Bottom Line: Cute monkeys in outer space present beginning math practice for young children. With seven different skills to practice, this app provides a decent baseline of beginning math skills. It is easy to navigate, but there are no directions read aloud or samples given, so grown-up guidance will be needed for kids to use the app appropriately. As a first math app for children five and under, it does not allow for much independence in tasks.
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The developers, 10monkeys.com, created My First 10monkeys Math App for children five years old and under as a first math app. The chosen theme, monkeys in outer space, is adorable and will catch young children's attention. Kids will love the pictures within the menu screens of a monkey sleeping on the moon, monkeys playing on top of planets and more. The menu screens are easy to navigate by tapping arrows on either side of the screen, tapping the section name at the bottom or by clicking an appropriate icon from the home screen picture.
While navigation is easy, the independence will stop there for many children. This app provides no oral instructions or any visual examples. This would be a good app to use with an adult, but young children need to be able to explore on their own to become engaged in many cases. Kids may be able to learn to use parts of My First 10monkeys Math App on their own, but they will definitely need guidance at first from an adult. I would like to hear the directions read orally to children. It would be even better if a short visual was given to show how to complete the activities prior to starting. The app is not entirely lacking visuals, as the help button provides assistance in an appropriate visual way. When the question mark button is tapped, a hand appears that is pointing to the correct answer.
There are seven different skill areas for a child to navigate and practice. Counting is the first game on the menu. In counting, 20 different cards are laid out with different amounts of objects on them. The user must click on the cards that have the same number of items on them, but they are different objects. For a beginning math app, this is a bit advanced. A child must have a variety of prerequisite skills to be able to complete this game. The user must be able to count using 1-to-1 correspondence, remember a number counted while counting another set, and be able to match pictures similar in number but not in objects. While I find this to be a unique counting game that kids would love, I question its place in a child's first math app. First and foremost, 20 different cards with small pictures on them may be too much for some young kids. If the app had settings to choose different numbers of matches, it would open it up to more children. Another thing that might make this section more useful is the ability for the app to count aloud as a child taps using 1-to-1 correspondence.
The next two sections, Comparing and Geometry, are set up similarly and are appropriate beginning math practices for young children. Comparing allows a user to choose between finding the least or finding the greatest. Once the player begins, four worlds with plants sticking out of them appear, and the child must pick either the least or the greatest depending on what was chosen at the beginning. As long as a child understands least and greatest, this is a good practice game. Geometry works on finding circle, rectangle, square and triangle from messy arrays of shapes. Shapes appear and a child taps on only the shape that was chosen before starting the game. Practicing shapes is definitely a great game for a child's first math app. I would love to hear the names of the shapes spoken aloud when touched to help a child learn them.
Children will enjoy playing the piano in the number recognition section. Stars appear for a child to count and then find the matching number on the piano keys. A line of music is shown on a staff at the top of the page and the numbers lead the child to play it correctly on the piano. This is very creative and engaging. The only suggestion I would have for this section is the ability for the app to count aloud as a child taps the stars to help practice counting.
Patterns and measuring are two more skill areas to practice. Patterns provides the start to a pattern and the child must click on the shape that would come next. This game randomly moves among a variety of different patterns, easiest to hardest. Measuring has the choice to find the lighter or the heavier item at the start. Once chosen, two items will appear and the user must tap on either the lighter or heavier based on what was chosen at the start. Children must have prior knowledge of the meaning of heavier and lighter and the approximate weight of a variety of objects. Children may struggle to know if a balloon or sunglasses are heavier at first, but the pictures repeat, so hopefully they would learn through repetition.
The last section is share, which is practicing number pairs. A child must choose a number between five and ten to start. It is the user's job to click on two numbers at a time that will add up to the chosen number. There are 24 numbers in a messy array on the screen from which the user can choose. This is a great activity, but it also requires prerequisite skills.
My First 10monkeys Math App provides music and sound effects that can be turned on and off separately. There are sound effects for both correct and incorrect answers. On many of the games, a monkey comes down from the top of the app on a star for each incorrect answer. I fear that this app would be one that children might get the incorrect answer on purpose in order to see the effects that it makes. There is really no incentive to get the correct answer, as the wrong answer provides a fun interaction also. The help button will also tell the user the answer. Will all children have problems with this aspect? No. But there are many children who will get the incorrect answer just to see the monkey appear. With young children, I prefer that the incorrect responses are not reinforced by fun interactions and sounds.
Overall, this is a good app with a variety of targeted skills. As an app designed to be an introductory math app for children five and under, I believe it falls short. I would suggest the app to be more for five and six year olds to practice math skills that they are already practicing in school. It would receive a higher rating from me if it was targeted differently. Although the overall theme is cute, the app is not overly engaging for young children to continue to enjoy. This app receives 3½ stars from me, as I believe it has good content, but could use a bit more and needs to fit its target better.
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Heather S. was hoping to see someone dressed as a monkey for Halloween. SmartAppsForKids.com was paid a priority review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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