Monday, December 22, 2014
Give away alert!!!
The fabulous Smart Apps for Kids is giving away a $100 iTunes gift card! Click here to enter.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Math Apps
As a reading researcher, I have naturally gravitated toward e-books and phonics apps for the kids. But recently one of my favorite first grade teachers posted a list of her favorite free and low-cost apps (http://mrsbowergrade1.weebly.com/documents.html). The list begins with a number of fun and really well-put-together math apps that are perfect for my 6-year-old.
The newest big thing in Brooklyn's first grade is timed math fact tests. The kids have to do as many single-digit addition or subtraction problems as they can in one minute. Which isn't anxiety provoking or anything, of course... So her favorite new app is Scholastic's Sushi Monster.
The sushi monster is hungry. He (she?) holds up a sign with a number on it and your job is to serve up two pieces of sushi, which will create a number sentence with the needed result, so that s/he can gobble it up. You have to plan ahead, or else you will end up with numbers that do not fit the remaining number sentences. And there is a timer ticking away the seconds throughout the game. Unfortunately, there is no subtraction level; just addition and multiplication. But the app is free, so who is complaining?
Another one of our favorite new apps is Teachley: Addimal Adventure. Addimals has a fairly complicated backstory about Professor Possum, who is set on destroying the world (BWAH HA HA HA!) and the Addimals who are trying to stop him by solving single-digit addition problems.
I confess that I was not paying a lot of attention to the story details. But the reason the app is so interesting is because it explicitly teaches strategies the students can put to use right away, rather than merely encouraging them to memorize their math facts. There are four Addimals, because each one has a different approach to solving addition problems. The app explains that four different strategies you might use are to count each of the ones, to count up from the larger number, to double the smaller number and add on, or to memorize the answer. For example, here are some ways to solve the following problem: 3+ 4 = ?
Brooklyn told me that she learned from this app that 9 + 3 *must* be 12, because 9 is one less than 10 and 10 + 3 would be 13. How can you argue with that?!
And last, but not least, because both my kids have been playing with this one--so much so that they insisted I load it to my phone as well--is Todo Math. Todo Math has this little guy going around on a mission toward a treasure box. Each step along the way is a mini-game featuring counting, patterns, equations, number tracing, tallies, and more. Each of the missions is an activity aligned with a Common Core standard for math in grades k-2. There are lots of manipulatives to drag and drop.
The free version of this app gets pretty repetitive after a while, but my preschooler doesn't mind. It is amazing how motivating kids find that "treasure."
So, there you have it. Three free math apps that my kids love.
The newest big thing in Brooklyn's first grade is timed math fact tests. The kids have to do as many single-digit addition or subtraction problems as they can in one minute. Which isn't anxiety provoking or anything, of course... So her favorite new app is Scholastic's Sushi Monster.
The sushi monster is hungry. He (she?) holds up a sign with a number on it and your job is to serve up two pieces of sushi, which will create a number sentence with the needed result, so that s/he can gobble it up. You have to plan ahead, or else you will end up with numbers that do not fit the remaining number sentences. And there is a timer ticking away the seconds throughout the game. Unfortunately, there is no subtraction level; just addition and multiplication. But the app is free, so who is complaining?
Another one of our favorite new apps is Teachley: Addimal Adventure. Addimals has a fairly complicated backstory about Professor Possum, who is set on destroying the world (BWAH HA HA HA!) and the Addimals who are trying to stop him by solving single-digit addition problems.
I confess that I was not paying a lot of attention to the story details. But the reason the app is so interesting is because it explicitly teaches strategies the students can put to use right away, rather than merely encouraging them to memorize their math facts. There are four Addimals, because each one has a different approach to solving addition problems. The app explains that four different strategies you might use are to count each of the ones, to count up from the larger number, to double the smaller number and add on, or to memorize the answer. For example, here are some ways to solve the following problem: 3+ 4 = ?
Brooklyn told me that she learned from this app that 9 + 3 *must* be 12, because 9 is one less than 10 and 10 + 3 would be 13. How can you argue with that?!
And last, but not least, because both my kids have been playing with this one--so much so that they insisted I load it to my phone as well--is Todo Math. Todo Math has this little guy going around on a mission toward a treasure box. Each step along the way is a mini-game featuring counting, patterns, equations, number tracing, tallies, and more. Each of the missions is an activity aligned with a Common Core standard for math in grades k-2. There are lots of manipulatives to drag and drop.
The free version of this app gets pretty repetitive after a while, but my preschooler doesn't mind. It is amazing how motivating kids find that "treasure."
So, there you have it. Three free math apps that my kids love.
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