How to play
An addition problem sits on a panel at the top of the screen while answer bubbles drift in from the right, always at the height of a single jump. Tapping anywhere on the screen (or pressing the space bar) makes the blue forest friend jump; the child has to time the jump so he meets the bubble carrying the correct sum. A correct catch scores points and adds eight seconds to the sixty-second clock, a wrong catch costs one of three lives, and ten correct catches cross the forest and win the round. Sums start within twenty for first grade and stretch further as the child keeps answering quickly and correctly.
What your child will learn
- Build addition fluency with sums up to 20
- Understand part-whole relationships
- Apply mental addition strategies
Skills practiced
- Number sense
- Mental math
- Problem solving
Why this age range
Recommended for grades 1–2 because addition within twenty is the load-bearing skill of those years. Children who arrive in third grade still finger-counting these sums struggle with multiplication, which assumes that adding small numbers happens automatically. Because the game layers a reflex element on top of the arithmetic, it works best once a child has a reliable strategy for these sums and is building speed — for a first encounter with addition, an untimed game is the better starting point.
Curriculum standards
- CCSS.MATH.1.OA.C.6
- CCSS.MATH.2.OA.B.2
Notes for parents
Number Forest combines addition fluency with a timing challenge: the child must pick the right answer and jump at the right moment. That suits a child who already recognises small sums and is working on recall speed; a child who is still counting on fingers will lose lives to mistimed jumps even when the arithmetic was right, so this is not the game to learn the facts in. There is a sixty-second clock and three lives, and every correct catch buys eight more seconds. If you sit alongside, watch which of the two skills is failing — if it is the timing rather than the maths, call the answer out loud and let your child concentrate on the jump. After two misses the game shows a count-on hint (start at the bigger number and step forward) rather than the answer itself.