American Kennel Club Launches Dog-Focused Math App for Kids

The American Kennel Club launched the AKC Math Agility App, which is curriculum-based and designed to teach kids math through the dog sport of agility, on Dec. 15. The app allows kids to play as one of 15 purebred dog breeds like golden retrievers or black Labradors–and the faster a child adds, subtracts, multiplies, or divides, the faster the dog will move though its agility course and conquer obstacles. The dog breed system is motivational: as kids conquer increasingly difficult math challenges, they unlock more dogs, for a total of 60 breeds to play.

"Math facts are the basis of all future math learning–if they don’t know their math facts, they won’t know anything else. When I was a teacher, it was always hard to find good resources: flash cards are a thing of the past," said Ashley Jacot, director of AKC Education. "There are not a ton of great quality apps out there that practice math facts, and so we saw an opportunity to provide children, parents, and teachers with something that will be useful for the child academically, but will make that fun through purebred dogs and agility."

Each breed’s card features information about that specific type of dog as well as illustrations of that dog. As players work on their math skills and compete in harder agility challenges, they’ll work their way up to competing in the AKC National Agility Championship!