As a math and technology teacher, I love using digital resources to help kids engage with math topics. Unfortunately, there is a veritable sea of math apps available, and most of them are absolute swill. Learn from my mistakes and check out these high quality free math apps to enhance your child’s understanding of basic math concepts. These apps focus especially on early skills such as arithmetic, number sense, shape recognition, and math vocabulary.
Skip: “10 Frame Fill” (Classroom Focused Software)
Play: “Number Frames, by the Math Learning Center” (Clarity Innovations)
I’ve already reviewed a few of the digital manipulatives available online from Math Learning Center, but today we’re taking a look at their “Number Frames” app when compared to a competitor.
Both apps are free, and both perform the basic function of showing a ten frame and allowing students to fill it in. “10 Frame Fill” poses a question (How many more to make ten?), and it can be set to review pairs that make ten sequentially or randomly. That’s all, folks.
“Number Frames” does not contain any practice questions. It is more like a physical manipulative that students can use to solve their own questions and to explore the relationships between quantities. This app also features a variety of settings, such as adjusting the matrix to a custom size instead of a simple ten frame (great for introducing multiplication), changing the color and shape of markers, and a write-on function. These options significantly broaden the approaches students and teachers can take with this app and make it useful for exploring a wide range of early math concepts.
For its intuitive interface and its flexibility, we’re going with “Number Frames.”
Skip: “Hop the Number Line” (Steve Rhine)
Play: “Number Line, by the Math Learning Center” (Clarity Innovations)
The carrot/rabbit themed number line in “Hop the Number Line” really got my hopes up, but sadly, this app is a dud. While it does allow you to drag the bunny up and down the number line to solve the problems it poses, that’s the extent of its function. The settings can be adjusted to varying levels, but when I selected Level 1 (add and subtract whole numbers), the first problem it gave was 10 — 28, not exactly a beginning level question. My four-year-old liked the bunny, but “Hop the Number Line” didn’t have much else to offer.
“Number Line” from Math Learning Center doesn’t pose problems, but it gives students a flexible tool to use to solve them. It can be set to include negative numbers, decimals, or fractions with a variety of denominators. Bars used to show intervals are flexible and easy to customize, and values on the interval bars and the number line can be masked at will, a useful tool for building early algebraic thinking.
No contest here — “Number Line” is a far more sophisticated and useful tool.
Skip: “Montessori Early Childhood Activities Train” (Mohammad Sadiq)
Play: “Preschool & Kindergarten Learning Games” (15 fun and educational games)
Despite its enticing name, “Montessori Early Childhood Activities Train” is an app that simply asks students to drag a shape into a matching void. Its first two levels — animals and ABCs — are free, but the animal level provides no intellectual challenge at all. The ABC level does require students to put letters into alphabetical order, but it fails to connect the letters to their sounds, so it focuses on the least Montessorian aspect of learning letters. Paid levels simply include more variety of shapes.
Save your money and get “Preschool & Kindergarten Learning Games” instead. The first free level on this app has kids learning the names of several shapes (including things as sophisticated as semi-circles and crescents) through a couple of different games. The second free level asks the student to select words based on their beginning sounds, a very important step in moving from reciting the alphabet to actually understanding what sounds each letter makes. Beyond that are several more levels available for purchase that address a wide variety of skills. My son loves this app and continues to return to it over and over again.
Skip: “Prodigy Math Game” (ProdigyGame.com)
Play: “Monster Math: Kids Fun Games” (Elementary Facts for Practice)
One review for “Prodigy Math” observed that it’s possible for a student to play this game for thirty minutes without actually doing any math, and I’d agree that therein lies its greatest weakness. This is a ridiculous RPG style app where you create a character and wander through a fantasy land collecting junk and battling monsters. If the developer had put half the time into the math practice that they put into characters’ hairstyle choices, it might be decently educational. When the student does do a bit of problem-solving, the questions are completely erratic in their difficulty level and focus. One question will show the student a square and ask how many sides it has; the next might involve division or fractions. Even the very simple questions require some reading, so my four-year-old could not navigate this game independently at all. It also constantly solicits the player to buy a membership, which really grinds my gears.
A much better option, if you want an adventure style game, is “Monster Math.” You can toggle the settings to select the type of questions asked, and the much simpler storyline actually made sense to my kid. Only a small fraction of time is spent on the story, and the rest of the time, the student is actually solving math problems. On the simplest level, the game presents a large batch of addition expressions and the student has to use the monster to “eat” all of the expressions with a certain sum. If the target sum is 4, they have to locate all the possible pairs that add to four (4 + 0, 0 + 4, 1 + 3, etc.). I like this fresh approach and how it helps students see the relationships between the numbers — all the many ways we can make 4, for instance. The monsters are cute, too.
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