CTCMath Online Math Curriculum Review: What You Need to Know

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“What’s CTCMath?”

It’s inevitable. Every time I have a conversation with homeschool moms and they ask me what math curriculum we are using, this is the reply I’ll get when I tell them we are using CTCMath.

This is when I launch into an enthusiastic explanation of how CTCMath has transformed our homeschooling journey and why it deserves the spotlight.

** This is a sponsored post. I received this product or compensation for review purposes only and was compensated for my time. I was neither asked nor required to share a positive review; all opinions are my own. READ HERE for more information.

At this point, we’ve used CTCMath for about half a year in our homeschool, and I’ll be honest: I was not 100% sold on switching math curriculum in the middle of the school year.

But it was clear that some things needed to change, and I began looking for an online program to suit our needs.

Now, there’s no short supply of options when it comes to online math curriculum these days. And I don’t necessarily think one is better than the other when it comes to the ability to teach your kids math. They ALL have their pros and cons.

However, CTCMath stood out to me for a few different reasons and won out in the end for us. I’m going to share with you our experience and what I’ve loved about it in this post, so you can better decide if it might be a good fit for your kids too.

So what IS CTCMath?

CTCMath is a complete online homeschool math curriculum created by renowned educator Pat Murray. It offers a unique, multi-sensory approach to learning math, aiming to make it accessible, engaging, and effective for students of all ages and abilities.

CTCMath specializes in providing short, clear, and concise online video tutorials, adaptive, interactive questions, and amazing reporting features for homeschooling parents. 

And with CTCMath, you get access to ALL grades (from Kindergarten to Calculus) and lessons with ONE subscription. This means all of your kids can learn at their own pace, and switch between levels easily as they progress. 

Is CTCMath Spiral or Mastery?

Technically, I would put CTCMath in the “mastery” category, because your kids do have to show understanding of a topic to receive a passing score.

And once they do, they have the option to continue with extra practice questions to earn stars on a progress bar. My kids really like this, and it encourages them to practice extra problems so they can earn those mastery stars!

However, when people hear “mastery”, they often assume that students never go back and review old concepts. That they just “master” something and move on.

That’s not exactly the case here.

CTCMath gives you the option to assign Weekly Revision Tasks to your kids, which are sets of mixed review questions on everything in the curriculum they’ve already covered.

You can set these to automatically be assigned to your kids each week…so you barely have to think about it, and they are continually reviewing concepts!

These can be printed, or you can have your kids work on them online – whatever your preference.

You’ll easily be able to access reports for these in your parent account, see exactly how your kids are doing, and review problem areas as needed.

Switching to CTCMath

So why did we switch to CTCMath?

I typically don’t like change. I find a curriculum I love, and just expect it to work the same for us year after year, no problems at all.

You seasoned homeschoolers know that’s not always the case! Sometimes, but not always.

And that’s an area in which I’ve needed to learn to be more flexible. Even if I love a curriculum, if it’s not the best for my kids in a particular season, well, we have the freedom to switch.

We had used our previous online math curriculum for the past 3 years, with no complaints. But this year, some new challenges arose with my kiddos.

For starters, one of my kids started to lose focus/daydream during his math video lessons. They were only about 15-20 minutes, so not too long, but they weren’t keeping his attention this year.

This would result in him not really understanding the lesson…but rather than go back and re-watch the videos, he would attempt the worksheet problems (and often get them wrong or leave answers blank…and not even ask me for help, because he didn’t want to do it!).

Another issue came from me, and I admit that I needed help in this area: some days, I trusted my kids too much that things were going smoothly. If I let a few days go by without checking their work, I would often realize that they had gone through a few lessons completely misunderstanding concepts. I would get frustrated that they weren’t “paying attention” or asking for help, but really I was frustrated with myself and my busy homeschool mom schedule that left me with not enough hours in the day to do all the things.

How CTCMath Helped

Right away, we began finding success again with the short lessons, adaptive questions, and self-grading features that CTCMath offered.

My kids were able to stay focused on the succinct & efficient videos, and they would know immediately whether or not they were working out the problems correctly.

And, they were not able to finish or move on to the next lesson until they could show they did understand.

No longer did math take them an hour each day. And they didn’t have to wait for me to grade their work, or help explain what they were doing wrong (fully worked solutions were available to them).

Process of Switching Mid-Year

You might worry about switching math curriculums mid-year because you don’t want your kids to miss anything. I think that CTCMath makes this easy, so I’ll share what I did.

