Following our Woodland Series Apps that include, Goldilocks, Ugly Ducklings and Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, we are pleased to present, the Birth of Monkey King, which is a trilingual (math story games) app with English, Spanish and Chinese language options. 

 

CAMathories® The Birth of Monkey King was adapted from “The Journey to the West”, which is one of the four Great Chinese Classical Novels published anonymously during the Ming dynasty in China in 1592. Some people believed that WU Cheng’en, who lived during that period, was the author of the novel.

 

The authorship remains uncertain but the story of Monkey King became one of the most popular stories in East Asia. The novel describes an adventurous pilgrimage made by a Tang dynasty Buddhist monk, TANG San Zang. He traveled from China to Central Asia and India to obtain a sacred Buddha text. The main character

who appears in this app, SUN Wu Kong, the “Handsome Monkey King”, played a key role in assisting TANG in this legendary and exciting quest.

 

Each chapter of the novel is highly imaginative and full of amazing interaction between mythical gods and goddesses, animals and human characters. The app shows how Monkey King was born and became the "Handsome Monkey King.”

 

This app aims to help 5 to 7-year-old children to learn mathematics by playing games with the Handsome Monkey King and his monkeys. How was the stone monkey born? How did he climb up the hills and mountains? How many fruits did the monkeys eat in total? How did the stone monkey become the Handsome Monkey King? How did the Handsome Monkey King and his monkeys get in and out of the Water Curtain Cave?

 

The games in this app involve young children in helping the monkeys to get enough fruits to eat, to find the right path to the top of the mountain, and to the cave for shelter, and to jump into their new home! The monkeys need to split the right number of fruits to share equally, to count the right number of steps to reach the mountain top and the cave, to select the right numbers and symbols to complete a sequence, and to make an equation in order to get to the next step.

 

The mathematics games and puzzles in the Handsome Monkey King’s early adventure involve the children in:

• Counting numbers to see how many friends the stone monkey has made

• Recognizing the symbol of addition

• Using numbers that are multiples of 3 to reach the top of the mountain

• Allocating fruits to monkeys equally and formulating a correct equation

• Completing different sequences to reach different places, such as the top of the mountain, the source of a stream, or the cave behind the waterfall.