Smart Apps For Kids

Playground 3: ABC Edition – Review

 

 

Bottom Line: A fun little alphabet learning app for kids ages 3-6. Features lots of opportunities to practice recognizing and writing letters. Doesn’t break any new ground, but does feature a yeti. Free lite version available.

Count Up to Ten - Review

 

 

Bottom line: a sweet little app to help very early learners master numbers 1 through 10. Uses Montessori teaching methods and contains three levels of difficulty for ages 3-6. Free lite version available.

Free App Alert: Draw This App (zoomed to No. 1 in the App Store)

I was perusing the educational app rankings in the iTunes App Store, as I am often wont to do, and noticed that an app released a week ago has already jumped into the top spot for free education apps (and is No. 20 among all free apps.)

Free App Alert: Crabby Writer: Phonics Read & Write! $3 app free for a limited time!

Miss Judd's Games makes great apps. (She's a teacher.) So when I saw that an app they released less than a week ago had gone free for a very limited time, I thought "quick, let everyone know!" So, here we are.

An example of one of the many cool things about this app is that there is no dragging a finger across to write letters. The child has to hold both fingers in the writing position and slide them around to write, which is obviously far more likely to help the child learn to write. 

Great stuff. Definitely grab this one before it goes back to $3.

ABC Theater: Old MacDonald & Friends - Review

 

 

Bottom Line: After nearly 100 years, Old MacDonald gets a nice facelift by adding a few new friends. 

The Nutcracker and the Mystery of the Disappearing Cheese: Review

 

 

Bottom Line: a beautifully animated short film, a narrated retelling of the Christmas classic, 7 preschool learning games, and 6 create a scene play rooms all set to the spellbinding music of Tchaikovsky's ballet.

Crabby Writer: Phonics Read & Write

 

 

Bottom Line: Cute graphics with a good mix of early literacy skills and some fun in the sun but may not pose much of a challenge for its target audience of pre-readers and writers. CCSS aligned.