Mathtappers

Mathtappers has a series of FREE  (and ad-free!) apps for working on basic math concepts - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, as well as fractions and telling time. Designed by math educators from the University of Victoria in Canada, each app includes a page of advice to the grownups on who this app is most appropriate for (i.e. what the skills the student already needs to have mastered) and how to introduce it to the kids. They have a webpage that also has some helpful information on it. The designers have used tools that teachers often use in the classroom to help children visualize relationships between numbers (e.g., ten-frames & hundred-frames) and master their fact families (practicing groups of facts together). As they say on their website,

"Even a single shared iPod Touch can be enough to make this type of tool useful in the classroom."

Beautifully done! There are many math apps that are little more than flashcards to be used for memorizing facts, or 'drill and kill' activities. Although those have their place, it is important to have apps like these that promote real understanding of the math too!

MathTappers: Estimate Fractions - designed to help learners to build their intuitive understanding of fractions by helping them to relate fractions (both symbols and pictures) to the nearest half (e.g., 0, ½ 1, 1½, 2, etc.) and then to extend their understanding by challenging them to use fraction estimates in addition and subtraction problems. 

MathTappers: ClockMaster - A variety of options available for helping kids learn to tell the time using both analog and digital clocks.

MathTappers: Find Sums - designed to help learners to make sense of addition (and subtraction as a related operation), and then to support them in developing accuracy and improving their speed.

MathTappers: Multiples - designed first to help learners to make sense of multiplication and division with whole numbers, and then to support them in developing fluency while maintaining accuracy.