Research on early childhood education in Jordan has shown that in comparison with other middle-income countries, Jordanian children’s enrolment rates in nurseries and kindergartens is low. Karim and Jana are fictional characters in a mobile application developed by the Queen Rania Foundation to take children ages 3-6 on a learning journey from the comfort of their own home. It is a free mobile application in Arabic that promotes early childhood learning of mathematics. The app was created in an effort to provide a free learning resource that aims to develop children’s mathematical, linguistic and social skills – increasing school readiness, especially for those who have not had the chance to enroll in kindergarten before entering formal schooling.
The Karim and Jana mobile application has proved to be increasingly popular reaching more than 215K downloads and 2.2M sessions in the span of four months from the launch date in December 2017. The secret behind the growing success lies in the actual content and user-friendly design of the application, it encourages parental engagement and gamified to motivate children and increase the rate of return. The app has five main sections offering games and activities that increase in difficulty as the child progresses based on learning objectives from the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). By clicking on the info button within each section, parents can access tips on how they can support their child’s learning while using the app and applying the concepts in their everyday lives.
Numbers:
This section teaches children numbers from 1 to 20. Using flashcards and games, this section focuses on counting and simple addition and subtraction skills.
Shapes:
This section teaches and helps children recognize basic 2D and 3D shapes and their properties. It focuses on numeracy skills such as tracing, building with shapes, tangrams, finding the shape and differentiating sizes.
Stories:
Through interactive storytelling, this section focuses on both, numeracy as well as listening and comprehension skills. There are six different stories that children can relate to enabling problem solving skills, concentration and children’s imagination.
Songs:
With music, this section has ten different songs that provide practice for children on numbers, shapes and movement. This section is one of the more popular sections in the app.
Adventure:
On a journey across the 12 governorates of Jordan, this section offers 48 different levels. There are four more themes followed in the path: photo puzzles, classification of objects, color coding and patterns.
The app is available now for free download on IOS and Android. And also on Windows and Mac version to operate on SmartBoards and computers.
For more information and to download Karim and Jana app: