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Monster Math App Review

App Info

Price: $6.99

Overview

How would your kids like to play an app that has monsters, minions, ferocious enemies, action, and a quest to free a prison held captive by an evil sorcerer? Well, they can have all that and more with Monster Math! This app combines all of those appealing elements of a video game with important Common Core math skills to create one adventurous math app.

Maxx and Dextra are best monster friends. One day while they are out together, Dextra is taken prisioner by an evil sorcerer. Maxx vows to find his friend and defeat her captor. However, in order to do that, he must fight against enemies and minions along the way who are determined to keep him from reaching his friend. Maxx must collect candies from the Hall of Math by solving mathematical equations. For example, the game will tell the player to collect all candies that equal 3. The player must then use their finger to move Maxx to the candies that have math problems that equal 3 (1+2, 7-4, 6-3, etc.) Once Maxx has collected enough candies to defeat his foe, he can move on to the next level. The levels grow increasingly challenging as the enemies require more and more candies to be defeated.

Parents and Teachers can customize a child’s experience by choosing the types of math problems they are presented with. Options include addition and subtraction in single or double digits, multiplication, division, comparisons, and many more. You can also select the grade level of math you wish the child to play from first grade up to fifth grade. The app also provides a progress report that you can access to see where your child has mastered and where they may need a little more practice. The option to create multiple profiles makes this app valuable for use in the home or in a classroom setting.

There were many things about this app that I liked, but a few things that I didn’t. First of all, I felt like the approach this app takes to helping kids get excited about math is spot on. The addition of defeating evil monsters to rescue a friend makes practicing math skills more exciting and appealing. I liked actually playing the game. The challenge of seeing several math equations and having to solve them quickly and looking for only a certain answer was fun and challenging. I also like the progress report to monitor my child’s performance. Having said that, I felt like the storyline itself was a little bit cheesy and a little too silly for even elementary kids. Even my second grade son thought that having to collect candy to defeat evil monsters was kind of ridiculous. The narration and story graphics seemed poorly done and lower quality than some other apps I’ve reviewed. Having said that, if your child can get past the cheesy story line and lower-quality graphics then this app has potential to be a good tool for mastering math skills.

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