As promised, my son has received by old iPad Air 2 for Christmas — albeit with a different case that’s proven surprisingly nifty so far — and my wife and I loaded it with some educational apps to get him started.

For years before this, she and I had occasionally discussed how he would love the DragonBox series of math apps if he ever got an iPad in place of his old kids-edition Kindle Fire. We finally got a chance to put that to the test, and we were absolutely right, because he’s been playing them a ton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYq-qOAq_iA

In case you aren’t familiar, the DragonBox series has been a hit since launching in 2012, and to date (December 26th, 2020) it now contains five award-winning math games:

1. DragonBox Numbers (ages 4–8) — Teaches your child what numbers are, how they work, and what you can do with them. An easy and fun introduction to the wonderful world of math, brought to life through colorful characters called Nooms, each of which represents a specific number. The Nooms can be stacked, sliced, combined, sorted, compared and played with, any way your child pleases.
2. DragonBox Big Numbers (ages 6–9) — When the kid has mastered DragonBox Numbers, they can move onto Big Numbers, where they’ll learn…well, how big numbers work, along with how to do long addition and subtraction. Over the course of 4,000 operations, they’ll gather and trade resources, build shops and houses, furnish and decorate Noom houses, and unlock new worlds.
3. DragonBox Algebra 5+ (ages 5 and up) — It’s never to early to start learning algebra, and this game is perfect for giving young ones a head start. They’ll intuitively pick up basic algebraic concepts as they navigate the game’s chapters and solve linear equations in visual ways, without even realizing they’re learning this stuff. It’s rather impressive how well it works.
4. DragonBox Algebra 12+ (ages 9 and up) — Building on what they learn in the previous game, Algebra 12+ dives deeper into more advanced algebraic concepts, including parentheses, positive/negative signs, adding fractions with common denominators, collections of like terms, factorization, and substitution.
5. DragonBox Elements (ages 9 and up) — This one focuses on geometry, and I don’t mean just “learning shapes.” The game actually has kids using the properties and relations of various shapes and angles to solve puzzles by recreating the Euclidian proofs that literally define geometry. And again, they won’t even realize that’s what they’re learning!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm-6pDiSH44

It’d cost you $34 to buy all these games separately. With the bundle however, you get all of them for $25, which I think is a stellar deal.