MILLIE S MATH HOUSE Alice Mello Cavallo Shaundra

MILLIE’S MATH HOUSE Alice Mello Cavallo & Shaundra L. Bryant Technology Review March 29, 2004

Overview • General Description • Activities Overview • Evaluation

Little, Middle, and Big • Size matching • Help Little, Middle, and Big to find shoes • Randomly places shoes on shelve and each character asks for some shoes • Incorrect: “Too big/small” • Correct: “Thanks! These fit nice”

Let’s Build A Mouse House • Shape recognition • Asks for the shape and child moves it from one side to the other • Incorrect: “Uh, oh that’s a square” • Correct: “Great!” • Once finished other mice do a dance

What’s My Number? • Counting, Addition, and Subtraction • Duck prompts child to put the same number of shapes on her stage • Incorrect: “They don’t match” • Correct: “Good Job” + animation

Bing and Boing • Learning sequences/Pattern Matching • Child is shown sequence first then prompted to repeat it • Incorrect: “Oops try another one” • Correct: “All right”

Let’s Make a Bug! • Number and Shape Matching • Rabbit asks child to make a bug with a certain number of the shapes on from the panel • Incorrect: “That’s too many” • Correct: “Nice Bug” + bug rolls or flies away

Cookie Factory • Numbers and quantities • Help Horse to put the correct number of jelly beans on the cookie • Counts and shows the number that is on the cookie • Incorrect: Froggy gets to eat the cookie • Correct: Horsey gets to eat it

This is the number machine! • Learning to count 10’s, 20’s and 30’s • Worm asks to find a number in the cashier machine. • Correct: the draw opens up and that same number of characters will appear one by one while they are being counted. • Incorrect: The incorrect number is displayed and it is said aloud: “This is number X”. • If there are more than 3 mistakes, it erases (unable) all the numbers in the rows where the required number is not located. • If there are 4 mistakes than it erases all the numbers except the required one.

Evaluation - Likes • Animation and Sounds • Reward • Clear speaking • Succinct phrases • Gender neutral animal characters • Rabbit, horse, frog, blobs, duck • Fundamental Math Skills • Counting, adding, subtracting, pattern matching • Semi-self directed • Curriculum Equivalence • Easy Installation • Free Mode and Guided Mode • Massachusetts Framework • Put in cd and follow directions

Evaluation- Dislikes • Limited activities • Not much depth • Child guided to answer • May stumble onto answer without understanding • Slow execution • Wait before get to next activity • Not age appropriate • Perhaps for under 5, otherwise boring • Limited Creativity • Even in free mode is restrictive

Evaluation -- Overall • Fun • Use in conjunction with teaching for better depth • Only use for 5 and under 3 Star Rating