Love to Count by Pirate Trio Educator Review

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Common Sense Review

Updated July 2012

Hundreds of tasks and swashbuckling fun for new math learners

Common Sense Rating 5

Teacher Rating (1 Teacher Review) 4

Price

$3.99

This grade range is a recommendation by the Common Sense Education editorial team, not the developer/publisher.

Grades

Pre-K-1

Platforms

iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

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Subjects

Math

counting
grouping
numbers
shapes

Skills

Character & SEL

perseverance

Critical Thinking

logic
part-whole relationships
problem solving
solving puzzles

Purpose

Targeted Practice

Standards

Common Core State Standards

Enter each player's name and choose an avatar.
Happy characters invite kids to try to solve challenges.
Challenges often require kids to use more than one math skill.
Creative pirate themes are incorporated in every page -- even on number lines!
As kids solve problems, they collect items for their treasure boxes by creating words.

Pros

Tasks include real-life activities, like cutting pizzas and counting dots on ladybugs.

Cons

Kids on the young side of the target age may forget to tap "Done" after completing the task.

Bottom Line

By blending simple math skills into pirate games, Love to Count by Pirate Trio helps kids understand why math matters.

Dana Villamagna
Common Sense Reviewer
Classroom teacher

Common Sense Rating 5

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return? 5

The adorable pirate and ocean themes draw kids into the math challenges, and the progressive treasure box reward system helps keep them coming back to solve more problems.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer? 4

Love to Count presents math challenges in ways that help kids build the concept that math is important in everyday life. Math is an integral part of each challenge. Specific verbal feedback is often provided for incorrect answers.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students? 4

Kids are given instructions verbally, in written text, and through visual clues. An excellent explainer of the app's details is available under the "i" tab for teachers and parents.

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How Can Teachers Use It?

Since students can create individual user accounts on Love to Count by Pirate Trio, this is a perfect app for student-driven math practice. If used daily for five or 10 minutes during a period of weeks, students will discover many different concepts in random order, all while building their treasure box rewards. This makes this a surprising and fun math activity kids will look forward to playing time and again. Teachers may also consider using Love to Count by Pirate Trio to enhance a teacher-led review lesson for small groups, and as another way to approach concepts already introduced in a colorful and memorable way.

What's It Like?

Love To Count by Pirate Trio includes hundreds of short tasks that help kids bridge the gap between math concepts and real life. It's remarkable that this substantial math practice app for kids age 4–7 manages to incorporate practical math concepts such as fractions as well as skills such as recognizing left from right through kid pirate characters, adding oceans of fun.

Is It Good For Learning?

Through an almost inexhaustible cache of Common Core-aligned tasks -- asking kids to split a pizza evenly for the pirates or to choose the third starfish in a line -- kids practice math skills and earn virtual rewards. They rapidly move from one task to the next and are prompted to solve tasks by clear voice narration, so pre-readers can play, too. With 700 tasks, there's little chance of them getting bored. Every activity somehow relates numbers to order, time, weight, shape, group, or quantity. Once kids complete a few tasks, they earn letters that form a word and then win a reward from a treasure chest (an image of a pirate bear, for example). Multiple kids can have user accounts by choosing a culturally appropriate avatar. If they each have a user account, their rewards for finishing tasks are maintained and teachers can view progress for individual students.

The genius idea behind Love to Count by Pirate Trio is that even young kids need to know why math is relevant to everyday life. Making the math games relate to pirates' lives -- sorting shape blocks, catching fish -- just makes it all the more fun and engaging. Love to Count by Pirate Trio empowers kids to practice the math skills they're learning in class and that they need to use now or are likely to need soon.

Teacher Reviews

Write Your Own Review

Students will "Love to count" with this fun, interactive math app!

Sherri C.

4

July 24, 2014

Lesson Plans

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Counting And Cardinality
K.CC: Count To Tell The Number Of Objects.
K.CC.4	Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.

K.CC.5	Count to answer “how many?” questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a rectangular array, or a circle, or as many as 10 things in a scattered configuration; given a number from 1–20, count out that many objects.
Geometry
1.G: Reason With Shapes And Their Attributes.
1.G.1	Distinguish between defining attributes (e.g., triangles are closed and three-sided) versus non-defining attributes (e.g., color, orientation, overall size); build and draw shapes to possess defining attributes.

1.G.3	Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, fourths, and quarters, and use the phrases half of, fourth of, and quarter of. Describe the whole as two of, or four of the shares. Understand for these examples that decomposing into more equal shares creates smaller shares.
K.G: Identify And Describe Shapes (Squares, Circles, Triangles, Rectangles, Hexagons, Cubes, Cones, Cylinders, And Spheres).
K.G.2	Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.
Measurement And Data
1.MD: Measure Lengths Indirectly And By Iterating Length Units.
1.MD.2	Express the length of an object as a whole number of length units, by laying multiple copies of a shorter object (the length unit) end to end; understand that the length measurement of an object is the number of same-size length units that span it with no gaps or overlaps. Limit to contexts where the object being measured is spanned by a whole number of length units with no gaps or overlaps.
Operations And Algebraic Thinking
K.OA: Understand Addition As Putting Together And Adding To, And Under- Stand Subtraction As Taking Apart And Taking From.
K.OA.2	Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.

Love to Count by Pirate Trio

Pros

Cons

Bottom Line

Key Standards Supported

Counting And Cardinality

Geometry

Measurement And Data

Operations And Algebraic Thinking

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