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Show HN: Silly math games to make learning fun for K through 3rd grade

mindlygames.com

90 pointsmoserch108 comments

Please let us know what you think. We would be so so grateful for feedback from the community. Thank you in advance!

My 14 year old son was frustrated with "Fun" math games as they were not really fun. So he started building his own games in p5.js and recently he launched these games at https://thegamebox.ca/ He has been making these games since he was 10yo, so there is a progression in quality. Last game he made is not a math game but a puzzle game (Red Remover) he used to play and love when he was very young and was no longer available. He has done all the graphics as well for these games.

Just played through all the levels of Red Remover. Those were fun. Kudos to your son for not just making games but sharing them. At 14 I was just grinding away at World of Warcraft... didn't even touch programming or making games myself until I was in college.

Wow, these games would be impressive for a college kid to be making!

Gosh, just spent 40min playing Red Remover, and that was a lot of fun! Congrats to your son, keep up the great work!

Please tell your son these are super cool games! Thanks so much for sharing and it’s amazing he made these.

That's pretty awesome :) thank you for sharing!

This is amazing! well done to him!

My daughter is in 1st grade and really enjoys playing blackjack with me(Dad). It's an amazing metaphor for addition and gives some good entrypoints for talking about probability and decision making.

We play for candy. Surprisingly she hasn't eaten any of it yet. She seems to be balancing her desire to beat dad by having more candy and her desire to eat candy. It's been great bonding time too.

Next up, a similar game with other operations.

This is amazing because I just started doing exactly the same thing with my 1st grader with similar results. She loves it so much more than the terrible worksheets she comes home with.

Yeah! Go you! There's so many great lessons in this game -- arithmetic, probability, decision making, managing competing desires, risk and ROI (gotta bet some to get something back, and ultimately you might not get it back).

How would you feel about an online game where your kid played blackjack for candy to learn addition? Is it still ok, or is that only something you would have her play with you? That sounds fun and is such a great practical application of the skill she's learning.

I try to do anything that can be done without a screen, without a screen.

The math and probability part could probably be made into a game. Something engaging and with a compelling end goal (candy or completion of a fun narrative) would catch her eye.

My goals for playing are more oriented towards bonding, learning useful/life lessons, and keeping the kiddo challenged.

These are great goals. You have a lucky kiddo.

My son responds super well to gamified learning. What I found is that there are plentiful options when it comes to math... but not as much so when it comes to reading.

When he was in kindergarten during the disrupted school year of 2020/21... I created a "reading version" of the classic Battle Ship game. Instead of a 10x10 grid of letters and numbers it was a 10x10 grid of K-2 "sight words" that I would randomly choose and draw onto a grid (in Excel) that could be printed.

Then we'd play by reading and repeating sight words to indicate the coordinates to attack. He loved it!

Such a great idea. We played a lot of battleship when we were growing up. I may need to try this out with my son when he starts learning to read!

That's impressive. Makes me feel like I need to up my Dad game.

I am willing to pay $1000 for a math game that won't be silly. I'm not even kidding. I tried to find something that would spark interest, captivate, but I had little luck with math games.

I wrote my own (if you scroll my comment history) math game/app which is little bit different and partially solves the problem.

But I am constantly looking for anything that would be cool, captivating, and educational.

https://www.classcraft.com/resources/blog/science-game-odyss...

More science than math proper, and is probably around middle school level. May still be interesting however.

These guys are awesome. I actually met them a few years ago at ISTE at the house of blues in Chicago. Really nice people and a super cool product.

I'm a fan of the DragonBox series. At least their algebra set. Haven't checked out the others.

https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-5

https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-12

The geometry thing is not bad, a bit like a geo proof quiz.

as a source of inspiration, something I just did that you might find worth exploring: I just bought a dozen old Martin Gardner books out of desperation. So far they're working really well. (For a 5th grader). About $4 each on used book sites.

(I mine through them to find little puzzles to feed to the 10-year-old as we're doing things like driving to activities)

Not sure if it's not silly, but I just posted a little exercise myself: https://boogiemath.org/meta/meta-2. Have more of them on stack.

The Treasure {MathStorm, Mountain, Cove, Galaxy} games of the 90s were pretty fun. I'd imagine they're not too difficult to emulate.

I'm with you. That's not our goal here, as we are going for a kid comedy angle, but a product like that would be super cool.

I do raindrops on luminosity. Its pretty dumb but I want to get a high score. The rest of luminosity games are pretty bad

Just curious, what is cool, captivating and educational to you?

Love to know.

One of the ideas - introduction to math equations as 3D graphics game with effects.

I haven't seen such games, except silly, that do that.

Maybe some other foundational math principles implemented as games.

I love https://www.zachtronics.com/ games, but these games are for 12+ I guess, and even more. Not always about math though.

