Math Games 1st Grade

There are 9 different activities in the Math Games 1st Grade app each of which lets children practice their developing numeracy skills. Although its title suggests that its primary market is not the UK, parents, and teachers should not be put off from considering this app. Its content is perfectly pitched for young children whatever educational system they are in and it is a superb app.

The counting, comparing numbers and simple arithmetic challenges within the app are easily understood and provide meaningful practice. Their layout and method of interaction encourage children to think about the maths in the correct way. They are focused more on providing practice than teaching new skills but a little bit of thought or some well-judged help from an adult will help children to advance when engaging with the app. A child's engagement and achievements within the app can be tracked through badges that are awarded for completing the exercises.

The artwork makes this app special. It has a lovely hand-drawn quality reminiscent of favourite children's books. It is simply but not primitively animated as little touches bring the different elements to life. It is also varied as each maths exercise uses a different scene within the fantasy medieval setting of the app.

Instructions, encouragement, feedback and helpful hints are spoken - children with limited literacy skills will not be held back in using this app to develop their numeracy skills.

The settings page within the app is simple but contains a facility that is all too often left off apps but which teachers find very useful - the app's saved data can be easily reset. Some apps can only do this if they are uninstalled and re-installed again which can be very inconvenient for a school administered device. In addition to this feature, the activities can be all unlocked allowing teachers to use the app as an instructional aid, either with a small group on the device itself or with the screen mirrored to a class display. So often apps miss out these features which bring a whole new usefulness to the app in the classroom. It is great to see them here.

There are a couple of areas where the app could be improved.

Firstly, it could be made even more classroom-friendly by allowing multiple children to be tracked within it. As some of the achievement badges can only be won by multiple uses on different days, it can only be used in this way by a single child. This doesn't detract from its main usefulness of allowing children to practice all of the activities in a single day but it would be nice for children in a classroom to have the incentive to practice on other days too.

The final criticism is of its request for the player to leave a review on the app store after completing all of the activities. Apps aimed at young children should not lead them out of the app into other ones. As well as being incongruous with the otherwise 5 perfectly realised child-friendly experience, it is unlikely to yield any meaningful reviews considering the ages of the children who will be playing it. This prompt should be moved to the settings page.

These suggestions for how the app could be improved should not put anybody off buying this app. When measured against the beautiful presentation and careful design of the activities, they are minor points. There are a lot of maths practice apps for young children but few that display such a consistently high standard of presentation and careful design. Both parents and teachers should consider this app to help their young children build their confidence in numeracy.