Review by Debbie Gorrell, Common Sense Education | Updated September 2017
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Love to Count by Pirate Trio

Get it now
  • Download from App Store

Hundreds of tasks and swashbuckling fun for new math learners

Subjects & skills
Subjects
  • Math
Skills
  • Character & SEL
  • Critical Thinking
Grades This grade range is a recommendation by Common Sense Education and not the developer/publisher.
Pre-K–1
Common Sense says (See details)
Teachers say (2 Reviews)
Price:  $3.99
Platforms:  iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

Take a look inside

5 images
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 box by creating words.

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

Cons: Games are randomly selected and cannot be chosen by skill or interest.

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

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

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 5 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 Love to Count by Pirate Trio a surprising and fun math activity kids will look forward to playing time and again. Teachers may also consider using the app to enhance a teacher-led review lesson for small groups, and as another method to approach concepts already introduced in a colorful and memorable way. However, games cannot be selected based on content, so targeted practice is difficult. 

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Standards:

Love To Count by Pirate Trio includes hundreds of short tasks that help kids bridge the gap between math concepts and real life. With the help of kid pirate characters, 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. 

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 and choose their own 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. 

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.

The great 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.

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

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?

The app presents math challenges in ways that help kids build the concept that math is important in everyday life. Specific verbal feedback is often provided for incorrect answers, but games cannot be chosen by skill. 

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

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.

Common Sense Reviewer
Debbie Gorrell
About our ratings and privacy evaluation.

Key Standards Supported

Counting And Cardinality

  • 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.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.2

    Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.

Measurement And Data

  • 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.2

    Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.

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Teacher Reviews

(See all 2 reviews) (2 reviews) Write a review
Featured review by
Fiona T. , Media specialist/librarian
Media specialist/librarian
Fun Pirate themed Math app
This app allows students to consolidate previous Math knowledge in an interactive game that increases in difficulty with use and allows multiple players. It can be used independently and encourages students to add, subtract, multiply and divide in real, relatable scenarios such as counting objects and sharing treats. My students would specifically ask to play with this app and with over 700 Math problems they never became bored with the format. The app allows teachers to check the play statistics so that you can easily monitor and assess a student's progress.
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