Teaching Money vs Main Idea
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Teaching Money
This app helps students learn about money by recognizing coins and notes, making purchases, and understanding currency. It offers interactive modules for sorting, saving, and shopping, with support for Australian, UK, and US currencies.
- Recognize coins and notes
- Practice paying for objects
- Understand currency values
- Learn to give change
- Interactive sorting tasks
- Digital toy store scenarios
- Teacher tool for discussion
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Little Monkey Apps Teaching Money provides another format to help your students become more familiar with money, recognising coins and notes, paying for objects, coins and notes of equal value and giving change. The App is split into a teaching module and five task based modules; Sorting coins and notes, Piggy Bank, Toy Store, Giving Change and Show Me. At this stage, Little Monkey Apps Teaching money is in Australian Dollars, UK Sterling and US Dollars. All coins and notes have been altered in line with country laws. (We've put our logo on!) Use the flag to select the currency. Apologies if we keep saying dollars, but you know what we mean! Use the settings tool to have coins start on tails or a mix of heads and tails. Little Monkey Apps Teaching Money is aimed at providing digital scenarios or task based money questions. It does not replace the importance of play based and open ended real life experiences. The App enhances your classroom pedagogy, by providing a different way of presenting the same curriculum standard. Teacher Tool A blank screen with coins at the side. Use this tool to discuss money, look at the notes, give verbal scenarios to children etc. Use the pencil tool just as you would use a whiteboard, then the camera tool to record what the student has achieved. You might like to use it in their learning portfolio, revisit the problem in a subsequent lesson, display on your large screen to discuss with a small or whole group etc. Don't forget to use real coins with your students (plastic or laminated ones too) for that shop corner you are going to set up or for all those fantastic money games that you have. Personal favourites are money stamps and an ink pad, coin rubbing, bingo, card match, 'learn to earn' days and board games which use money. Sorting coins and notes This task asks the student to sort the coins and notes from the middle plate to the correctly labelled plate. If they get a coin or note incorrect, the plate, the coin or note wobbles once the coins and notes have ALL been placed. This way, they have a chance to self correct before being told they are wrong immediately. Three levels, coins, notes and coins and notes. Double click the coin to turn the coin or note to its alternate side. Piggy Bank Put the coins and notes in the piggy bank to see the money added up. Double click the pig or shake the iPad to tip the money back out. Use as a helper to addition problems or worded pocket money. Or let the children play to see how much money they can possibly put in! Toy Store This task asks students to buy more than one toy for the amount given. Level 1 up to ten dollars through to level nine up to $250. its highly unlikely that young students would be able to do level nine, but we had one child who was ACE at adding money so we put this in for him! Off the iPad, we suggest setting up a toy fruit store or bakery, toy cash register, toy money and allowing the children to PLAY, PLAY, PLAY in this area. You also might like to visit a local market and have each group of children buy a set of items (or one item each), returning to school to make fruit salad (or something else you are allowed to do).You might even get onto the discussion of price differences and price per weight amount. Giving Change The student is asked to put coins into the hand for the change they will get from the given amount. Level 1 up to ten dollars, up to level 5 for $20 with a note and coin change. Show Me This module asks you to show two different ways of making a value e.g. five dollars, placing the two separate ways on the two plates. Levels one asks for up to one dollar to level five up to twenty dollars. It is great teaching point to watch and ask students why they chose a particular way of making up the amount. Similarly, you could have students work in pairs to encourage the verbal discussion of how to go about the task.
Main Idea
This app helps children in grades 2-5 improve their reading comprehension by teaching them to identify the main idea of sentences. It uses a fun, game-like environment with step-by-step learning and a reward system to keep kids motivated.
- Step-by-step skill building
- Incremental learning with unlocked levels
- Frustration-free guided learning
- Engaging reward center
- Parental review and reporting
- Over 600 examples
- Timed levels for fluency
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** Featured on Appolicious.com & iHeartThisApp.com ** 'Main Idea -Sentences' helps kids who have trouble with reading comprehension. Identifying the main idea is a key part of reading comprehension. 'Main Idea -Sentences' builds this comprehension skill in a fun, game-like environment. The skill is developed step-by-step until mastery. *** Happy Frog Apps is a Mom's Choice Award winner! *** ***** 5 Stars - Thank you for this app! Other software I’ve used has moved too quickly for my son. This one worked! Can’t wait for the next Main Idea app…it’s coming, right? ***** 5 Stars - This app is one the best education apps I have used with my little one. It really helps to improve his reading abilities. He is obsessed with passing the levels and it never let him disappointed. One of the few apps that worth to upgrade to premium version. 'Main Idea - Sentences' is designed for children in Grades 2-5 who can read the words, but don't understand what they read. Beginning readers in earlier grades can also benefit from the targeted skill development. 'Main Idea - Sentences' develops the skill of knowing what a sentence is about. This skill must be firmly established before a child can determine what a paragraph or page is about. Key Benefits: - Builds comprehension skills step-by-step until mastery. - Incremental learning. New levels are unlocked only when your child is ready. - Frustration-free learning. Your child will always be guided to the correct answer. - Fun and engaging Reward Center to increase motivation. - Easy parental review. Just check out the stars to see how your child is doing. - Contains over 600 examples, with content designed by professional teachers and researchers. - Advanced levels include timers to ensure fluency. Research shows fluency in the foundation skills is critical to reading comprehension. - Can be used independently (just hand it over: your child will know what to do!) or with a therapist/parent for reading intervention. - Provides extensive reporting for up to 10 students to suit the needs of parents, teachers and therapists. Our apps are designed for and tested by typical and special needs children. Testers include children with Autism and other special needs. Our apps work for them! This 'School Edition' app has no in-app purchases. To evaluate the app, download the free version, which has 4 free levels. Additional levels and additional players can be accessed with in-app purchase. If you prefer no in-app purchases, download the School Edition of this app. While you're thinking about reading, check out our other apps that target WH questions, inferencing and answer identification skills. Learn more about reading comprehension and research at our website www.HappyFrogApps.com. Drop us a note, we'd love to hear from you! We take customer service very seriously! If you ever have a problem or find that we've missed something, contact us at our website and we will do our best to fix the problem. We are a member of the Moms With Apps program that promotes privacy in children's apps. We collect NO private information in our apps and our apps do not allow unrestricted web access.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Main Idea at 85% against Teaching Money's 60%. Main Idea also leads on rating (4.3 vs 4.0) and update cadence (every 3 months vs every 14 months). Teaching Money's advantage is price ($1.99 vs $6.99). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Teaching Money costs $1.99 and Main Idea $6.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Main Idea holds the better App Store score, 4.3 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Main Idea has 6 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 60% of Teaching Money's written reviews are positive against 85% of Main Idea's.
Teaching Money ships an update every 14 months, Main Idea every 3 months. Both last shipped on November 6, 2026.
| Parameter | Teaching Money | Main Idea |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 — better | $6.99 |
| Rating | 4.0 (1 ratings) | 4.3 (6 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 60.0% of reviews | 84.6% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 6 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 14 months | Every 3 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 12.2 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 27 MB | 22 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Aleesha Kondys | Janine Toole |
Customer experience
Teaching Money
Main Idea
In-app purchases
Teaching Money
No in-app purchases
Main Idea
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Teaching Money free?
Is Main Idea free?
Which has better reviews, Teaching Money or Main Idea?
Do Teaching Money or Main Idea have ads?
Which is updated more often, Teaching Money or Main Idea?
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