Adults assume that kids are fine with silly educational tools. While in reality they're boring, because every school implements some sort of cheap flash/html5 games that solve nothing. I want the kiddo to solve hundreds examples in 3D, maybe even in VR, and enjoy that. Instead of 2D browser old-skool tech.

I don't understand why VR is underutilized in education. Where are all the games we're supposed to have to educate children? Imagine how easy it's explain x^3 (like 10^3, 25^3, and so on) in VR?

I am using VR for fitness, and it's been a great success. Lost 17 pounds with 5 more to go for my goal. I am paying $20/month for the app. But I'd be willing to pay for similar math educational app.

Something like Myst could be a very fun implementation of this. Have some of the puzzle be solved by manipulation of the environment using graphing, or have actual mathematical puzzles.

I bet a word problem would be much more interesting if you play it out

This is a great idea :)

Which app?

check out supermathworld.com - it's discontinued now but it sounds like this is the type of game you're looking for.

Have you tried Frog Fractions?

Worked very well with 5yo daughter; she and mum thought it was very good ("not too busy, extremely clear").

One small thing that upset daughter (only a little bit) was getting "Game over!" - which I think just meant she'd come to the end of the game, but which she took as "You lost!" (probably as a result of watching older brother play games). If that's right, then consider changing wording to "Well done, you've reached the end of the game!" rather than the (more negative, to many people) "Game over!".

We just changed it to "Well done!" Great feedback. Thank you!

I played through two of the games twice and if I'm not mistaken, the sequence of numbers is always the same. Could they be randomized? I have a feeling children would learn the pattern and not focus on numbers.

We agree! This is actually in the works!

Random thought that I'm not sure is even a good thought. Tried the number pizza man game, and one mechanic which I thought may be interesting is if the distribution of values in the pizza boxes changes as time goes on. Rather than maybe skipping ahead after a while if the student doesn't get it, slowly change the randomization to include more and more, and then perhaps only exclusively, the right answer. This would allow a kid to still "get it," while still engaging them in the game mechanic.

That's actually a really good idea!

Cool stuff!

I'm actually in the process of writing a game for my nephew, who is turning 9.

My game is going to be more about going to school and encourage him to have fun learning and socialising; perhaps shooting zombies, protecting/getting power-up from the school, collecting books for points.

He lives in a poor household where the mother doesn't want to do anything that isn't life-or-death. The kids (he's oldest of 3) are alive regardless of going to school,and the mother didn't need school, so there's a real need for some sort of external encouragement to push beyond that.

It seems trite, but I do wish that fortnite had some "stay in school" message, even just in the title sequence / main menu.

Please share when your done. That’s really cool that you are building a game for him. I love the “stay in school” message, too.

Is there any evidence, from the academic literature or otherwise, that math games improve educational outcomes? (Sorry, I know that sounds like a wet blanket statement and I am not discouraging the OP from trying to make an impact here. I am just curious.) Also, I tried to play a couple of games (e.g., https://www.mindlygames.com/game/skip-counting-by-5-dino-soa...), but it has been stuck "loading" for the entire duration of how long it took me to write this comment.

Sure. I used to work in education policy, and this was the most reliable source I can recall of peer-reviewed studies on impacts of educational curricula/interventions. Plugged in elementary school games for you:

https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Search/Products?searchTerm=game&...

1. Play is how basically every other mammal learns.

2. Learning comes easier to people when it's fun, because they're more engaged and receptive.

That said, I don't think these games in particular look anything close to optimal. To be fair though, I can't load them either - stuck at 98%.

If you'd be willing to share what type of device you're on that would be super helpful. Thanks for the feedback!

Firefox on an M1 mac.

Hi! Any chance you could let me know what type of device your using? We tested on a few after your comment and this might be a really helpful piece of info for us. Thanks for letting us know it isn't loading for you!

Firefox windows (in order.. seems like the first one starts the chain):

- Error decoding audio: menuMusic - The buffer passed to decodeAudioData contains invalid content which cannot be decoded successfully.

- Uncaught (in promise) DOMException: The buffer passed to decodeAudioData contains invalid content which cannot be decoded successfully.

- Uncaught Error: Audio key "menuMusic" missing from cache`

Ok! I think we found the issue and it's with our music files on firefox. Should be fixed now! Thank you so much for catching this.

Can confirm it works now :) Feature: Might I suggest you remember toggling music/sound off across games.

Thank you! This helps a lot!

Couple of things here didn't work; firefox 102.4.ESR and chromium on linux go to '100%' on Dino Eggs and hang there; works on same PC using chrome and on a random Win10 box with Chrome.

Dino's eggs also popped up two '40' choices for a Q where answer was 40 - but one of them said wrong answer (as reported by 5YO experimental subject).

This is great info, much appreciated :) !

MBP (a recent one), chrome browser.

The key thing is that they encourage kids to willingly spend time learning. https://www.wired.com/2012/06/dragonbox/ is a good article on the author's experience with a similar game and their kid

Thank for sharing, that's a great article!

