Kindergarten Math Games for Kids

Apps for children in early education require a different approach to those designed for children a little older.  Understanding written content cannot be relied upon as a skill, nor can a familiarity with standard ways of giving answers.  On top of all of this, careful thought must be given to how to correct misunderstandings without demotivating or turning young minds away from wanting to learn.  This app addresses each of these to produce an educationally sound experience that children will want to play.

A free download of this app gets you enough to appraise the quality of its graphics, sound and the style of its learning content, but to really get the benefit of this app an additional purchase is required.  You should choose carefully here as the in-app purchases are quite fine grained and you can address fairly specific learning with some of the options, but the best value purchase opens up all of the activities thus far produced by the developer, which includes not only the maths ones but literacy ones too.

Focussing on the numeracy activities available after the in-app purchase, you will find a good selection that covers the skills that the app’s targeted children will be working to develop.  Each learning activity is different.  In some, children will be tracing numbers to learn how to form and recognise them.  In others they will be engaging in structured activities to develop a skill, such as addition or following sequences of numbers.  Other sections are less interactive but offer fun songs and animations to entertain and educate young children.  This approach of designing the interaction in a way that suits the specific learning goal is much better than the approach taken by some other apps, where a variety of different subjects are forced to fit into one type of interaction.

The learning tasks here are all united with each other in having spoken instructions, fun sound effects, beautifully drawn and child friendly graphics, and a method of interaction entirely suited to the specific activity.  Correct answers are met with verbal praise and various animations, incorrect answers are gently pointed out and the players are encouraged to have another go.

One feature that may divide opinion is the app’s automatic override of the device’s existing volume setting to the mid-point when opened.  As a plus this ensures children can hear the audio cues of the app; as a minus this could be problematic for those have a preferred lower setting for using the app in a group with more than one device running it.   It is hardly likely to be a major problem though.

For both parents and teachers there is a lot of potential in this app, when expanded with the appropriate purchases.  The sections can be accessed out of order, allowing teachers to make use of them to support a lesson’s work.  Alternatively, children can work through the sections in order, building upon previous learning and newly developed understanding.  The lack of time limits also enables a chance for parents to sit and work through this app with their children, discussing and encouraging as they go. 

With the chance to try it for free and the potential to offer so many activities, this is an app that should be considered by all those responsible for helping a young child to learn.