Math Bakery First Grade

Math you can grasp!

Reader Rating4 Votes
4.8

Math Bakery First Grade App Review

App Info

Price: $2.99

Overview

Math Bakery First Grade is an engaging set of games to help young children build basic addition and subtraction skills. There are six games for each operation, each with increasing levels of difficulty. There’s also a “Dual” mode that pits two players against each other on either of two levels of difficulty, to add a pleasantly competitive element to the fun. In addition, a few “mini-games” within the normal games spice up the action, making for productive mental breaks.

Features include:

  • Intuitive interface that is easy for young children to use
  • 6 great games for addition and subtraction that build skills
  • Several different learning formats, including tracing numbers and working with measurement
  • Foundational instruction in grouping by tens
  • Easy to follow tutorials and help

Quality

Math Bakery First Grade is a very high quality app featuring intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces that are perfect for young children. Kids can drag and drop shapes on the screen, then select numbers to answer questions. The screens offer a wealth of visual cues to help children learn concepts, such as a number line from one to ten and red ribbon that connects groups of ten items.

Parents and teachers will appreciate the app’s capability to accommodate and keep records for up to three users. Kids can play independently, then teachers, mentors or parents can see how they performed on the activities. A parents’ section includes a handy guide to all of the app’s features as well as explanations about why the concepts are important and access to privacy policy and the like.

Education

Math Bakery First Grade is a wonderful way to introduce younger children to concepts important for understanding addition and subtraction. It’s best for preschool through about grade 1. The app highlights foundational concepts (such as one-to-one correspondence, grouping by 10s, halving and doubling, and so forth) that kids need to learn to fully and truly understand addition and subtraction. As the developers say, it’s “math you can grasp!”

 

The main games in the app show groups of cookies on a baking sheet that kids can move around using a drag and drop interface. The app shows two groups of cookies, and had kids add or subtract by moving them around the baking sheet.  For addition, the second group is moved up to the top line to make a group of ten if possible, then kids count the total number of cookies. For subtraction, there is a row of cookies, and players must pull the number subtracted down to a lower area, then count the remaining cookies.  As in the addition games, there is a lot of stress on how to work with groups of ten (full rows). Activities are untimed by default, but there is option to turn the timer on if you want to add a bit of excitement to the activity. The concrete nature of the games will really help kids get the hang of addition and subtraction all the way up to numbers above 20. The stress on groups of ten also will help kids gain a great grasp of place value concepts.

In addition to the main games for adding and subtracting, there is a measurement “mini-game” to add some fun. Kids help “mix” recipes by adding measuring cups full of each ingredient up to the correct amount. The measures are currently in the metric system, but developers say that U.S. Customary Units (cups and teaspoons, etc.) will be available soon.

Entertainment

This app is highly engaging for kids…after all, it’s full of COOKIES!! Kids will enjoy the format and will feel great as they learn the basic math skills. Happy, nonverbal responses are triggered after kids complete a few items successfully, and at the end of each set, players can watch their completed, baked cookies run through the cash register to gather stars that will allow them to work on building a gingerbread house.

Value

The Math Bakery First Grade app costs $2.99 in the App Store and $3.49 on Google Play, which is a fabulous value. The game provides important foundational skills with concrete, manipulative experiences that educators know to be the most effective way to teach. It’s a perfect companion to classroom teaching for these beginning computation skills, and encourages that all important intuitive understanding of numbers and operations that leads to good mental math skills.

 

Child Friendliness

This app is quite child-friendly. Parents and teachers will appreciate the fact that there are no outside advertisements and no in-app purchases. There is a link to the developers’ website, but it’s well-protected behind an effective gate system.

  • NO accessible external links
  • NO social media
  • NO 3rd party ads

 

Math Bakery First Grade
Quality
Education
Entertainment
Value
Child Friendly
Reader Rating4 Votes
4.8