I’ve been meaning to write something about children’s PDA software. I thought I’d start with some excellent educational games from Leading Step. This is a bit of cheat I have to admit, because my children did most of the work in reviewing this software!
Both my children have PDAs and they put them to a variety of uses such as photography, animation, games, music etc. But I like to think that they can learn something too. Educational games always feel like a bit of a con for children. You give them a game and they end up learning something even though they didn’t really want to.
Anyway, this is exactly what I did with Math Champ. I loaded it both their PDAs, and when I got home from work, they didn’t even look up for playing with this game.
My son (age 6) was playing this game when I got home.
When asked what he thought of it he didn’t reply. In fact he completely ignored me for some time. When I did get his attention he said “Yeah, it’s brilliant”. That’s praise indeed.
Anyway, I had a bit of a play myself later, and here’s what I thought.
Math Champ contains a bunch of different games for kids to learn with. So when they exhaust one of the math games they can easily pick up another. It works with a range of ages so it easily be used by younger children as well. The games cover a range of tasks from simply identifying numbers to adding, subtracking, dividing etc. There’s fractions too, but that was way too hard for me to handle.
The app can be set to work with different number ranges and abilities and can be narrowed down to it just works on a specific times table (useful if a child is having problems in just one area). Here’s a shot of the control screen:
Finally, and something that the children loved, was the ability to see their scores over time. It helps them to focus on the game they’re playing and get better at it.
Like I said at the beginning, I don’t think it is fair to give kids math games, but when they tell you that they enjoy it what can you do? Mine loved this one.
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