What are BOOM Cards? Digital Learning You’ll Love

When COVID lockdown started and it became obvious that my daughter needed supplemental help, I stumbled across a resource on Teachers Pay Teachers that took me to a platform called “Boom Learning”. In the product description, I saw something about “cards” and thought “What are BOOM cards?”. I had never heard of such a thing.

And boy am I glad I discovered them!

Boom Learning is a digital learning platform that offers games and activities that supplement classroom, homeschool, and therapy activities. Sellers upload “games” that teach a math lesson, give spelling practice, or practice strengthening executive functioning skills. Users purchase decks or bundles of decks that focus on the same skill or have the same theme and usually offer a discount.

The day I discovered Boom, we got a free deck that exercised visual attention skills. My daughter had to find the differences between two images. She clicked on the elements that were either missing or different on the second image of the two. It was so easy to figure out and she really enjoyed getting a “ding” sound when she was right, or a “woops!” sound when she made an error.

The colorful graphics and instant feedback appealed to both of us right away. The format holds a child’s (and adults too, if I’m being totally honest) interest better than paper and pencil activities ever could and that feedback can be highly motivating.

That day I had thoughts like “where has this been all my life?”. Seriously, when your child has a skill you can’t seem to get any traction with, these games make it more likely your young learner will buy into lessons, and actually practice.

Speaking of motivation, Boom offers the ability to specify a set of cards within the deck to focus on – which enables differentiation. Assigning cards that are too difficult can be discouraging, too easy and it’s not moving the skill forward. With these activities, you can find the sweet spot between easy enough to get “dings” and challenging enough for learning to occur. Just the right balance between “dings” and “woops” will keep a kid trying.

Want to see some preview videos to get the idea of how they work? Here are some of mine!

Main points answering “What are Boom Cards?”

• Boom Learning is a digital learning platform that provides lessons, games and activities that are often more motivating and fun than paper and pencil lessons.
• Activities are referred to as “decks” of “cards”. Users purchase decks or bundles of decks that meets a certain child’s learning or skill need.
• Audio reinforcement with “dings” and “woops!” provide users with instant feedback that boosts motivation.
• Ability to differentiate to meet a specific student’s needs is easy to do by assigning a certain set of cards within a deck.
• You can see your student’s performance on assigned decks through your teacher dashboard.
• There are different membership levels that range from free to publisher. Check the details here.

Be sure to follow me on BOOM!