HiddenPictureGame-JavaSwing
Hidden Picture Game for teaching addition and subtraction implemented using Java Swing.
This is a very, very rough piece of work. It was only developed to the point of being barely useful for my very specific purpose.
No warranties stated or implied!
With that out of the way...
Back when my first daughter was around 3 years old, I was trying to get her to memorize her addition / subtraction facts. She also was a bit behind on her fine motor skills and found writing answers on paper sheets a bit frustrating.
I found this online Hidden Picture Game and thought it would be perfect for her!
Alas, it was met with resistance for the following reasons:
-
She said the pictures were too boyish.
-
It assumed mastery of 0+0 through 9+9, whereas I wanted to be able to select which questions to emphasize and provide mnemonics.
I hacked together this application in Java Swing to allow me to load in "girlish" images (Disney Princesses, Hello Kitty, etc.) that she'd be motivated to reveal. The questions are controlled from the beans.xml file.
This program does not teach math by itself. It assumes the child has been exposed to addition / subtraction facts from a book. The book I used was: "Two Plus Two Is Not Five".
The application just provides extra practice to lower the error rate and improve speed.
The book provides helpful diagrams and explanations. I liked to verify basic understanding by doing exercises together from the book before moving on to the app.
I sometimes had to supplement with "counters" (like blocks) to help assure the kid that the math fact holds true.
The iPad had just come out around that time and I didn't have a Mac for development. I'd purchased a used Tablet PC which made it easy enough for my kid to play the game.
It turned out ok in the end, since it made the Android port easier, I think.
Although the Table PC is now a thing of the past, there are now Windows 10 tablets. I got a 10" Win10 tablet from Walmart for $90!
- Install "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers"
- HiddenPictureGame-JavaSwing to the directory of your choice.
- File -> Import -> General -> Existing Projects Into Workspace -> Select Root Directory -> [.../HiddenPictureGame-JavaSwing]
- Window -> Show View -> Package Explorer
- Right click HiddenPictureGame-JavaSwing.
- Run As -> Java Application
The program picks an image at random from the "resources" folder. Add or remove images from there based on what your child finds motivating.
The kinds of questions that come out are controlled by the beans instantiated in beans.xml .
The Main.main(...) method picks out a "game" implementing the
game_logic.GameI interface. It's hard-wired to pick out the bean
named gameCycler.
Backing up a bit, a few levels of abstraction have built up around
GameI:
-
FlashCardGame: Tests a related list of math facts. -
ComposerGame: Picks randomly from a list ofFlashCardGames. -
GameCycler: Cycles through a list of subgames, be theyComposerGamesorFlashCardGames.
I start with GameCycler since I may have limied time, or my kid
might have limited mental stamina that day. GameCycler allows me to
put specific games ahead of others.
ComposerGame allows me to put together questions randomly drawn from
a set of FlashCardGames. If learning using mnemonics, such as those
from "Two Plus Two is Not Five", part of the trick is recognizing
which mnemonic to use.
Here's an example instance from beans.xml
<bean id="doublesSubtraction" class="FlashCardGame" init-method="init">
<property name="name" value="Doubles Subtraction"/>
<property name="exprSpec" value="10-5;8-4;6-3;4-2"/>
</bean>
You can see that the exprSpec property allows one to configure a
list of semicolon-separated math facts that go under the same
mnemonic.
The parsing happens in FlashCardGame.generate(...) and currently
only supports addition and subtraction.
These are useful once the student has mastered enough mnemonics that you can throw whole ranges of problems at them without having to list out a dozen (or more) FlashCardGames.
Too many to count. :-)
Happy to receive pull requests!