It might be overkill, but I wanted to make sure they had everything covered.

CTCMath offers diagnostic tests for each topic in every grade. So I actually assigned diagnostic tests to my kids for the grade level below what they were currently studying.

If there were any topics they didn’t do well on, I assigned that lesson to them to review.

Once we were through with that, I assigned diagnostics tests for their current “grade level”, for topics I knew they had covered in their previous curriculum. Same thing – if I found any gaps, I simply assigned that particular lesson as a review.

As we finished diagnostics tests, I simply had them continue working through the lessons systematically. We continue to use the diagnostic tests at the end of units to see if there are any areas we need to review.

A Few Tips

The very first thing I did was watch the parent guide videos – so that’s what I recommend you do! They are so thorough, and gave me a great understanding of how to use CTCMath and what I needed to do.

At first, I was slightly confused at how the lessons are organized, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not that bad! For each grade level, you’ll find everything broken down into streams, then topics, then lessons.

Think of a “stream” like a unit (for example, “Measurement” in 4th grade). Within that stream, you’ll find different topics (“Units of Measure”, “Area and Volume”). These are kind of like chapters within that unit.

Finally, you have the individual lessons within each of those topics. The lessons each have their own short video teaching followed by questions the kids need to answer.

CTCMath Behind-the-Scenes

Sometimes it’s easier to see how something works to have a better understanding of it! In the video below, I walk you through an actual CTCMath lesson so you can see how I assign lessons to my kids, what EXACTLY CTCMath is, and just a little bit of what you can do with it.

5 Things I Love Most About CTCMath

There are a lot of things we are loving about CTCMath, but these are the top 5 things that stand out most to me, and why it’s working for us in this season of our homeschool:

1. Comprehensive, Flexible Curriculum

CTCMath covers all grades, K-12.

I absolutely love that I don’t have to purchase different grade levels at a time; this gives my kids a chance to move through lessons at their own pace, review lessons as needed, and continue working ahead as they are ready.

2. Interactive, Self-Graded Questions

I don’t have to grade math problems anymore! My kids answer the interactive questions after each lesson, and get immediate feedback to help them know what they know and still might need to work on.

When you set up your students, you get to determine the grade they need to “pass” each lesson. I use 80%, but you can set this to whatever you want, and specify how many attempts they get before seeing solutions (worksheet assignments only).

3. Self-Paced, Adaptive Learning

The questions students have to answer after each lesson are adaptive, meaning, they change in difficulty level depending on each student’s ability.

CTCMath has a smart algorithm that will track your child’s progress and serve-up the questions based on their needs. This really helps them build confidence and keep them challenged at the right level.

4. Progress Tracking & Reporting

The reporting features of CTCMath are really incredible. You can see detailed reports for pretty much anything you want to know (and then some!).

I really appreciate being able to see specifically what topic my kids are struggling with, and subsequently assign targeted lessons to them.

You can have weekly reports emailed to you, and download PDFs for your records as needed.

5. Affordability

CTCMath is much MUCH cheaper than the previous option we used. It’s very affordable, and offers different membership options.

Homeschoolers are even offered a half-priced discount, along with a free trial.

When you use CTCMath, you don’t have to purchase a separate full curriculum for each child, for each grade level. The family membership covers all grade levels for all of your kids.

What Do My Kids Think?

They’ve all given CTCMath a positive review!

Early on in using CTCMath, I found that my kids would keep working to improve and achieve mastery in their lessons because they could see that they were earning “stars” as they worked.

The first time my son missed a problem, he told me, “I lost a bar because I missed one! Can I re-do these and try more?” His game-loving nature did not like to see those bars and stars disappear!

Both of my girls love the shorter lessons, and being able to see their grades and progress as they work. They also love the games CTCMath offers within the platform (Speed Skills and Times Tables Shoot ‘Em Up).

My kids are seeing and learning the value of doing slow, careful work because of this. They want to get a correct answer the first time through!

What I Don’t Like About CTCMath

While there are many things I love about CTCMath, there are a few things I wish were different.

There are obviously no perfect programs, and these are not deal breakers but simply my honest thoughts.

• I know my kids are learning math concepts through CTCMath, but I do wish the approach was more conceptual at times. However, I know there is going to be a trade-off in this area to have some of the other features we want right now in a complete math curriculum.
• I wish it was taught from a Biblical worldview. Yes, you CAN teach math from a Biblical worldview, and this was one of the things I loved about our previous curriculum. CTCMath is secular in nature.
• This is more of just a technical annoyance, but while I love being able to switch from the Parent dashboard to a Child’s view very easily, it’s not so easy to switch back from Child to Parent. You have to log all the way out, and for some reason I also often need to refresh my screen to be able to log in again. I do wish there was an easier way to transfer back and forth.

