TOS Review: I See Cards

 

I’m reviewing a fun math product with the TOS Crew this week, it’s called PyraMath and it’s made by I See Cards. This company makes several different card games that help kids learn their math facts in fun creative ways. PyraMath is the one I’ll be explaining in this post, but there are three others on their website: FracTazmic, Prime Bomb, and the basic I See Cards.

They have free online games that you can play and if you have the top score for the month you can win a FREE deck of cards. If you’re not lucky enough to win a deck you can buy a deck for $6.95. Not a bad cost when you consider the many different uses. It’s like having four different sets of flash cards in one, only better because the kids will actually enjoy this kind of math drill, whereas my kids despise doing regular flashcard drills.

We loved PyraMath! It is so versatile that all different ages can play and be challenged at the same time. For example, my 3rd grader can play his 5th grade brother and while he is working with addition/subtraction, his older brother can be working with multiplication/division. So both are practicing the skills they need to work on while playing against each other. It’s like doing 4 different sets of flash cards with two different students ALL at the same time! Talk about killing two birds with one stone!

PyraMath consists of a deck of 56, brightly colored, playing cards that have  numbers in English, Spanish, Roman Numerals, Chinese, Arabic (including multiple dialects), and French. Also included is an instruction card and instruction booklet offering a variety of games to play including PyraMath Solitaire, and PyraMath WAR. You can also visit the website to watch video’s that explain the different games to play using these cards.

You can probably figure out how this game works just by looking at the name Pyra…as in Pyramid…and Math. You build a pyramid using math facts. In this picture each card is added to the one on it’s left and then the sum is placed between the two on the next line. Sounds confusing when I try to explain it, but it’s really simple when you play it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now when we played it looked like a pyramid on both sides because both players build from their own side. It looked something like this: 

 

 

 

 

So to begin with you place 5-7 cards in a row. These are the cards each player will begin playing off of. You then draw a card and if you can add/subtract/multiply/divide any two cards and get that answer you would place the card between the two. For example, if the the row of cards was 5, 2, 8, 1, 4 and you draw a 7, you have a couple of different plays. You could do 5+2 and place it between those cards or you could do 8-1 and place it between those.

The one thing that I thought would be confusing was that when your total was equal to or greater than 10 you would only use the digit in the ones place. So in the example above, if you drew a 6 instead of a 7, you could do 2x8 and place it there (the sum is 16 and you use the 6 because it’s in the ones place).  This sounded super confusing to me, BUT when we played NONE of us had a problem with it. It really works out fine.

So PyraMath cards in a nutshell:

*Multiple learning games that help reinforce addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division

*Cost $6.95

*Good for ages 5 and up (if they’re able to do addition)

*For more information visit the I See Cards website and for more reviews on this product visit the PyraMath post over at the TOS Crew Blog

 

**Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I received this product free of charge, in exchange for my honest opinion/review. For more honest reviews from real homeschoolers, visit the TOS Crew website.