Prodigy Math Game Review – Short version – I gave money to a stranger on the internet for an upgrade to ProdigyMath game, a math program that I wasn’t initially a fan of and for something that I already had the free version of.
Long version – I use Life of Fred math with my home schooled 10 year old. He loves it but the delivery of our next book had been delayed. So I decided to use this as a chance to test some online math programs in the meantime. Prodigy Game being one of them. Read on for my Prodigy Math Game review!
Introducing my Prodigy Math Game Review
I’d heard others rave about Prodigy Math but I’m not usually a fan of gamified math, as often kids spend too much time playing inside the game and not enough time “mathing” OR kids just think the games are lame because the game play is not as good as whatever the latest big game studio thing is they like playing.
After trying a few other programs – none of which impressed my son – I finally got round to setting him up on Prodigy Math. He spent 20 mins scoffing about how rubbish the gameplay was but then voluntarily came back to it later on in the day and played for another 30 mins, even tackling hated (for him) topics like long multiplication and decimal subtraction and learning new topics such as mean, mode and median. Each question has a built in hint which gives a brief explanation for how to solve that type of question but realistically students need to have studied the topic previously as the hints are brief and quite general or have a parent on hand to help them.
An addictive math game
The following day my son played for an hour and declared he needed the paid version. Now the full price is $8.99 a month paid monthly or $4.99 a month paid up front for the year. I’m happy to pay for educational stuff BUT I’ve also recently discovered the world of Group Buys – where a group of parents club together (usually on FB Groups) and get a discounted rate on a program. I’ve bought a few things in recent months this way (including a fab story app and a typing app). The Group Buy rate for Prodigy Game was $14 for the whole year.
So my son complained about how he can’t believe I gave money to a stranger on the internet and that how he’s going to have wait at least another 8 days to get the upgrade which will get him more coins, armour, pets etc. however, despite this he approached another hour on the game that day.
I was impressed! The gameplay is kitsch (think Pokemon) but is fast, smooth and addictive. The time spent on gaming compared to the time spent on the math is much better than on some other programs I’ve tried (Education City – I’m looking at you!) There are even You tube channels where you can watch kids doing Prodigy Game “Let’s play” videos complete with them solving math problems. What a time to be alive!
Setting up a free Prodigy Game account
Both parent and teacher versions of Prodigy Game are FREE. The paid upgrade is primarily for the kids so they can level-up faster – but the peoplebehind Prodigy claim that paid students end up playing for longer and making faster math progress because of the higher in-game rewards (my son’s single session record so far has been almost 3 hours on the game with me forcing him to stop!)
On both the free and paid teacher versions you can assign specific topics for your child to work on using the Planner tool. This is a great way to reinforce topic that your child is working on at school or to revisit some of their weak spots from previous topics. With the planner you can choose to add questions on topics from the US, Canada or UK curriculum.
Prodigy Game Group Buy
By the way, my Group Buy did come through! The US/International Group Buy I usedfor Prodigy Game is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/256935961369124/ You’ll need to set up a Prodigy Game parent or teacher account first (it doesn’t matter which and you can switch between them.)
Do you agree with my Prodigy Math Game Review? Has your child tried Prodigy Game? Let me know in the comments below.