
Ask HN: Best math app for elementary school kids? - Stronico
I need to improve my eight year old daughter&#x27;s math skills.  She has no natural affection for doing math problems.  We&#x27;ve been doing flash cards, which work somewhat well, but since it&#x27;s 2019 I went looking for a technological improvement.  As this problem is common, nerdy and technical  I thought I would find a wealth of options using our favorite buzzwords, personalized, machine learning, evidence based, rational, etc.  However that was not the case.  They all wanted to make learning fun, but not much more than that - at least at a first look.<p>Does anyone have any math apps that they (or their children) have used personally that worked?<p>UPDATE - having an app also serves the purpose of building some independent study into her daily routine (I realized that while replying to a comment.)
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michaelah
Checkout Beast Academy
([https://beastacademy.com/](https://beastacademy.com/)). My 7 year old
Daughter loves it!

The lessons are presented as an animated comic book where the characters are
cute little monsters learning math concepts. In addition to the online app,
there is both a physical version of the Lesson Book and Practice Book for each
grade level -- which in turn is sub-divided into 4 parts (eg. 2nd Grade -->
2A, 2B, 2C, 2D).

One point worth bringing up is that this is a product produced by The Art of
Problem Solving, which is very much involved in Math Olympiad competition
prep. So, the material can get challenging quickly. They are doing basic
algebra in the 2nd grade level and in beginning of the 3rd grade level they
are doing material that I never saw until HS Geometry.

All of that being said, I find the curriculum design and method of building
mathematical intuition and number sense vastly superior to anything I ever
experienced myself in school. I studied math in university and work as a Data
Scientist and ML Engineer and I am learning from her lessons as well :)

I would recommend beginning with the level 2A regardless of your daughter's
existing skills. The first concept that is covered is place value and you
spend the bulk of the first book/level rolling this concept over and
inspecting it from every conceivable angle. It's hard to overstate how really
groking place value is foundational to almost all other math that kids will do
in school; Beast Academy does an exceptionally thorough job of covering it.

My daughter thinks it is tons of fun and I don't have to do anything to get
her to do the lessons or materials -- she just wants to do it on her own. I
should also add that my daughter has never had a negative view of math, so I
cannot say with confidence that my N=1 observation will generalize.

Best of luck!

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madhadron
> She has no natural affection for doing math problems.

Why would she? I would be more worried if she was saying, "Oh boy, half an
hour of rote application of memorization!" All you should care about for
arithmetic memorization is getting through it as efficiently as possible.

If you're doing flashcards, then I would suggest a spaced repetition system
such as SuperMemo or Anki. For actual math instead of memorization, do it with
her. Nothing available today compares with direct interaction with a caring
adult who knows the material.

~~~
Stronico
Some kids do like doing that actually. I don't get it either. I also hated
math when I was her age. It took till about 30 before I could see the beauty
in mathematics.

I will probably still do the flashcards with her - one thing (not mentioned in
the original question come to think of it) is to build some independent study
into her repertoire. Seemingly an app would be a good way to do that.

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natehoellein
Hi - I wrote a flash card app for my kids. One of my kids used it a lot from
3rd through 5th grades, and another, started using it in kindergarden and will
continue in 1st grade.

The app can be configured to practice all operations, singularly or combined
and with any range of numbers. There is an option to choose a common number so
that number shows up in every problem. There are two different problem types:

8 + 4 = ____

8 + __ = 12.

If a problem is missed 3 times, then it will show up again until that problem
is solved successfully 6 times. There is also a section where you as the
parent can review the all the problem history.

Here's a link, feedback is always welcome and appreciated! (support at
4bitshift dot com) Right now it's iOS only.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flash-cards-math-
facts/id11493...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flash-cards-math-
facts/id1149305731)

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tmaly
I have not found any great apps. I took the workbook route and whiteboard
route.

