one can find lions in the wild. If your family wanted, you could see if there were any local zoos which house lions so you could see them in person and compare them to the videos.

There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant Written by Helen Ketteman and Illustrated by Will Terry

While reading this story and looking at the book online, our four-year-old stopped several times to share images and pictures with his two-year-old sister.

I enjoyed the fact that the narrator and the cowpoke were read by different voice actors. This helped bring the story to life for our family.

Our son's favorite pages were those with all the animals in the cowpoke's stomach. Both of our children found this to be a silly story to listen to and read aloud. Our daughter's favorite pages were those that reviewed all the animals that the Cowpoke had swallowed.

Glaciers: Earth's Water

At first, I was just going to look at the Glaciers by myself, as it is written for older children than our four-year-old (interest level 3-6 grades) but after reading through A Lion's World and There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant, our son wanted to look at the third book, too. As he 'flipped' through the book, he proudly showed me each page and read me the words he already knew. And he was so excited to see the map! That had to be his favorite part when we went online. I think my favorite parts were the videos that accompanied the book  including the one that showed inside the crevices of a glacier.

There are also a number of downloadable activities that accompany Glaciers. These include a chart of Glaciers around the world, an expository paragraph exercise, and a quiz – among other things. They are perfect to supplement the book, videos, and other features of Glaciers.

When using the Glaciers Menu page, you can highlight a feature to see on which pages you can find it. For example, in the image above, the pages with videos are highlighted. So, Glaciers contains four pages with videos in addition to the five pages with printable activities and three pages of weblinks. This makes it very easy for both parents and children to navigate and learn more about the topic. The quiz is both within the book and available as a PDF file to download. Another good feature is that the vocabulary words are in bold print and underlined.

They also offer a Curriculum Correlations download that addresses which National Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core State Standards, and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science that the Earth's Water series meets. (There are total of 7 books in the Earth's Water series including Glaciers.)





To learn more about Media Enhanced Books from Weigl Publishers please see:

To read additional reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew please see: