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My name is Scott Cary and I started Softbasics Software, after a 22 year teaching career, to help parents work with their children to achieve true mastery of math and language arts. During my career as a middle and high school teacher, I saw so many students with poor skills and this made the upper level experience much more difficult than it should have been. Since I retired, I have continued to tutor children and to work with parents, many of them homeschoolers (in fact, many of the features were suggested by homeschooling moms).
I developed several programs during my career and have since added several more (now comprising the 7 program Soft-Pak), while refining each of them to fit the needs of homeschoolers and parents who truly are concerned and involved. I also determined that I would provide these programs at the lowest cost possible to make them affordable to all families (a pension allows me to do this and I am very happy to share these programs with any families who wish to use them). Over 8000 families have since requested copies and the feedback has been wonderful. So many parents, especially moms, have sent kind comments and have also passed along the word about these, for which I thank them.
The programs are not edutainment - there are more than enough of those types of programs available. Instead, I decided to write programs that target specific skill and fact areas of need and that keep the student on-task with minimal distractions. Due to random generation of math problems, the same skill or fact set can be selected over and over until mastery is achieved (printable and on-screen). There is no point in moving on to the next level if the current one is not mastered and static workbooks only offer one or two pages per unit. In addition, virtually all answers are inputted by mouse (clicking number buttons 0-9 or true/false, or other choices). This allows the focus to remain on the screen, instead of constantly looking down to the keyboard. Therefore, many, many more problems can be completed in the same amount of time. (Also, this greatly assists special needs students who need only work the pointing device.)
In addition, I have included 900 multi-level word problems in math. These are crucial for true mastery - so many children can compute numbers when the problem is set up for them but many don't know how to solve real world problems. With Math Maker (printables) and Math User (on-screen with built-in calculator), the student can work through these problems, starting with Level A (easiest - requiring only 1 or 2 simple steps), through Level B (intermediate - requiring more steps and higher level skills) to Level C (hardest - requiring multiple steps and the highest level of skills). Once these are mastered, you can be certain that the student is ready to move on to higher math, such as alegbra and geometry.
Included in the Soft-Pak are 3 non-math programs - Language Arts Master, and Test Pak (Test Maker and Test Master). Many parents report the need for good language arts programs to help with spelling, reading, writing mechanics, and basic grammar. L. A. Master offers this help and Test Maker allows the user to add personal word lists for use in L. A. to go along with the 4000 words already included. In addition, reading can be practiced (using the word lists, plus phrases, clauses, and sentences already included). This is very effective as the student learns to see word groups as single units - we, as adults, read "in the morning" as one unit and move our eyes to the next phrase, but a young reader will see "in - the - morn - ing" and say each syllable separately.
I have placed a large amount of info on this site to help you find out about the programs. Please take a few minutes to visit the individual program pages (use links on the left column of the main page). Then, if you feel that these programs can help your children, simply use the options on the main page to request. Thank you. Scott Cary - Softbasics.
Please review the 3 numbered points below to make sure that you can use these programs.
- These programs are aimed at children between the ages of 6-13 (slightly younger and older children also may benefit, depending upon readiness and need).
- USA, Canada, and military APO addresses only.
- The programs are for Windows XP and Vista, plus Windows 95/98/98SE/ME (both versions are on the CD).
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, feedback, or comments.
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