Math Software

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Archived Q&A and reviews ▼

Parent Q&A

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  • Online game to master multiplication?

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    Jun 18, 2023

    Hi—My kid is going into fourth grade but hasn’t mastered her times tables. We’re doing daily practice, but I’ll bet she’d be motivated to do a ton more reps if I handed my phone over to her for 20 minutes a day to play a game, in addition. I’ve found some apps that basically run flash cards, but there’s no gamification there. Anyone have advice: fun games with multiplication/division as a driver to advance? Thank you! Good luck to all this summer. :)

    Jun 18, 2023

    Yatzee is a fun game for the whole family. It only uses five dice but it's a start. We also used old fashioned flash cards. We would go through the cards and set aside the ones that were difficult for a second review. Once through the entire deck and once through the harder ones. That was it. Not too much of a time commitment. And LOTS of commiseration that memorizing your mutliplication and division tables was boring but EVERYONE has to do it. Eventually you have a day when there's nothing in the stack to review!

    Jun 21, 2023

    I used to play Number Munchers all the time in elementary school back in the late '90s. It was my second favorite after Oregon Trail. It looks like they have an Apple app now. Or you might be able to find an online version. 

    Jun 21, 2023

    Duolingo has a math app that uses the same game design and education research as the language app. I have not used the math version, but DuoLingo has helped me with French for the past year. I found it more fun and engaging than previous attempts to learn the language. I’d start there for your math student. 

    Jun 21, 2023

    Hi- elementary math specialist here.  Please check out this deck of visual multiplication cards.  The visual representations are very effective at helping children comprehend multiplication, not just memorize by rote.  I’ve used these with many kids and they work!  Most multiplication “games” online are based on quick recall of facts with a timer, and the speed aspect stresses kids out.  “Math for Love Multiplication by Heart Visual Flash Cards”- you can buy the deck on Amazon.  Watch the video first to learn how to use them.    
    https://www.amazon.com/ive?ingressType=dpimageblock&egress=asvh&product…

    Jun 21, 2023

    As a kid I played Number Munchers on the computer to reinforce multiplication. It isn't times tables, per se, but instead it focuses on multiples.    

    Jun 21, 2023

    The favorite in our household is Math Makers: Fun Math For Kids. It's a subscription but the same company has a couple of standalone pay-once games. It's cute, there's no irritating voice acting, it's gotten new content fairly regularly, and it emphasizes problem solving using multiplication (and addition and subtraction). I like it a lot! That said, it doesn't really do math drills.

    We paid for a MathTango subscription for a while, and the multiplication/division half has much more emphasis on memorizing the tables, which sounds like what you want. But as a game, I found it predatory-adjacent -- lots more flashing lights and achievement gimmicks to keep kids playing. It was an effective memorization tool but was a battle to get my kid to turn it off. 

    If cartoons are an option, the final two seasons of Numberblocks are all about multiplication, division, and prime/square numbers, with some very effective earworm songs. Might be too babyish for a fourth-grader but all the episodes are five minutes long, so it might be worth a shot.

    Jun 21, 2023

    Check out Prodigy! My kiddo just finished fourth grade and this was one of the games/apps available in his class to reinforce math concepts. There is definitely a gamification element. https://www.prodigygame.com/

    Jun 24, 2023

  • Learning 0-20 addition and subtraction

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    Jul 14, 2019

    Hello wise folks, my daughter will be heading into second grade and her teacher recommended (and it is expected for second grade) that we work on memorizing addition and subtraction for 0-20. My daughter likes math but they said she is slower to process the information and they think this will help if she becomes quicker with these facts. We have the math dice and work on incorporating this into our daily routine but I'm thinking she would benefit from something like flash cards but found there are so many options. Are there any that have worked well for your family? She also loves the computer or ipad, any favorite apps or websites that you have used and would recommend? I want to make it fun but am also ok with some cold and hard facts such as flash cards, etc.

    Thank you!!

    Jul 14, 2019

    Our children really love the Dragonbox math apps. The first couple (Numbers and Big Numbers) start off with math facts and number fluency, and others get into much more advanced topics like algebra and geometry. Our school also uses Monster Math and our child liked it enough that we downloaded that for home too. It's a lot more based around math facts (and was either free or relatively inexpensive) so might be a good one to try.

    Jul 17, 2019

    Hopefully the apps and cards help but I definitely would watch her over the next school year. Our daughter has a math learning disability that teachers and the District did not want to acknowledge based on a visual processing disorder. It put a huge amount of stress on her. If she is still having issues by mid year 2nd Grade I would submit a request for an evaluation and if they deny services request an Independent Evaluation (IEE) that the District pays for. Getting specialized support early is really important. Also you can contact DREDF for all kinds of information on the process.

    Jul 17, 2019

    While memorizing addition facts are super helpful in solving a math problem quickly, I’ve also found that sometimes there is no correlation between how good a person is at math, and how quickly they can solve an addition problem. I had a second grader last year who consistently scored in the 90th percentile on all his math tests, computerized AND paper/pencil. However, he was never able to get past 10 simple addition problems on his addition sprints (out of 50) in 4 minutes. There was another student several years ago who had the same problem, but ended up doing 8th grade math in 5th grade. What I’m saying is that if your daughter’s math grades are stellar, but this is the only problem, I wouldn’t worry too much about the memorization.

    Jul 19, 2019

    Our daughter has enjoyed several math apps, including park math, moose math, and bugs and numbers. I've liked these too. Also, bedtime math (which calls on a parent to read out a math problem rather than asking a kid to play on her own), is apparently proven to improve math tests significantly. Also a hit with our daughter, but requires parental involvement.

    Jul 23, 2019

    Our math specialist has changed our lives and her name is Deborah Brunelle. Her website is http://roomtolearn.net/ My daughter was really struggling with number sense in Kindergarten and it was suggested we find some outside help before math starts to increase in complexity. Possibly facing a dyscalulia diagnosis (dyslexia for math) our family was stressed and worried about what this meant so I started researching what direction we should go in since there are so many different types of tutors. After completing a huge worksheet of contacts and reading articles we met Deb and the deal was set. After about 1.5 years of seeing her weekly, I am thrilled to share that my daughter has progressed in such an ideal and kind environment I really can't imaging life without her support. Deb is comfortable with a well known learning program called Making Math Real. From this basis, Deb shines with creativity and sensitivity. She is intuitive, super smart and has an easy and loving smile. She creates weekly sessions for my daughter keeping in mind our smaller goals as well as larger goals that we have outlined with her school teacher. In session, she mixes math games with white board work and manipulatives. If any other parent out there is searching for help, we hope you meet our math angel Deb!

    Aug 5, 2019

Archived Q&A and Reviews

September 2001

We're looking for math games for our son (5th grade) that focus on repetitive math skills (multiplication, division). We've really avoided computer games until now, so we don't know what's out there. (we use a Macintosh) Thanks for any ideas. Mara

We love the Math Blaster series, and one of the best ones is for 9-12 year olds. I think we bought them at Costco for cheap, but I've seen them online shopping, too. Fun graphics, repetition of basic skills, word problems, problem solving, etc. Heather

Try Math Blaster. This is a popular game and I'm sure they have a version for MacIntosh. There is a basic one, then a more advanced version. It's reasonably fun, not exactly Lemmings PaintBalls, but fun enough. Good luck. Dianna