Math Doodles

$2.99, iPad, iPhone

Teaches: math, counting, logic, addition, clocks, angles

CTR Rating: 96%

CTR Review

Math Doodles consists of four hand drawn activities: Sums Stacker, Connect Sums, Unknown square and a preview (but functional) version of Splat GoRound. Each lets you playfully explore mathematical relationships in either timed or untimed settings. A hallmark of the activities is the inclusion of unconventional counting systems. These include braille, Spanish, money, Spanish tally marks, clocks, binary, Arabic and area fractions. Because the puzzles are both high in child control and they let you set your own challenge level, you're more likely to "try the math on for size." This is one of these apps in which you think the puzzle might be too hard, but you find yourself still doing it 20 minutes later. Note that the author, Daren Carstens is an artist and a math enthusiast on a mission to help children discover the magic in numerical relationships. He has a lot to say about learning: see http://youtu.be/FUV-8vdaL_o. In addition Daren Carstens has been a volunteer at CTR's Dust or Magic conference for many years. There is no business relationship between Carstens Studios and CTR, however, we asked the G&T teacher at Desmares Elementary school to assign the ratings for this title. Also note that Sums Stacker, one of the four activities, was released previously as an iPhone app (see Sums Stacker, CTR January 2010).