I wouldnt have believed a 5 year-old would be learning algebra

Many of the games that I buy for my son to play on the Mac and iPad are math games, not because I want to push him into learning math early or at an accelerated pace, but simply because I want him to enjoy it and for it to be part of his daily life. Ive bought a number of fun counting and pre-school math games for him and he enjoys them, and Im always looking for new math games. Unfortunately, after you try a few, most are slight variations on the same concept. When I saw Dragon Box in the App store, it looked different, but I was sceptical of preschool/kindergarten aged kids being able to enjoy it or get anything out of it. I cant believe how wrong I was.

This game is incredible. It is basically a logic puzzle based on algebra disguised as a card game that progresses through a series of levels organized in a way that would be familiar to anyone who has played Angry Birds, Wheres My Water, or other games where you have to solve one level before unlocking the next. A fun addition to going through the levels is that each chapter has a different creature that grows a little after you complete each level. Just getting the creature fully grown and moving to a new creature is a big motivation for my son to want to keep moving through the levels.

The game is very intuitive, but some adult supervision will be required for very little children. For example, for opposites, they start with a "night" version for every card that can cancle out its "day" version. When they jump from night day pictures to "a" and "-a", I had to explain to my son that the minus symbol serves the same purpose as the "night version of a picture card.

Overall, I think that this is a brilliant game and a wonderful way to hang out and play on the iPad with your young kids while building their foundations for algebra. As someone who struggled with math and didnt appreciate it until later in life, I wish that there were games like this and the devices to play them when I was a kid. It is an absolute joy to see my son loving a game that is teaching him math rather than just wasting time.

ChouDoufu about DragonBox Algebra 5+