Math Game for Elementary School Children Using Leap Motion Controller
Authors: Alnafjan Abeer 
Published: February 2024

Education holds significant importance in society as it provides individuals with essential knowledge, skills, and critical thinking abilities. However, traditional educational approaches may not always engage children effectively. To address this, innovative methods are needed to make education more interesting and captivating for children. By incorporating interactive elements such as educational games, multimedia resources, and creative teaching techniques, we can create a learning environment that fosters curiosity, exploration, and active participation. This approach enhances learning outcomes and fosters a lifelong passion for learning in children. In recent years, the advancement of technology has transformed the educational landscape, offering a wide array of resources to enhance learning experiences. Educational games have emerged as a promising tool, particularly in fostering children's interest and engagement in various subject areas. There has been a significant increase in the number of studies, projects, and research efforts dedicated to designing guidelines and frameworks for integrating technology and educational games in the field of education. This increased focus demonstrates the acknowledgment of the significant potential of educational games as effective tools for improving learning outcomes. To ensure the effectiveness of these games, researchers and developers have identified essential features that contribute to their educational value. These features include the ability to stimulate critical thinking, minimize the reliance on textual content, provide user-friendly interfaces, and promote interactivity. By incorporating these elements into game design, educators can create engaging learning experiences that foster deeper understanding and knowledge acquisition among learners. The focus on these crucial features demonstrates the commitment to designing educational games that effectively support learning goals and engage students in meaningful ways. Our project’s primary aim is to design and develop an educational game employing hand movements using the Leap Motion Controller (LMC) as an interactive input device. The game aims to enhance children's understanding of arithmetic operations, specifically addition and subtraction, in an enjoyable and captivating manner. The use of LMC enables the recognition of children's gestures representing numbers, thereby providing an interactive learning experience. The objectives of the project include acquiring relevant background knowledge, establishing functional requirements and computational constraints, designing and developing a math game incorporating elements such as 3D animations and pictures, and validating the game's effectiveness in achieving its intended benefits for both children and their teachers.The paper is organized into five sections. Section 1 introduces the problem and outlines the aim and objectives of the project. Section 2 reviews related works in the field. Section 3 presents the system design. Section 4 describes the challenges anticipated during and after implementation. Finally, Section 5 concludes with a summary of our findings, future work, and design considerations.