This is awesome. Will put my K and 2nd grader on it later.

But also, your website is fast. I know it's all static and pretty easy to do, but yet most people get it wrong, so kudos to you on that!

Thanks. We have some engineering superheros to thank for that. Really appreciate the feedback and compliment:)

In the 90s, I used to love playing Number Munchers on the Apple IIc.

I lost so much time to the various munchers games.

I loved that game too!

That game look fun!

Fwiw, in "Numberman's Pizza Party | Addition within 5", after the question (and answer) has changed, clicking on a box with the old (now incorrect) answer yields correct pizza. And the reverse. It seems box correctness is set at creation, rather than reflecting the current question? Which sets up a dynamic of look at question, click on "correct for current question" box, get told it's wrong.

Yup, that caught me off guard, too. Perhaps a solution would be to have a gap where the old pizzas finish but no new ones are added, then change the prompt and start new pizzas when the screen is empty.

Another problem I saw in that game: At one point the prompt was 50 45 __ 35 but it wanted me to click on 30. That was in the Skip Counting By 5 game.

This is a great catch. Thank you. We are cooking up a solution!

A plug for "Math from Three to Seven: The Story of a Mathematical Circle for Preschoolers" seems warranted here. It has great ideas for fun things to do with kids as well.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/12689040-math-from-th...

This book is great indeed. Coincidentally, I just published a post where talking about how this book encouraged me to start a little math circle myself: https://boogiemath.org/meta/meta-2

Awesome. Good on you! The kids are lucky that you organized one.

Edit: Just looked through your website. Love the math and the satire. Keep it up!

I just read through it too! Love the comedy. And I don’t think the kids were lucky not to have you as a teacher! They would have been lucky to have you! I’m sorry you got side tracked by the pandemic there.

Awesome. Are you doing that in person? I love getting to work with the little ones in person.

Yes, we were meeting in person every Wednesday. There were two groups - about three years old in the first group and about five, six years old in the second group (at the time when we started).

This book looks super cool! Did you write it? We haven't forayed into preschool games yet so I'll def check this out. Thanks!

Ah! Not me. I should have made that clear. A Mathematician named Alexander Zvonkin wrote it. The book's super well written and is full of useful ideas though!

I will def check it out. Thanks again!

Man, takes me back to the days of "The Magic of Multiplication 1" on TI-99/4A:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PoPUMrmmmUs

My sister (four at the time) called it "Mockablecation". It's how I learned my times tables a full year ahead of my class.

Thank you so much for the feedback, this is cool!

Nice! Thanks for showing us this!

Great stuff!

Side note: the background music on one of the games (Space Race | Three-Digit Addition - Adding 10) reminded me of this Bollywood song: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mXkbWKr5ovU

Ha! Awesome. Total Bollywood music lover over here

Thanks for sharing. Im always on the lookout for good teaching aids. Unfortunately I find this too stimulating for me to present to my kids. I prefer to show my kids media that is calming and beautiful rather than "fun".

No worries at all. Have you heard of dreambox for math? You might like their games:)

I can't load any games either and get the error: "Uncaught Error: Audio key "menuMusic" missing from cache" when it happens.

Hopefully it's a quick fix as I'd love to check them out closer!

We want you to be able to play! I reported the error you're getting. What type of device are you on. Thank you for the feedback!

How did you make these games? I think it’s fun but would it be possible to make it multiplayer? Say two kids, one on each device, and join the game to play against one another.

That's an excellent idea for the future. We are just starting out, and I would be thrilled to have the capability!

I would love to be able to do that in the future for sure, that would be great :)

Some additional consequences for just trying all the answers - or a mode where there are, if you've got a kid who will just click on them all instead of thinking.

That’s a good point and something we need to figure out a response to in the game play.

The Dino Eggs Multiplication by 6 game has the same order each time, which might make kids remember the order instead of the multiplication facts.

Ok!! We were able to figure out a fix for randomizing one of the games. Here's an example. We just need to apply it to all the games still. Thanks for the great feedback! https://www.mindlygames.com/game/addition-within-20-space-ra...

This looks neat, thanks for sharing! Any comments on what resources you used to tailor the games to a specific grade level?

I used to be a kindergarten and first grade teacher and my go to is the standards. They are a great starting point for skills by grade level:)

Very cool. Although looking for something at a 4th or 5th grade level for my 3rd grader :)

Any specific skills you are looking for?? I could try to make something! :)

I don't have kids, but I love the UX here! Keep it up :)

Thank you so much for that :) !

Thank you!!

The grades links at the bottom of the page are broken for me.

Thank you we will look into it!!

Fixed. Thanks for pointing this out. :)

The music on the one I tried is awesome!!!

Yay! I'm glad you liked it :)

Thank you!

Blocked by corporate firewall :(

I'm so sorry :( !

nice work! I tried a couple and they look great

Thanks for checking them out!

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