Poko Helps Your Pre-K Child Prepare For Basic Math

Tribal Nova has once again managed to make a great learning game complete with the characters from their previous iLearn With release (Poko, Bibi and Minus). They employed the help and advice of educators and developmental psychologists to ensure their approach and content were age-appropriate and effective. There are three levels of learning within the app. The first level uses bowling to teach additions of numbers up to 6. Poko and Minus go bowling and it’s up to your child to pick up the pins that fell over and counting them. The narrator then states how many pins of each color fell down and asks your child to count how many there are altogether. Several possible answers appear on screen and your child is asked to pick the correct one. Once they master the concept, they can head to the next level. iLearn With Poko: Additions contains three levels of difficulty. As a bit of a safe guard, the app does not allow a child cannot simply jump to the hardest level without first mastering the more basic ones. I know my kids like to jump around to all sorts of levels on apps, so this is a nice reassurance that they can’t jump into math that they aren’t ready for. The perfect age range for the app is 3 – 7. The app teaches basic concepts of addition and goes up to number 15, so if a little one already understands basic adding concepts, he or she will be a little better off with a more advanced app. There are two things I would like to see improve in the future. First, I would like to see the addition of children’s voice overs. My kids respond much better when they hear a child’s voice on an app. The characters within the app seem to have no personality for children to get attached to since they never speak. Also, I would like to see a better reward system – after enough correct answers your child do get the chance to earn a toy, but I have found no way for the earned toys to be played with. This seems just a bit pointless, but I have full confidence that this will improve in future. I definitely recommend this app, especially if you own an iPad and want to spend some time with your preschooler or toddler working on learning basic addition. It's colorful, fun and low-key. Everything combined together makes this app a winning combination and will help your kids fall in love with math.