Fun and Engaging Kindergarten Math App {CCSS Aligned}

Are you looking for fun new ways to prepare your child for Kindergarten math? Or perhaps your child has finished Kindergarten, but needs to review over the Summer (raising my hand!). Either way, I have a fun new Kindergarten math app from Zap Zap Math to share that your kids will love!

Looking for a fun and easy way to keep up your kids math skills over the Summer or prepare them for Kindergarten math? This app from Zap Zap Math is a great resource to do just that! Learn more at MathGeekMama.com

*Please Note: This post is sponsored by Zap Zap Math and I was compensated for my time in writing this review. All opinions, however, are 100% my own and I was not required to write a positive review.*

New Kindergarten Math App for Kids

Zap Zap Math Kindergarten is a fun and entertaining math app that my kids have been begging to play lately.

We recently went on vacation to see our family and head to the beach. It’s not a terribly long drive (about 6 hours) but with 4 kids, it can seem a lot longer!

I decided to let them test out the Zap Zap Math app (available on iTunes and Google Play), and they’re hooked! The games cover important Kindergarten math concepts, but in ways that are fun and motivating for my kids. Plus, it helped to pass the time!

Some of the games are a bit addicting and there were times during our vacation where I had to take the phone away and send them outside!

About Zap Zap Math Kindergarten

To begin the game, an adult must help set up the account for your child. Then that child can begin to play. The game tracks their level, how many questions they’ve gotten right or wrong, etc.

Looking for a fun and easy way to keep up your kids math skills over the Summer or prepare them for Kindergarten math? This app from Zap Zap Math is a great resource to do just that! Learn more at MathGeekMama.com

Kids then travel through outer space, working their way through the various games and math problems at each planet.

There are 3 planets, covering numbers, shapes and measurement, and addition and subtraction.

Each math game is like a level, and kids must start at the beginning and work their way through each game to make it to the end. In other words, all the games are locked until you complete the previous level. Then the next game is unlocked, etc.

At first, I thought this was a disappointing feature (not being able to jump around to whatever game or topic you’d like).

My kids, however, being used to Super Mario Brothers, were completely okay with this and saw it as a challenge.

By the time kids have worked through all three planets, they will have covered all the math skills addressed in the Common Core State Standards.

Even if you don’t use the CCSS, this still covers the basic content of most Kindergarten curricula, making it a fun and easy way to prepare kids to start Kindergarten math, or a fantastic review before heading into first grade.

I’ve found it to be especially helpful for my daughter, because there are some concepts that I didn’t spend as much time on in Kindergarten (since we homeschool) but this game has helped her to review.

Looking for a fun and easy way to keep up your kids math skills over the Summer or prepare them for Kindergarten math? This app from Zap Zap Math is a great resource to do just that! Learn more at MathGeekMama.com

One topic that was especially helpful for her was the focus on reading number words (to 20). Practicing reading the word and matching it to the correct numeral was something we didn’t spend as much time on this past school year, so this was a great review.

How to Incorporate this Math App into Your Routine

Though I usually sit and observe or discuss the games and problems with my daughter while she plays, this can definitely be an independent activity.

If you homeschool, this would be a great way for kids to continue working on learning and reviewing math skills while you’re helping other kids.

Or as a quiet activity if you have younger ones napping.

If you’re a classroom teacher with tablets, this would work well as a reward for well behaved or especially helpful students.

Or as an engaging activity for early finishers.

And though kids can definitely play independently, I would suggest (as with all online or app based math resources) working with your child on occasion.

Take time to go through some of the games together so you can ask questions to discern their level of understanding. Sometimes, kids figure out tricks or simply guess when they’re playing an online game, so it’s important to dig a little deeper to assess their understanding.

Questions to ask as you play:

  • Can you explain what the question is asking in your own words?
  • How did you know that was the answer?
  • Can you make up a story to go along with that problem? (For example, if it’s an addition problem, they might say, “4 aliens were blue, and 3 were green. So there were 7 aliens altogether.”)

What I Like About this App

One of the great things about this app is that it covers all the Kindergarten math standards. There are lots of fun math apps out there that cover specific topics, but this includes so much.

I also like that concepts are covered multiple times, in increasing difficulty. So even though your child may complete a level and move on, that same concept will be included again in a later game.

Another thing I like is how visual many of the concepts are. This is incredibly helpful for kids, as it is essential to teach and explore math in visual ways and with visual representations.

Looking for a fun and easy way to keep up your kids math skills over the Summer or prepare them for Kindergarten math? This app from Zap Zap Math is a great resource to do just that! Learn more at MathGeekMama.com

For example, when comparing numbers, there are pictures to represent each quantity so that kids can more easily see and determine greater than, less than or equal to.

Some Cons of the Zap Zap Math App

One feature that’s not my favorite is the timer. As kids progress though the levels and the questions get more challenging, a timer begins to show up. This is to encourage kids to answer the question before time runs out.

The reason I don’t like this is that I don’t believe we ought to measure students’ success on how fast they are, and I don’t think we ought to value speed. I prefer to value deep understanding and exploration.

That being said, nothing actually happens if they miss the time, it simply starts over. So there are no negative effects from the timer, and no indication to students that they’ve failed because they didn’t answer before the buzzer.

The other thing I don’t like (which is going to be the case with virtually any math app) is that it is performance based. In other words, each problem is either right or wrong, with no open ended exploration.

But again, it is a very fun and engaging app, and covers all Kindergarten standards, so to remedy this, I would simply use open ended exploration along with the app.

There’s never going to be an app, game or curriculum that covers everything a child needs to be a successful mathematician, so it’s always helpful to find great supplements and put them together to give kids a well rounded math education.

This includes online or app based games, hands on manipulatives, open ended challenges, paper and pencil problems, etc.

So if you’re looking for a Kindergarten math app to add to your tool belt, this is a great place to start!

Want to Learn More?

Zap Zap Math is available for $2.99 on the iTunes app store.

It’s also available on Google Play.

You can also learn more about the game here!

Looking for a fun and easy way to keep up your kids math skills over the Summer or prepare them for Kindergarten math? This app from Zap Zap Math is a great resource to do just that! Learn more at MathGeekMama.com

Have you tried this with your Kindergartner? What do they think? Share in the comments to let us know your experience!


Looking for a math app for older kids?

Practice and Review Multiplication Facts with Fact Fluency: Mastering Multiplication App on iTunes:


 

2 Comments

  1. That looks awesome! Thanks for the review. We’ve found an easy way to make maths review quizzes is using a game template (eg kahoot.com uquizgames.com ). This way you can pop your own content it! Great for the whiteboard.

  2. That looks awesome! Thanks for the review. We’ve found an easy way to make maths review quizzes is to use a game template (eg kahoot.com uquizgames.com ). This way you can pop your own content it! Great for the whiteboard.

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