Marble Math iPhone Apps

Artgig studio recently released two iPhone apps for math learning support: Marble Math & Marble Math Junior.

In the games, you roll or drag a marble around a maze collecting right answers (or the pieces of a right answer) to a math question.

Husband likes to roll the marble. He says that’s more fun because dragging the marble isn’t a challenge.

But I like to drag it.

Marble Math is fun and educational!

Both of the Marble Math games have the same features: it’s a maze with obstacles, vortexes, bonus items and point decreasers.

The difference between the two apps is the level of math. So before you see the cool screenshots, check out some of the things covered in each version of the iPhone app:

In Marble Math, I encountered

Addition (three digits)
Subtraction
Ordering Roman numerals (yipes!)
Addition of fractions
Algebra with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
Ordering decimal numbers
Combining things to get a number using order of operations
Factors of a given number

In Marble Math Junior, I encountered

Ordering things (including a mixture of dice, tallies, arabic numerals, etc.)
Finding items that are the same as a given number
Identifying shapes
Adding up to a number
Telling time
Finding numbers less than a number
Multiples of 2 and multiples of 10
Basic multiplication (by 10)
Some basic fractions
Basic algebra with addition (10+?=17)

The pictures are worth 10³ words!

The “pick the shapes” puzzles are fun. The banana will make your marble slip, but collect all the stars and you’ll get an extra life.

The ghosts look like badguys – but they’re actually your friends. They let you go through the walls. (Come to think of it, it might be bad if you’re rolling the marble and not dragging it!)

Collect all three tiny stars and you earn another “life.” Roll over the flashlight and… well, I’ll let you see what happens then!

I like that they use time, but that tiny little clock is hard to see. (But my eyes are a good 30 years older than the target audience!)

The key opens the “I’m done” portal.The green slick sends you spinning. The Free Ride ticket give you extra points:

Here’s a sample of a multiply one. The bananas here will make your marble slip and the swirlies will transport you between them!

Having problems? Skip it, get the solution or give it another shot:

But at some point the math will be hard enough to turn off the obstacles and bonuses. You can also choose your marble – but you have to earn them first!

Here’s a nice order of operations one:

This one almost killed me. I kept plugging at it, though. It’s from Level 3 of Marble Math.

Give it a shot!

Get the Marble Math & Marble Math Junior apps – one or both. Try your hand at them and share them with your kids!

P.S. The cool folks at Artgig Apps were kind enough to share the app with me free of charge. They also gave me one of each to share with a reader. The first two people to tweet me a screenshot of any iPhone math app they own will get one of the codes.