About Us

"The French mathematician Jacques S. Hadamard found, in a study of 100 leading mathematicians [including Einstein], that the majority of them were primarily visual in their approach."

Our Philosophy

Math Galaxy's approach to learning math is based on the philosophy that:

• New ideas must be connected to a child's current network of knowledge and experience.

• Skills develop along a concrete-to-abstract continuum, with advanced skills developed by generalizing from more concrete experiences.

• A child must see a wide range of instances of a concept in order to separate out extraneous material from what is essential.

• A child needs to be actively engaged with new ideas and not passively entertained.

• Mathematical concepts are tools that, like any other tools, involve actions that move you towards a goal. Mastery means that you know what the tool does and when to apply it. Students need to learn to analyse situations to see which tools are appropriate at each point, rather than memorizing a laundry list of steps for this week's problems that will fade from memory when they go on to next week's.

• Teachers and computers have different strengths and weaknesses that, used together, can complement each other. A teacher can deal with a wide range of student responses and is much more flexible than a computer, which must be programmed for each possibility. However, teachers don't always have the time or energy to give students individual attention. If you can identify critical areas of instruction where a student needs help, a computer can review those skills tirelessly.

Math Galaxy starts from the beginning, with addition and multiplication tables and single-digit operations, but its main focus is on where children start having trouble with math: multi-step problem-solving. There are enough programs out there that teach number recognition and simple operations, with dancing bears and other frills, but stop short of where students start having trouble, making the leap from familiar and concrete experiences to abstract thinking.

Unlike most math textbooks, which throw a mass of material at the student, Math Galaxy focuses student attention on concepts sequentially and interactively, based upon the ideas behind math manipulatives (such as counting blocks) and connecting new concepts to familiar experiences. Unlike most math software, it goes beyond simple games, low-level operations or rule memorization to link familiar and concrete experiences to higher-level processes. It goes beyond physical math manipulatives by linking each physical operation to its mathematical counterpart at each step, and by allowing manipulations that are difficult to do with physical manipulatives. It stresses concepts that run throughout all of basic math to provide basic understanding rather than memorized rules. Our goal is to provide students a foundation for analytical thinking in the modern world and for higher-level math and science.

The key to learning math is consistency. It is best taken in small doses but done consistently. Even ten minutes or ten problems a day will improve your child's understanding of math if done consistently.