Homeschooling With CTCMath

So what will it look like to use CTCMath in your homeschooling? Here are a few tips!

Assigning Lessons

First, you need to decide if you want to assign tasks to your kids to have them complete, or if you simply want them to log in and work at their own pace through the lessons.

Right now, I create one “task” for the week, and assign my kids all of the lessons I want them to complete that week during math time. They are responsible for completing everything before end-of-the-day on Friday. This has proved to be a great lesson in time management for them!

You could do this, or you could assign a new task each day.

If you choose to go the route of letting them work through lessons on their own, I suggest setting some small goals. For example, set a goal of working on math for 30 minutes each day, or completing a certain topic by a certain date.

Follow-up on Work

I recommend logging in daily to see what your kids have worked on, and make sure they are making progress on their tasks or goals.

If you notice they are struggling with something, or their grade is low on a certain lesson, you might choose to review that lesson again and follow up with a custom question bank to re-assess their understanding.

The Question Banks are another wonderful feature you can use to generate questions for your kids from their lessons. There are a lot of customization options (such as setting the difficulty level or changing the order of the questions), and your kids can do these online OR you can print them out as worksheets. You even get a copy of the questions with an answer key!

Get Your Kids Comfortable with the Program

Sit with your kids through their lessons for as long as it takes to get them comfortable enough to work independently.

Make sure they understand expectations and how to complete their assignments. Some assignments have an optional printable worksheet, so teach them how to print those out if you want them to.

How Do I Know Where to Start My Child in CTCMath?

CTCMath does break-down topics by grade level, so you could simply select a grade and go to town; but I think a better option is to take advantage of their diagnostic tests, as I mentioned I did above.

There is a diagnostic test for each unit, and you can choose to make your student take either a 20 question, 30 question, or 40 question test. I usually assign 30; the more you have them do, the better idea you might get as to what they know or don’t know.

Using these tests will help you place them in the right spot in the curriculum, and ensure they don’t have any gaps in knowledge (especially if you are switching from another curriculum).

How Long do CTCMath Lessons Take?

This is going to depend on the child and the lesson, but generally my kids complete their lessons in less than 30 minutes.

The video lessons are all less than 10 minutes (generally between 4-9 minutes). They don’t waste much time, and really explain concepts in the most efficient way possible!

Following the videos, kids will answer the questions, which again, varies in time and what level they are working at. But, I think that the amount of questions is just right…just enough for the kids to show mastery, and not too many that it gets repetitive and just “busy work”. The adaptive algorithm definitely helps with this, too.

How is CTCMath Graded?

This is not really explained on the CTCMath website, and I was curious as to how my kids’ grades were being calculated, so I reached out to them!

Here’s what I was told:

This grade (what CTCMath calls the “Efficiency Rating” or “ER”) is calculated differently depending on the student’s level.

In Kindergarten through 6th grade, this ER is an average of the student’s three best attempts at the interactive questions (questions after each lesson).

This means that they can increase their grade by retrying questions (and continuously scoring well).

Once they get to 7th grade, they’ll begin to have printable worksheets introduced in their lessons, and this changes how the grade is calculated.

At this point, the grade is a score out of 100, with the student’s first attempt having the heaviest weight towards their grade (and each subsequent attempt having less weight). Subsequent attempts can also only cause the grade to increase or remain the same, to encourage kids to try to do better without worrying their grade will drop.

Their grade is also “frozen” after they have viewed solutions, so their grade is not influenced by a higher score they achieve after looking at the answers.

How Much is CTCMath?

As I mentioned earlier, CTCMath is very affordable, and there are monthly or yearly membership plans available.

They really cater to the homeschool community by offering a half-price discount, which gives you access to ALL grade levels for ALL your kids for one low price.

You’re going to want to give the CTCMath homeschool family membership a try and get a feel for it yourself. Access the free trial of CTCMath and special discount for homeschoolers here.

Best Online Math Program for Homeschool Families

CTCMath certainly is a contender for this! If you’re searching for a homeschool math program that promotes mastery, flexibility, and engagement, CTCMath is definitely worth exploring.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments: do you have any questions about CTCMath? Have you used it in your homeschool (and if so, what are your thoughts)?

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