Baggin the Dragon Math Review

I am always looking for ways to make math fun for my kids. This is why I was excited to try Baggin’ the Dragon Maths Online from EdAlive. This math game uses adaptive technology to customize the review questions for each student. I’ll be sharing our experience in this Baggin the Dragon Math review!

I received access to the Baggin the Dragon Maths Online in exchange for my honest review, but all the opinions in this post are my own.

What is Baggin the Dragon Math?

Baggin the Dragon is an online math review game. Kids travel around the game board while answering questions about a wide variety of different math topics.

The game is unique because it uses adaptive learning technology. This means that as kids are playing, the game will automatically adjust the difficulty level of the questions to match their abilities. When kids answer a question correctly, the next question will get harder. When kids make a mistake, the next question will be easier.

This game is designed for kids ages 5-15, depending on their math skill level.

Who Created Baggin the Dragon?

Baggin the Dragon was created by EdAlive, an Australian education company. EdAlive has created additional online games to help kids practice reading and typing as well.

Parents in the U.S. should note that these programs use British spellings. In addition, the narrator has an Australian accent. In Baggin the Dragon, the measurement questions use Metric system units of measurement.

Key Features of Baggin the Dragon Math

• Review questions cover a variety of math topics
• Adaptive technology adjusts the difficulty level of the questions throughout the game
• Parent dashboard allows parents to keep track of their kids’ progress
• Fun for kids ages 5-15

How to Set Up Baggin the Dragon

Baggin the Dragon Math has both a parent dashboard and individual child accounts. After logging in to the parent dashboard, I was able to set up a separate account for each of my kids. The game automatically selected a username for each child, but I was able to set a unique password.

From there, each child had to use their username and password to log in to the website separately. We found that it helped to write down the usernames and passwords. Because we didn’t create our own usernames, it was hard to remember them.

Technology Requirements

Baggin the Dragon is an online game that is accessible through the website. This means that kids can play at any computer with an internet connection using a browser.

Because my kids are younger, we prefer to use a phone or tablet that has a touch screen. We found that we were able to use this game on my phone through the internet browser.

Unfortunately, because of the small screen, the questions were very small and hard to read. This made navigating the game difficult. I found that I needed to sit with my child while he played to help him input the answers to the questions.

How to Play Baggin the Dragon Math

During my Baggin the Dragon math review, I found that this game is simple for kids to play.

The Game Board

This game is set up like a board game. Kids can choose a playing piece, roll the dice, and move their piece around the board. Kids take turns with the computer or another child while playing.

My son enjoyed rolling the dice and the game board was a good motivation to keep him playing the game. He didn’t seem to mind answering a math question on each turn, because he knew that then he would be able to move his piece around the board.

Where are the Dragons?

Because this game is called Baggin the Dragon, I was expecting it to be about dragons. The game board does have a Medieval Castle theme. Kids can also land on unique Medieval themed squares throughout. For some reason, my son seemed to lose a turn in the stocks every time he went around the board.

As kids travel around the board, they are gaining strength and courage as they answer questions correctly. Their strength and courage scores are shown as numbers, and points are added and subtracted from those scores as they answer questions.

It’s not clear what the strength and courage are for until the game ends, at which point those scores are used to try to capture the dragon. The game displays a scorecard and compares the players’ strength and courage numbers to determine a winner.

The dragon finally made an appearance when my son won the game. He earned a short cartoon video showing the dragon being captured, which he was very excited about. I would have liked to see the dragon incorporated throughout the game in a more intentional way.

Parent Dashboard

One of my favorite parts of Baggin the Dragon is the parent dashboard. Here, parents can access customized progress reports for each child that uses the game.

The report that I found especially helpful was the curriculum tree report. This report showed each category of questions that my son had tried, how many questions he had seen within that category, and the percent of correct answers.

This report could be sorted by EdAlive curriculum categories, or by Common Core State Standards. Although we don’t actively try to follow Common Core, I was surprised to see that my son had answered questions that corresponded to standards in Kindergarten all the way up to 4th grade. I could see at a glance what topics he was understanding well, and where he could use more targeted practice.

This game turned out to be a great way to test my son’s skills in a fun and stress-free environment. It would be hard to target a specific area for review using the game since the questions are chosen from a variety of math topics. But, the report gives me a helpful overview of my son’s strengths and weaknesses.

Pros of Baggin the Dragon Math

1. It’s Fun and Motivating

My kids really enjoyed playing this game. They enjoyed the game board, rolling the dice, and taking turns. This motivated them to keep playing. And, my son loved the video of the dragon at the end. This game definitely made my son want to practice math!

