One way is to find already available games for kids on the Internet, then have your kids play it. I'm betting not all games will be fun for them... study their reactions to the games.  One thing I've learned so far is that my daughter reacts to the objects that she is already familiar with... like stars, sun, etc.

~creek23

No problem, Waqas.

I will try some of your exercises to my daughter then send you inputs on how she reacted.  Although she's just 3yo.

I've glanced on your Addition for 4yo... to gamify it further, I guess you could have it drawn like for example, 3 Cats and another 4 Cats -- then how many will cats will there be if you add them. so they can count the Cats then tell the answer.

~creek23

Sure.  This will surely help me kid to learn Math as well... well, as soon as she gets 4yo.  Since, she's not yet that familiar with digits -- she can already count 1 to 10, though. :)

For the art assets, maybe you can modify the Firefox mascot I did as "cats" and the Gimp mascot as "dogs" :P  --  you only have to get the head part from the SVG file.

~creek23

Hi Waqas,

I am more liking it now.  Even more excited to show to my kid and see how she reacts -- as a developer, I also wanted my kid to be Math/Computer enthusiast -- not that I will have to shove Math into her.

Btw, can you have a specific Addition test page for now? My kid doesn't know how to Subtract yet. :D

As for the mascots, what I meant is for you to use it as the (supposed) familiar objects for children to count.

~creek23

The keyboard thingy is an cool idea -- this makes it easier for the child to answer.

Will sure have some tutoring as a Father-Daughter time this weekend.

~creek23

I am neighter a child, nor a teacher but I will try to give a design of a math game.

1. You get questions, like normal. Questions will give you 5 points each if awnsered correctly.
2. If you awnser it wrong, you lose 1 life (out of 5)
3. For each 100 points you go up 1 level. If you level up you have less time to awnser questions, or more difficult questions. If possible, give all levels a theme.
4. bonus points can be scored by

• 25 points for awnsering 10 questions correctly in a row.
• 5 points for awnsering it quick (< 15 sec.), or +10 points if really quick (< 5 sec.)

Some other advises:

• Never use penalties! but hand out bonusses whenever possible. This will give the player the feeling that they are good, and allow the persons who are good to pass easily throug the "boring" levels.
• Save points can be used to cut even more through the boring bits.
• Achievements and PERSONAL high scores can be good motives as well.
• Read a book about game design

"So my question really is that how do you take an educational subject and turn it into a game, which is interesting for age 4-11 year olds."

I think you're describing a very wide age range here. When I was 4, my family bought their first computer and I sunk a lot of hours into Math Blaster. For basic math skills, I don't think I've seen a better example of gamification. When I was 11, I was more into solving puzzles and playing adventure games like Myst and The Journeyman Project.

If you're designing for the web, it might be a little harder to keep the attention of the older age range unless you're using UDK or Unity running as a plugin. If you DO want to write games for the older age group, I'd suggest requiring outside research as a gameplay element. Carmen Sandiego did this for geography, but you could apply the idea to any subject. Present a problem, link to the appropriate resources, and let the students discover the solution on their own.