Surprise! Speed Wheel Drills Are A Hit! {A Homeschool Review Crew Review: Math Essentials}

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew. 

Woah! You just never can tell what will be a hit with a child to help solidify math facts.

We were given an opportunity to review Math Essentials Speed Wheel Drills for Addition, Multiplication, and Division. 

I knew my daughter appreciated the straightforward, no-nonsense approach of other Math Essentials materials and needed something to help her increase her speed and accuracy with math fact recall as she moves into high school. However, to be honest, I was not sure if a workbook containing 1,440 speed wheel drills would work for her or not. In fact, I wondered if doing such drills would get old for her quickly.

I am happy to report: they did not. Math Essentials Speed Wheel Drills for Multiplication has become one of my daughter's consistent, self-chosen, independent summer lesson materials. When the Speed Wheel Drill books came into our home, she asked if she could use the multiplication one and has been using it regularly throughout the summer.

Here is what she had to say about her experience:

I like Math Essentials Speed Wheel Drills for Multiplication, because it is a quick and easy way to review multiplication tables.

I also like it because I try to beat my old times to see how much I am improving.

I enjoy that doing an entire page takes me only five to fifteen minutes. Sometimes I do a whole page and sometimes I do just one line - three wheels.

I find this better and more efficient than flashcards. because all my answers and times are written down and I can review them.

The only issue is that I am slightly lazy sometimes and don't always write my percent correct.

Using this is helping me get the repetition I need to remember my facts. Multiplication facts have always been hard for me, but I don't enjoy a lot of online games to practice them or, if I enjoy the practice games, but don't always remember the facts after. With these drills my accuracy and time  are improving.

I would recommend this resource to people who want a a quick way to review multiplication and to keep remembering their facts. People who don't like to be timed for math problems and people who don't like repetition may not like it as much. Repetition and timing is not a problem for me at all. I like that the format doesn't change and I can repeat things and see how I am doing.

What a wonderful surprise it has been for me to see my daughter's success with Math Essentials Speed Wheel Drills. Through the years, we have tried many things, online and off, independent and together, to help her learn math facts and increase accuracy and speed with instant recall of them - some things more successful than others. This is definitely among the most successful.

My daughter willingly self-paces through the drills, deciding how many drills she wants to do on a given day, timing herself, correcting her own work, etc. The open-and-go nature has made working with the material easy to slip in around other life happenings. The fact that my daughter can use the resource on her own is a boon for her and me. The self-correcting aspect, I believe, actually helps reinforce her learning of the math facts. and the tracking of time - surprisingly to me - has been a motivator for her.

Math Essentials Speed Wheel Drills for Multiplication have been an effective tool for keeping facts fresh for my daughter, and, as such, I recommend it to others who have a child that prefers independent, offscreen resources.

I also recommend the Division and Addition books for students who need practice with such facts. 

Each softcover, consumable book is set up the same way.

They open with a "How to Use this Book" page, which succinctly describes how to use the drills, track your progress, etc. 

(To use the drills, you take the number in the center of the speed circle and add/subtract/divide using the number on the next concentric circle out, then write your answer in the space on the outside of the circle.)

Then, there are pages with 21 math tips.

Following that are pages that contain 1,440 speed drills with 12 drills per page with the drills in random orders by center numbers.

The final pages of the book contain a solution page that can be pulled out of the book, put in a sheet protector, and used for self-correcting, plus the bonus of a Math Glossary, Important Symbols, Multiplication Table, Commonly Used Prime Numbers, Squares and Square Roots, and Fraction/Decimal Equivalents.

Slim, handy, open-and-go resources, Math Essentials Speed Wheel Drills for Multiplication, Division, and Addition can become a great help for students like my daughter that need extra facts practice so as not to regress with such skills.

The only thing I might change about them in future editions is making perforated pages or lay flat binding. Such changes would make an already effective resource just a little more user-friendly. 

Over 20 families from the Homeschool Review Crew have been testing out one, two, or all three of the Speed Wheel Drills books developed by the Winner of Intel Innovations in Teaching Award Richard W. Fisher with their children, so be sure to click through to find video, social media, and blog reviews.

You might also want to take a look at our past Math essentials reviews:

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