2. Medieval/Dragon theme

My kids love castles and dragons, so the theme of this game was perfect for them. Research shows that kids learn better when they are interested in the topic, and the Medieval theme helped keep them motivated to learn. Even though the dragon only made a brief cameo appearance at the end of the game, it was enough to get my kids excited to play.

3. Easy to Navigate

I appreciated that this game was easy to learn. We didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out the rules. Instead, we were able to jump in and start playing almost immediately.

We found that we preferred to play against the computer, because the game was simple to understand. The game does give the option to play against another child in a more complex game with more rules, but there was never another child online when we tried to play.

Families with more than one child could use this feature to allow siblings to play together.

4. It Works for Non-Readers Too

This game automatically reads the questions from the lowest adaptive levels out loud. We found that after answering a few questions correctly, the game would adapt and transition to a higher-level question that was not read aloud. However, we were able to work around this by clicking on the question, which triggered the read-aloud feature even for the higher-level questions.

5. The Questions are Adaptive

Although we struggled a bit with the adaptive learning feature, I appreciated that the difficulty level of the questions would adjust as my son played the game. There is also a “too hard” button that kids can click if they need to, which replaces the question with a different one.

6. Baggin the Dragon covers a Variety of Math topics

I loved the variety of questions my son answered while playing this game. In just one game, for example, he had the chance to review concepts including counting, addition, subtraction, place value, measurement, geometry, estimation, algebraic thinking, fractions, multiplication, and more.

This makes the game great for math review, and also for assessment of kids’ strengths and weaknesses.

7. Good practice with word problems

This math game includes a lot of word problems. Kids need to read the problems and interpret to figure out the answers. I have found that many math curricula don’t include enough word problems to help kids really feel comfortable solving them. This game was great for extra practice with word problems.

8. Parent Dashboard

The parent dashboard was one of my favorite parts of this game. I love that I can pull up a report of all the questions my son has answered, sort it by Common Core standards, and see my child’s strengths and weaknesses at a glance. This is a great assessment tool that will be helpful for parents in planning where to focus in their homeschool lessons.

9. Safe and Ad Free

I felt comfortable having my son play this game as there were no external ads within the game. Although the game does give kids the opportunity to play against another child, there are no chat features available. The game also limits kids from giving out personally identifying information by choosing usernames automatically and offering a limited selection of avatars for kids to choose from.

Cons of Baggin the Dragon Math

1. Adaptive Learning

My family really struggled with the adaptive learning feature during our Baggin the Dragon math review. We found that the difficulty level of the questions varied widely throughout the game, and this made it hard for my son as many of the questions were either way too difficult or way too easy for him.

While we were playing the game, I noticed that within 3 turns, he answered questions from adaptive level 2, 7, and then 12. Every time he answered a question correctly, the adaptive learning seemed to up the difficulty by several levels, which meant that soon the questions were way too difficult. But, if he got a question wrong, the difficulty level dropped rapidly- and sometimes, too much so.

The parent dashboard confirmed my suspicions about the adaptive difficulty level feature. A quick glance at the progress report showed that over the course of one game, my child had been asked multiple questions in each grade level ranging from kindergarten through 4th grade. Difficulty level ranged from recognizing number names (a kindergarten skill) all the way up to classifying shapes by the properties of their lines and angles (a 4th grade skill).

Although this wide range of difficulty levels was helpful in assessing my son’s strengths and weaknesses, it led to frustration as he was playing the game and kept encountering questions that were way too hard for him.

2. Theme

I was really excited to share a game about dragons with my kids. And I was disappointed with the fact that the dragon didn’t play a more prominent role throughout the game. My kids were still motivated to play the game, and they enjoyed the dragon video at the end. However, they didn’t really even notice that they were building strength and courage to try to catch the dragon, and the connection between those numbers and the dragon didn’t come in until the very end of the game.

3. Better on Computer than Phone

We struggled to use this game on a smaller mobile screen. The questions were small and hard to read. It would be nice if an app was available that would allow the game to be better optimized to play on a phone or tablet.

Baggin the Dragon might be a great fit for you if…

• You are looking for a way for your child to review a wide variety of math concepts
• You would like a fun way to assess your child’s strengths and weaknesses in math
• You would like a detailed report about your child’s skills
• Your child enjoys playing board games and is motivated by competition
• Your child enjoys learning on the computer

You should probably choose another math program if…

• You are looking for a way to teach new math concepts
• You would like to be able to target review to a specific topic or grade level
• You would prefer to play on a mobile device with a small screen

Learn More About Baggin the Dragon Math

You can learn more about Baggin’ the Dragon Maths Online and try it for yourself here.

You can read more reviews of EdAlive’s learning games on the Homeschool Review Crew Blog!

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