Common Sense Media Review
By Jinny Gudmundsen
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
An excellent math game for the Leapster.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 6+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
What's It About?
Leapster MATH MISSIONS transports kids to Spectacle City, a metropolis notorious for its poor math skills. Kids are employed by four businesses, and at each they use their math skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and geometry) to solve everyday problems.
This translates into gameplay: At the seafood market, kids help the clerk weigh fish by dragging the seafood onto a scale until it's balanced. At another store, kids help tag merchandise for sale by matching a target sale number. The other two businesses need help matching geometric shapes in a tangram puzzle, and using logic to fill candy orders to match customers' feedback. When kids have earned enough money, they can spend it at the city's gaming arcade.
Is It Any Good?
In 2003, Scholastic released two excellent Math Missions computer software titles for kids. By partnering with Leapfrog, Scholastic now brings some of the content and characters from the original Math Missions to the Leapster format, and the result is an outstanding handheld math video game for first- through third-graders.
Leapster Math Missions is an excellent choice for families who own a Leapster or the Leapster L-Max. These on-the-go math games can be played on three levels of difficulty, and they have built-in tutorial help.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how they use math in their own real life situations (going to the store, taking a bus, etc.). What are some offline activities you can do to keep working on the same skills that this game targets?
Game Details
- Platform : Leapster
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Not available online
- Publisher : LeapFrog
- Release date : January 25, 2006
- Genre : Educational
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : September 26, 2024
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