Monster Math: Games For Kids

About Monster Math: Games For Kids

I saw this app with a crazy high rating in the App Store and figured I’d try it for my 8-year-old. We’ve had it on my iPhone 15 Pro for a little over a month now. My first impression was honestly mixed. The app itself is bright and the monsters are cute, but I was immediately hit with prompts to start a free trial for the “full experience.” It felt a bit pushy for a kids’ app. I decided to ignore that and just explore the free stuff first. After a few sessions, I started to see the appeal. My daughter, who usually groans at extra math practice, actually asked on a Tuesday after school if she could “play with the monsters.” That was a win I wasn’t expecting.

Core Features

The free version gives you a decent chunk of games focused on basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication. My kid loves the one where you feed a monster the correct answer. The characters do little dances and the sounds are fun without being annoying. I like that you can set a specific grade level or learning path. I set it to second grade skills, and it started throwing two-digit problems at her pretty quickly. The progress tracking is simple but useful. It shows you which types of problems they’re getting right and which ones need work. I didn’t see any flashy leaderboards comparing her to other kids, which I actually appreciated. It felt focused on her own improvement.

Real-World Use

This became our go-to for waiting room time or short car rides. Last week, we were stuck at the dentist’s office for 20 minutes, and instead of getting fidgety, she quietly worked through a bunch of subtraction problems to earn a new hat for her monster avatar. She doesn’t see it as homework, she sees it as a game where the currency happens to be math answers. I’ve noticed her mental math speed has picked up a bit. She blurted out the total for our two ice creams at the park last Saturday before I could even pull out my phone. That felt like a real, tangible result from all those monster-feeding sessions.

Pricing & Value

Here’s the big sticking point for me. The free content is good, but it feels designed to make you want the subscription. After a few days, my kid kept seeing locked worlds and special monsters she couldn’t access. The pop-ups for the subscription trial are frequent. I eventually caved and looked at the price. It’s not the most expensive kids app out there, but the constant nudging left a bad taste. Once you pay, you do get a lot more—new game modes, detailed reports, and all the characters. The value is there if your kid is truly hooked, but I wish the free tier felt a bit more complete so the upgrade felt like a bonus, not a necessity.

Updates & Support

The app has updated once since I got it, fixing some minor bugs. I had one issue where the sound effects cut out randomly. I emailed support from the link in the app settings. I didn’t hear back for three days, which was longer than I hoped. But when they did reply, it was actually helpful. The person asked what iOS version I was on and suggested a specific phone restart sequence, not just a generic “reinstall the app” response. It worked. So, they were slow but knowledgeable, which is better than fast and useless.

Data & Privacy

This is where I always get nervous. I went digging through their privacy policy before letting my daughter play. They do collect some data for analytics—like how many problems are attempted—which is pretty standard for improving the app. I was relieved to see they state they don’t sell personal data to third parties for advertising. The app doesn’t ask for weird permissions like contacts or location, which is a huge green flag for me. All the progress is stored locally on the device or linked to a parent account you can make. I made a bare-bones account with just an email. Overall, for a free app, it felt more respectful of privacy than most. I didn’t get the creepy feeling that my kid was the product.