PopMath Original 4+

Fun, More Features Please!

What We Liked:

My daughter (8) smiles more when she’s playing PopMath than she does with most math games on the iPod. From the moment she opened it and popped her first bubbles, to every time she cleared a level and received a message of encouragement, “You rock”, she’s been all smiles. Those little written encouragement messages really challenge her to do better with each level as she aims for the ‘higher’ encouragement messages.

As a mom I love the flexibility this app offers as a teaching tool. Your child can either play through the app from start to finish as the app increases the value of the numbers and the number of operators, or you can select a single operator, a mixed operator, a specific number table, it’s wonderful. You can even make adjustments between levels.

This really helps your children to build to mastery with a specific table and operator, particularly valuable if you use a mastery-based math program like our family does. Your child can try as many times as he needs to get the right bubbles paired and no timer is visible during the level (number wrong and time is displayed after the level). The low-stress, encouraging environment and bubble-popping gameplay make this app surprisingly fun for kids.

Children may use the process of elimination, completing the bubbles they KNOW first in order to narrow down the options for the tougher questions, but I still feel that having to select the matching question and answer still helps to solidify math facts through the repetition of connecting the two parts.

What We Didn’t Like:

Even though there is a lot to love about this app, it has limited features. There is no record of the scores, so if you want to see how your child is doing you’ll have to sit with them and watch the end of each level. I’d also like to see a way to go back to the beginning of the app without exiting it, and to have multiple user options.

Overall:

PopMath Maths Plus is a really fun and flexible way to build confidence in basic mathematical skills that allows for precise targeting of fact sets and operators. Simply designed, surprisingly fun; I’m very pleased with the performance of this math app.

I received a promo code.