We have a number of games at our house that involve dice. Not all of them are math-based games and many of them aren’t portable. 5 Dice: Order of Operations Game is game your middle school kids can play in the car or when they need a little practice or skill-building.
A math game intended for upper elementary and middle school students that helps students enjoy practicing their order of operations. The game encourages students to use higher order thinking to solve the “target” number by working backwards given the answer but not the equation.
Players “roll” 5 dice and need to use those 5 numbers to build a problem that will result in the answer given to them. This requires the student to think about how to achieve that result with just 5 dice and the operators ( + – X ÷ ). You must use all of the dice and can use any operators that will give you the result provided.
A whiteboard is provided for checking your work. While this is very useful on the iPad it doesn’t give you much room on the iPhone or iPod due to the screen size. It’s still helpful to have a place to sketch possible solutions but you have to do them one step at a time. It’s a limitation of the screen size, not the app and I don’t hold that against the developer.
This game makes you think while being fun at the same time. Players need to use multi-step problem solving skills in order to get the desired result. Designed for Jr. High, students, 5 Dice will help them to get a firm grasp on order of operations.
The app tracks the progress of each player displaying the amount of time it took to solve the problem and the level get progressively harder to continue challenging the player.
This is one app you’ll want to keep on your iOS device. It’s educational, fun, and helps solidify those math skills.
5 Dice: Order of Operations Game
Cost: Free
Category: Education
Language: English
Rated 4+
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
Presidents vs. Aliens is a fun educational game that makes learning about the presidents an adventure! Answer a trivia question and then fling a presidential disc at the aliens. Much like Stack the States, you earn a president for every level you complete. Once you’ve earned a certain number of presidents you unlock another game. Collect all 44 an administer your executive powers to thwart the alien invasion of the United States.
Learning is done in one minute increments and when the student successfully completes a task, points are awarded. The points can be redeemed to play games. There is a set of criteria built into the program that must be met in order to proceed to the next difficulty level for that task. That means you don’t have to stand over their shoulder and make sure they’re actually learning something. Many typing programs allow a student to progress even if a certain skill hasn’t been mastered.
At first, my daughter was a little confused when she started using the software. There’s no silly characters that pop up and tell you what to do. The software required a little direction on my part at first but she soon got the hang of it. Now that she’s been using for a while she can dive right in to the next exercise and start earning some points to play games and increase her rank.
