PennyMe

I love finding apps that can reinforce what our kids are learning in school. I was excited to learn about PennyMe, an app that helps your children practice their money counting skills. Money gave both of my girls trouble. Part of that is genetic, there’s a reason I’ve never worked as a cashier and why I stay far away from the PTO cash box. The other part of the trouble came when it was time for homework and we looked at the worksheets. It’s hard to learn to tell a penny from a dime when you’re working off a black and white copy and my girls struggled trying to remember what looked like what.

Now that I’ve established that we’ve got challenges when it comes to counting money let me say that I’ve given PennyMe a try and I’m thrilled with it. It does a fantastic job offering practice exercises with money and the money looks like real money! There are two ways to play. The first is “Quiz”. Here you are given some coins and asked to select the matching amount of money. The coins can be moved around the screen just as if they were real money. In the easy mode the coins are shown along with their value. (Ex: a penny has 1c on it). In the normal mode there are no hints, the coin is all you’ve got to work with. In “Count” you are given a monetary amount and you need to drag coins into the middle of the screen until you’ve reached the set amount. You can use whatever combination of coins that you like, as long as you reach that total. Again, easy mode displays the coins value and normal mode shows you just the coins.

The only suggestion I have for PennyMe is to create a way to track scores. The games keep a score as you play but when you’re done the score is gone. There is also a timer that counts how long you’ve been playing. It would be nice to see that recorded as well. I wish this app had been around when my girls were in the first grade learning to count money. It’s going to be a terrific tool for my son when he gets there and I think he’s going to have an edge over his poor big sisters.

Price when Reviewed: $.99    FREE

Seller: Acoco Interactive

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.