Well-built app that provides engaging practice in early math skills
Community Review for Moose Math by Duck Duck Moose
My Take
Moose Math, much like other Duck Duck Moose apps, offers a high quality learning environment within an intuitive, well-designed user interface. The target skills are well suited to early primary and are an engaging way to reinforce math skills. Numerous player accounts can be created, and progress tracked through a "Report Card" screen, which lists players' progression and success rate, as well as suggestions for areas of need. A nice real world extension are worksheets connected to the game's activities, available for download from the Duck Duck Moose website. My one wish for this outstanding app would be the ability to "close" a store once mastery is reached. The students love to make endless smoothies, but I'd like to direct them toward other activities. Besides, sometimes I could use a break from the catchy sound of a virtual blender whirring endlessly at the iPad center.
How I Use It
Loaded on my "centers time" iPads, this app is a perennial favorite of my kindergarten students! It is engaging for all levels and offers dynamic practice in several math skills, including number sense, skip counting, attribute matching, geometry, colors, addition and subtraction. Players visit different businesses, completing increasingly difficult levels to earn items to decorate their town. The most popular destination by far for my students is Moose Juice, where players build (and "drink"!) a variety of smoothies by following addition and subtraction recipes. Although not a major part of the game experience, many of the items and creatures found in town can be manipulated, inviting exploration and experimentation. While each game does have an easy to use, kid-friendly help function built in, I consider Moose Math a skills review, but not adequate as an introduction to the target math skills.