NINTENDO: Personal Trainer

Parents with Style is one of Nintendo's biggest fans! This company has it going on when it comes to improving our lives. We are Wii fit addicts and both Hubby and I are going to start the Wii yoga this week, so we can lose weight together. My pregnancy pounds are packing on a little faster than I would like. We also love using the Nintendo DS Personal trainer for Cooking. Its perfect for us and our family.

Well, Now Nintendo is taking it one step further and have introduced Personal Trainer: Math new software for the Nintendo DS^™ that provides a fun and rewarding way for people to improve their basic math abilities. Let me tell you that when I grew up...I was horrible in math and actually still am. My day job is nothing but math, go figure! HUH!

“Personal Trainer: Math provides a fun antidote for math anxiety,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “People can keep their math skills sharp while tracking their progress every day to see how they improve.”

This is a fun way to get your kids playing something that will actually help them learn to improve their math skills. I can't wait til my kids are a little older...Nevaeh is only 4 years old and this is a little to old for her yet. But, our nieces love it. My hubby played Personal Trainer: Math for the last couple of weeks and he has turned into a walking math maniac. He loves doing crossword puzzles so I figured I would toss this in front of him to see what would happen. Yeah! He won't put it down.

According to Nintendo, a new survey, conducted by Wakefield Research for Nintendo, confirms that math anxiety is alive and well among U.S. kids. In fact, of 400 children surveyed, one in five believe that they are more likely to grow up to become a professional athlete, actor or singer than they are to get A’s and B’s in math next year. Other results of the survey conducted Dec. 12-23, 2008, include:

• More than one-third of kids surveyed say that math is their most difficult subject.
• Nearly one-third of kids have very negative feelings about math: 18 percent called it “boring,” while 13 percent actually called it “torture.”
• 86 percent of parents surveyed say that math is important to their careers, even though more than half of them admitted they thought they’d never need the math they learned in school.

Personal Trainer: Math includes 40 fast-paced exercises, from basic addition and multiplication to more extensive multiplication tables and calculation ladders. Daily math drills keep skills sharp, while attendance records provide ways for users to see how they improve week to week and month to month. The Nintendo DS touch screen interface allows users to input their answers quickly and easily. Using wireless DS Download Play, up to 16 players can compete to finish their problems with the fastest time, even if only one player has a game card. If you are looking for a new way to stimulate your kids and they're math skills, this is the way.