Free or inexpensive tools to help children with math

Tested by over 500 students and vetted by teachers, these are our favorite tools that are free (or under $10) that parents, tutors and childcare providers can use to support children with math. They are all adaptive and use a mastery-based approach. 

Many families and teachers have been asking for educational resources to support and reinforce learning at home or to bring to their Mastery Hour sessions. Here are our favorite, mastery-based adaptive learning tools. Kids can bring them to their tutoring sessions on masteryhour.org or work on them independently with parents at home. Mastery-based means that students move ahead at their own pace only after they’ve mastered a skill (to ensure they retain the information and can apply it). Adaptive means that these apps are learning about your child as they learn, giving them only problems they are ready for and reinforcing weaker areas to make sure they do not have gaps in knowledge.

Adaptive, mastery-based math resources for PreK-12th

Prodigy is our go-to mastery- based tool to give kids lots of fun, engaging math problems while ensuring they are staying up to speed with school standards. The basic version of Prodigy is free, but parents can purchase the premium version which allows them to have more insights into what skills their children are working on. If children do not have specific homework, we recommend they bring Prodigy to work on when they come to Mastery Hour. (See our Prodigy Game codes below so kids can play with others).

Prodigy Game Codes
1st grade (PreK/Kindergarten)
C964351
2nd grade
151A820
3rd grade
CF458B5
4th grade
817F7D5
5th grade
5AD568A
6th grade
7F5E892
7th grade
AE09AAF
8th grade
4D99D7E

Math Tango is a great game for kids just learning math or looking for extra practice. It’s even fun for adults. There’s only one thing we don’t love about this app, which is ometimes kids might get stuck looking for the treasure on an islan. Wee’ve found a helpful approach to get past this is to zoom out

Khan Academy Kids is one of our favorite apps for kids learning, not only math, but any subject. And it’s free forever! Khan Academy (it’s predecessor) covers all grades. It’s reliable, accurate and provides points to incentivize students.

En Espanol: https://es.khanacademy.org/

This is an extraordinary company that sells fantastic worksheets, curriculum and practice created by teachers. There is the option Filter by “Free” to see free resources. We’ve searched for math, selected the option free and sorted by highest ratings in our link. You can also filter by grade, subject and other great filters.

Dragon Box Algebra is a very fun,creative tool that has an entirely new approach to learning algebra that helps children get a deeper understanding of concepts and how to think algebraically, rather than just how to solve problems on a worksheet.

  • Math Antics FREE or $10/year for worksheets (3rd-8th grade)

This very funny, charming math teacher has made videos to explain various math concepts. His youtube videos are free and his worksheets to reinforce concepts only cost $10 for the whole year.

For really little kids

These are great tools that will keep your 2-5 year old engaged and learning for hours :)

  • Numberblocks FREE on youtube, also available on netflix with membership

Coding

  • CodeSpark Academy - $9.99/month (also lets kids create their own games)

  • SpriteBox Coding (great first coding app)

  • LightBot (a bit more advanced than SpriteBox)

  • Code.org FREE, tons of resources for all ages from this great non-profit

  • Scratch or Scratch Jr FREE MIT”s awesome teaching kids to code project

Chess

Know any other great free or expensive resources to share?

We are especially looking for great data science and financial literacy apps. If you have any favorite, adaptive, mastery-based apps that are free or inexpensive, let us know so we can add them to our list of resources for parents and tutors! We are particularly looking for more apps in Spanish and Chinese.