Posted on: 01.04.2015.
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Like many parents, you've probably tried everything you can to make math more interesting, exciting and accessible for your child. From giving lighthearted quizzes over breakfast to providing extra help and support during homework sessions, you've pulled every imaginable trick from up your sleeve to get your child excited about learning math. If your child still insists that it's simply too boring, it's time to give technology a try.
The smartphones and tablets your child loves so much can double as amazing math-teaching tools. By turning math learning into fun, approachable games and activities, the best math apps make kids forget they're even learning and help spark a lifelong love for math. The trick is finding apps that suit your child's personal learning style and keep your child engaged, and we've rounded up ten of the best options.
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Available on: App Store, Android Market, Amazon
This engaging, approachable app includes 7 mini-games that introduce and reinforce seven crucial math skills: geometry, patterns, counting, measuring, patterns, number recognition and comparing. Ideal for kids in kindergarten and first grade, it features playful, silly monkeys who are traveling through space. By completing various activities, your child can help keep the monkeys' spaceship fueled so they can continue their journey. This app is big on positive reinforcement and praises kids just for trying. Your little one will love the upbeat music, funny sound effects and bright, colorful graphics and animation, and you'll love the great lessons that are imparted along the way.
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Many math apps are geared toward the preschool and kindergarten crowd, but this one is a bit more sophisticated and is designed to appeal to older kids. With its spy theme and cool noir-style music, it's sure to engage your child as they go undercover to defeat the evil Dr. Odd. By using addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and a combination of these techniques to solve problems as quickly as possible, your child can overcome the evil mastermind and come out a winner every time. As an added bonus, each of the 105 missions includes interesting geography tidbits. Operation Math received the Parents Choice Award in 2012, so it's a solid, effective choice for engaging, digital math fun.
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Available on: App Store, Android Market, Amazon, Windows Store, Windows Phone
Preschoolers and kindergartners adore this colorful, fun-filled math app, which features 18 entertaining and highly educational games. By manipulating buttons and bugs on the screen, kids pick up and reinforce crucial skills and concepts, including racing, patterns, counting, sorting, matching and more. Your little one will be engrossed by fast-paced games of tic-tac-toe, connect-the-dots and more. All the while, they will receive audio and visual feedback that keeps them motivated and ready for more. One of the best things about this cleverly designed app is that it adapts based on how well your kid is doing, which helps to keep frustration to a minimum. Various levels are available, so kids from preschool through early elementary school can get in on the fun.
Introducing Bugs and Buttons 2. Video courtesy of Little Bit Studio.
Like its predecessor, this entertaining sequel boasts 18 activities and games that revolve around early math skills and concepts. Children sort and manipulate buttons and bugs to complete various levels. As they do, they are exposed to crucial math concepts like counting, balancing, sorting and more. The graphics and animation on Bugs and Buttons 2 are truly incredible and will keep your kid entertained for extended periods of time. Adaptive game play keeps your child's abilities and skills into account to ward off frustration. At long last, learning math is fun and entertaining, especially when there are to unlock.
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Available on: App Store
All kids love going to the park. This engaging app lets them do so virtually while learning and brushing up on key math skills and concepts. Children use their fingers to navigate around a colorful, engaging park setting. As they do, they complete various games featuring subtraction, addition, patterns, sorting and more. For instance, your little one can add and remove mice from a seesaw to achieve the right balance or sort dogs based on their size. Physically manipulating objects on a screen really drives home key math concepts while keeping your kid engaged and entertained. Each of the seven different activities has three levels too, so kids of various ages and skill levels can get in on the action.
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Because this app was developed by Scholastic, you can rest assured that it's geared toward instilling important mathematical concepts in young learners. This addicting game features a colorful monster that must be fed numbered plates of sushi. By delivering the plates of food to the monster in the correct order, your child will unlock the next level, which is slightly more difficult. Unlike many math apps, this one isn't designed to be played for extended periods of time. With just 10 minutes of game play per day, however, your little one will develop and improve reasoning strategies that are sure to come in handy while learning new math skills. Visually appealing and intuitive to use, this app is sure to become a favorite.
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If your child is still a tot, this app will grow right along with them! It features 18 games that are split into three skill levels or age groups. The first six games are perfect for preschoolers. The next six games are designed for kindergartners, and the final six are suitable for kids in early elementary. The game is set in places where bugs like to crawl and explore, including a circus, a hotel and a junkyard. The intuitive interface and engaging graphics will help your child stay focused while completing activities that introduce new, and reinforce the existing math skills like fractions, counting, sequencing, sorting, telling time and more. Your child will enjoy a strong sense of satisfaction from progressing through various levels.
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Don't let the simple design of this game fool you. Through repetitive play and the manipulation of objects on the screen, it helps to teach kids how to identify and understand the numbers zero through nine. Numbers are presented in a variety of ways. For instance, the number four might be presented as four dots or as four segments that make up a single line. This exceptional app also exposes your child to sorting, measuring, counting and other activities while also introducing them to concepts like even and odd numbers. Clear verbal instructions make this versatile app intuitive and engaging.
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Trying to explain fractions to your kids can be tricky, but this handy app helps a lot. It introduces basic fraction concepts, including numerators, denominators, fraction ordering and equivalent fractions by having kids slice objects and remove barriers to solve various problems. As barriers are moved and objects are sliced, your child will help an adorable woolly mammoth make his way across a colorful landscape. The only way to do so successfully is by using critical thinking skills, which are especially important when it comes to making sense of fractions. Geared toward kids around the age of eight, Slice Fractions boasts more than 60 engaging puzzles spanning three stages of learning, and it's sure to be a hit in your home.
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Superheroes never go out of style, and this clever math app incorporates them in a way that makes learning everything from basic math to more advanced concepts like negative numbers and multiplication enjoyable and approachable. The goal here is to build superheroes that add up to a sum that matches numbers on villains' costumes. It kicks off with an engaging comic book story and includes five game levels that can be played individually or as a team. What a great way to get the whole family in on the math-learning fun! Step-by-step and interactive tutorials are available, so kids can hit the ground running regardless of their preferred learning style.
The majority of the math apps featured above includes free trials, so let your child give each one a whirl to figure out which ones suit their personal learning style the best. Regardless of which ones they end up choosing, you're sure to appreciate the way in which these apps make math learning fun, compelling and exciting for your little one. Math apps put kids in the right frame of mind for learning. Children are already comfortable using smartphones and tablets, and associate such devices with fun. While using these apps, your kid will be able to relax, concentrate and have a blast without even realize they're learning math.
