Rony's Math

 

 

Bottom Line: Well done and nice to look at but it needs more teaching moments rather than strict testing ones. There is also a link to another app right in the middle of an ending congratulations page.

 

On each of the five levels of Rony's Math, the main character, a raccoon, is trying to reach or help a friend and the child has to solve the math problems to complete each task.

For example, on the second level, Rony and her frog-friend want the child to pick lilies but only the odd numbered ones, in ascending order. Once that is complete, the child has to pick all the even numbered lilies in ascending order.

After each level is successfully completed, the child gets to play a whack-a-mole type game as a reward. This is called the "fun game" in the app and introduces different characters to whack for each successive level.

Rony's Math works well and looks and sounds nice; it looks like a game my four-year old daughter would really enjoy. I like the narration, by a child, and the graphics are cute and fun.

The problem is that, for the target audience, it doesn't go far enough to help the children learn what to do for each task. 

On the first level, for instance, Rony says to place the logs to build the bridge in "ascending" and then "descending" order (two different sections of bridge). That kind of verbiage just isn't going to work for the target age, meaning the app will have to be a play-together activity with an adult. It does tell the child when they answer incorrectly but there no visual instructions or prompts/hints even if the child just sits there and does nothing. 

In other words, my daughter Lily doesn't know what the words ascending and descending mean, so I would have to show her how to use the app on each level. If the app said "count up" or "count down" and had some visual clues or showed her how to start, she would learn something. As it is now, it's actually just a math testing/reinforcement app in really nice wrapping because the child is going to have to really know what they are doing mathematically to play (or have an adult explain what's going on to them.)

Another issue: On the final level, children are provided with paint brushes numbered 1-10 and asked to solve a math problem on a flower by painting it with the proper can-number. So, the flower has 4+5 on it and the child has to select the number 9 paint can.

The problem here is that there is a HUGE developmental difference between the first level (count from one to 10 forward and backwards) and doing math problems like 9-2, so I'm not sure who exactly the app is for. Those two levels are separated by several years of development.

If the app is targeting younger kids (and the iTunes description says 3+) then all of the levels are going to be too hard without far more visual prompting and help from the app. The flower level, for example, needed to be designed as a way to help children at an early level understand basic math. Each flower could have had the number of petals equal to the proper answer, so if the app asked what is three plus two they could have counted the number of petals to get five and chosen that.

At the end of the app the child is rewarded with all of the characters celebrating and right in the middle of the celebration is a link to one the developer's other apps. Not good. It really ruins the final page.

Take a quick look, but I'd wait until some of these issues are addressed.

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If you would like to purchase Rony's Math please use the links provided. Thanks for your support!

iPad ($2.99):     U.S.     Canada     Europe     Australia 

 

This review was written by Ron Engel, who once saw a fight between a raccoon and a cat. smartappsforkids.com was paid a priority-review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.

Comments

[A Facebook User]

So far I've also bought Rony's Math for my 3 year old daughter and I also want to share my expererience with young parents as it is signiticanty different from the written above. First of all I'd like to say my daughter is a great iPad lover and she likes most games I installed for her. But as a caring about her development mom I thoroughtly sort them out.
Rony's Math is in my favorits. Ron Engel wrote that it's rather testing than teaching app, but I fully disagree.
He said his child couldn't do anythink without his promts. But who said that the best app for kids is a game without parent's help. More over it is not the only aim of educational games at all. May be arcade apps are used to engage your preschool child so that you can have some free time. It's a wrong way to let your iPad teach your kid instead of you.

It should help you teach your kid. When my daughter opens Rony's math she is exciting with the music and bright colors and live interactive heroes. She repeats the poems. She can not count correctly, but she understands that there is a certain sequence in the first level and starts asking me. It's a wonderful result as this game stimulates her to put questions and I'm able to satisfy her curiousity. Here the app serves a developing environment for my child's learning. I am very pleased that by means of new technologies we can spend our free time learning and playing and the app is a source of ideas. As to the remark about difficulties in the last level I also should disagree. We, adults, cannot adequately assess what is difficult for the young learners. We read them books when they do not understand even a half of our reading, we talk to them and explain things to a newborn and do not wait when they grow up. The time passed and all we told our children starts to work. That is why I recommend this app to those parents who care about stimulating child's cognitive activity and enjoy being with their kids.
P.s. it serves more than three stars.

[Uncle iPad]

Thanks for the feedback. If you read our reviews on a regular basis, you'd notice that we encourage a great deal of parent-child interaction using apps...but we're also realistic enough to know that not all parents have the time to sit down and play apps with their children when their children want to play. That's a bit of an unrealistic expectation for most parents and, either way, we believe that all apps targeted to younger kids should include enough basic visual instruction and assistance to help the child to play and learn.