5 Fun Apps to Help Younger Children with Math

A Handful of Gamified Math Apps to Make Learning Fun!

It’s sometimes hard to encourage children to become interested in academics, and math seems to be one of the trickiest subjects for many. Children who learn to enjoy math during their early years of education are often likely to have an easier time as they progress through middle and high school.

When you approach academics in a way that can be entertaining, children tend to become more interested and less avoidant of completing learning activities. Luckily, there’s no need to come up with clever ways to get them interested in math anymore; apps are available that can create a fun learning experience for your kids, so you needn’t bribe them to complete their schoolwork any longer!

Whether your device of choice to help your children with their education is a tablet, smartphone, or computer, here are some apps they are sure to enjoy.

Peter Pig's Money Counter

Peter Pig’s Money Counter is a great app to help younger kids not only with math but also with recognizing and learning about U.S. currency. The app is fairly simple and can be helpful for children of just about any age, especially if they could use some assistance learning how to count money.

There are three different difficulty settings available, so it’s unlikely your children will get bored with it quickly. Tasks your children can partake in on the app include adding coins to the correct jars (the app then adds them to your “bank”) within a certain time limit, counting the coins and selecting the correct amount, and determining which group of coins contains a greater value.

Peter Pigs’ Money Counter is free and available for Android, but you can also find it online.

The Counting Kingdom

The Counting Kingdom is an app that turns math into an adventure, so your children may not even view their time spent on it as a learning experience. Kids are faced with the job of defending their kingdom and need to use monsters to do so.

Each monster is numbered, and in order to cast spells, the monsters that equal one of the numbers shown on the three papers near the castle must be selected. Once the correct monster or group of monsters is selected, the spell is cast, the monsters disappear, and your child is closer to saving the kingdom. However, if the incorrect monster is chosen, it makes its way one step closer to the castle.

The Counting Kingdom is available for iOS, Android, Amazon Fire devices, PC and Mac. It currently varies in price and is typically between $0.99 and $6.99.

Operation Math

Operation Math is another adventure game that can help your children with math. In the app, your child will be playing as a spy whose mission is to defeat “Dr. Odd.” Operation Math offers 105 different timed missions that will require your child to complete math drills in order to advance in the game.

The app can also help your children learn some geography, as the missions are located in different areas of the world. There are also several training levels that can help your child prepare for the missions. Perhaps one of the best features of this app in particular is that you can create three different player profiles, so it’s easy for more than one child to play it on the same device.

Operation Math is available for iOS, Android, Amazon Fire devices and the Nook for $2.99.

Motion Math: Hungry Guppy

Motion Math: Hungry Guppy is a simple app that can especially assist very young children who are just beginning to learn math or even those who haven’t yet begun. The fish, or guppy, swims around while it displays a certain number of dots on its stomach. There are circles with numbers or dots in the center of them that must be dragged toward the guppy’s mouth in order to feed it.

The circles that contain the numbers in the center of them can be dragged toward each other and combined to equal a specific amount. Every time the guppy is fed the correct amount, it grows a bit larger. If the incorrect amount is fed to it, it decreases in size.

Motion Math: Hungry Guppy is only available for iOS and costs $4.99.

Counting Caterpillar

Counting Caterpillar helps children learn to organize number sequences and gives them a fun way to practice counting to 100. Similar to Hungry Guppy, the objective of this game is to feed numbers to the caterpillar until it’s full. As the caterpillar travels, aphids appear with specific numbers labeled on them, and the numbers may sometimes be presented in different ways.

If the aphids are collected in the correct number sequence, the caterpillar soon becomes full, and a butterfly is earned. Butterflies can later be viewed in a gallery, and each one is unique, so your children will be motivated to continue through all of the levels.

Counting Caterpillar is available only for iOS and costs $1.99.

Technology as a Tool

There are of course some downsides to the prevalence of modern technology, most of which are overuse and security issues, but technology can be used as a great educational tool as well. Most of all, it can provide a more entertaining learning experience for young children so they can easily become interested and motivated to participate in educational activities. There are tons of apps that can make learning less of a chore for your little ones, so there’s no need to stop just at math!

Have you discovered any other fun apps that can help younger children with math? Please share them with us in the comments section below.