ScratchJr vs Sum Strike

With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) learn important new skills as they program their own interactive stories and games. By snapping together graphical programming blocks, children can make characters move, jump, dance, and sing. In the process, children learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively on the computer. They also use math and language in a meaningful and motivating context, supporting the development of early-childhood numeracy and literacy. With ScratchJr, children don’t just learn to code, they code to learn. ScratchJr was inspired by the popular Scratch programming language (http://scratch.mit.edu), used by millions of people (ages 8 and up) around the world. The ScratchJr interface and programming language were redesigned to make them appropriate for younger children’s cognitive, personal, social, and emotional development. ScratchJr is a collaboration between the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab, the Developmental Technologies research group at Tufts University, and the Playful Invention Company. The ScratchJr project has received generous financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF DRL-1118664), Scratch Foundation, LEGO Foundation, and British Telecommunications. If you enjoy using this free app, please consider making a donation to the Scratch Foundation (www.scratchfoundation.org), a nonprofit organization that provides ongoing support for ScratchJr. We appreciate donations of all sizes, large and small.

Sum Strike is a soccer penalty shootout for kids, where the math is not a barrier in front of the ball — the math is the aim. The goal is split into five targets. Answer correctly and a target opens; get it wrong and it shuts. Then you shoot at what you have opened, and the keeper dives. There is no power meter and never will be: the sum decides where the ball can go. THIRTEEN TOPICS, EACH WITH ITS OWN LEVEL Number sense, the four operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, negative numbers, order of operations, equations, and two soccer topics (geometry and statistics). Every topic has its own Elo-style rating, so a child can sit at one grade in times tables and another in fractions at the same time. The ladder has ten steps, one school year each from kindergarten through 9th grade, built on the Danish national curriculum (Fælles Mål). Difficulty moves on four independent axes — grade level, answer choices, scaffolding and time pressure — never as a single difficulty number. Wrong options are real mistakes, not noise: a dropped carry, adding numerator and denominator separately, a decimal point one place out, a percentage of the wrong base. That is what makes the parent report diagnostic instead of a grade book. VAR check is a three-step ladder that gives more help instead of handing over the answer. AROUND THE GAME A career with ten clubs, eight keepers with hidden habits, five stadium levels and seasons with promotion and relegation. Two players on the same phone. Online, turn by turn through Game Center, so no one can cheat. Leaderboards. A shop with coins that can only be earned by playing — never bought — and that only sells looks. PARENT REPORT Behind a parental lock: level per topic, the week just gone, the mistakes that keep coming back, and one concrete thing you can do together tonight in five minutes. Shareable as a PDF. Four languages. Readable type, less motion, and a switch that turns every clock off. No third-party analytics (Kids Category). The only measuring in the app is for the parent. SUBSCRIPTION Training is free forever up through 1st grade without a subscription. Sum Strike Pro unlocks career (a match already under way can always be finished), and two-player and online share one free match a week that renews every Monday. The shop is open to everyone. Price and terms are shown in the app before anything is bought. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/