Welcome to the 14th installment of the App Report featuring family friendly apps made by the developers belonging to the Moms With Apps network. This week we have apps that focus on a number of classic learning objectives.
Early Learning: TinyGenius helps teach the names of foods, animals and more. Magic Sorter and Merry Cubes provide puzzles for little fingers.
Literacy: ABC Phonics is back to teach about long vowels. Fat Cat App and Where Has My Dog Gone support early reading or those that need a little extra help. This week Oceanhouse Media and Mobad Games provide worthy reading material.
Math: MathLands teaches through puzzle solving.
Special Needs: Learn about cleaning a room with Put it Away.
On a different note, aaSsessMyVS offers a test to see if coloured overlays will improve your reading experience. Stack the Countries is now available to those with Windows Phones. Alien Buddies, Bo’s Beditime and Feed the Monster have all received updates or new versions. Finally, Punflay had not one, but two of its amazing apps showcased during Apple’s education event!
Click on the links to find out more about each app and to determine if it is suitable for you. If you find an app you like, remember to write a review on iTunes.
Garry Froehlich | Jellybean Tunes
Books
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Ellison The Elephant by Oceanhouse Media: Little Ellison just wants to sound like everyone else. He tries to make a big trumpet sound like his friends and his sister, but all he gets is a little toot! With encouragement from Mom and provocation from his imaginary friend, Weasel, Ellison discovers his very own voice – a jazzy sound that charms and entertains all within earshot. Ellison’s proud mom reminds us all that it’s ok to be unusual. In fact, “All the greatest elephants in history were unusual – that’s what made them great!” iPhone and iPad Android |
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The Year of the Dragon in 3D – A Peek ‘n Play Story App by Mobad Games: 2012 is the Year of the Dragon! Dominic’s proud parents rule the sea and sky, advise the Emperor, and have high expectations for their son. Meanwhile Dom befriends the boy Bo and the other zodiac animals, who wish to paddle a boat in the village’s annual river race. But when other people and Dom’s parents disapprove, what will Dom do? iPhone and iPad Mac |
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And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street – Dr. Seuss by Oceanhouse Media: Marco walks to school along Mulberry Street keeping his eyes peeled for interesting sites to share with his dad. But today all he sees is a boring old horse and wagon. “That’s nothing to tell of, that won’t do, of course”. . . so Marco envisions much more exciting events, each more elaborate than the last. The horse and wagon turn into a zebra and charioteer, then to an elephant with a sleigh as Marco’s imagination goes on a wild ride down Mulberry Street. iPhone and iPad |
Education
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ABC Phonics Long Vowel Words Free by Abitalk: A fun game for young children to learn and practice phonics by piloting a spaceship and shooting at planets to identify each word. PhonicsTwo is for children ready to learn the long vowel sounds. The words all have long vowel sounds. iPhone and iPad |
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TinyGenius by Gilberto Fernandez: TinyGenius consists of interactive card sets with topics such as foods, animals and others. The contents of these cards include photos, illustrations, names and sounds in several languages, designed by professionals to maximize children’s learning. iPhone iPhone Lite |
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Fat Cat App by Children’s Publishing: Fat Cat App is the first in a series of apps for early reading or remediation of reading in an engaging format. With the purchase of Fat Cat App, parents, teachers, and therapists can download a free teaching manual (supporting research and suggested activities and worksheets). Fat Cat App addresses early reading through phonemic awareness and phonics as well as providing auditory bombardment of sounds for speech students. iPad |
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Where Has My Dog Gone by Children’s Publishing: Where Has My Dog Gone was written by a retired speech-language pathologist. This app can be used by teachers, parents and speech-language pathologists as a supplement to teach the early prepositions and the early developing sound /d/ through interactive play. The children will enjoy learning prepositions by touching a sign to activate the characters to perform actions like telling the dog on the bike to ride “up” or “down” the slide. Through repeated activation of the signs the child will learn the prepositions the same way they learn that a stop sign means the driver should stop. iPad |
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aaSsessMyVS by aardwearing software limited: The purpose of aaSsessMyVS is to allow you to perform a brief test to see if coloured overlays will help improve your reading experience. If so, the sister app aaLuminate(also available in App Store) will help you. In this case, you should also consider arranging a formal test to determine whether tinted glasses/physical coloured overlays would be beneficial. iPhone |
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My Book Tree by My Book Tree, LLC: My Book Tree is an interactive app for iPad, iPhone, and iTouch devices that features original stories. Each story is presented in two modes: a “Read” mode in which the story can be read like a traditional book by turning pages (via a swipe action on the screen); and a “Listen” mode with narration. In the “Listen” mode, the words are highlighted as they are read thereby aiding in language development and reading skills. Each story comes with a fun educational game. iPad |
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Put It Away by leehsueh: Cleaning a room is an essential living skill for everyone, but can be particularly difficult for children with special needs. Performing this task on the app exercises category sorting and memory, and can help build confidence in kids with autism or other developmental disabilities to complete the task in real life, which is often a challenge. iPad |
Games
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Little Frog And Ball by Birds of Paradise: This app introduces our beautiful hand-drawn characters of the Little Ace. It is very simple game for younger children. Complimentary app for Little Ace And Ten Commandments. iPhone and iPad |
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Magic Sorter by Igromatic: MAGIC SORTER – Sea Tales – 5 in 1 helps develop important cognitive and fine motor skills by dragging & dropping objects to match the silhouettes. With parental assistance it can also develop language skills, for example, by naming the objects, sea animals, shapes and colors. iPad |
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Merry Cubes by Igromatic: Toddlers and kids from 2 to 7 will have fun with this cube matching game. Just swipe the cube and tap to rotate it and reconstruct the whole picture. Watch every matched fruit dancing as a reward and a real fruit disco as a grand prix! iPhone iPad |
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MathLands by Mamanijo: Kids are too often faced with math exercises that are mechanical and dull. They learn to solve small tasks without any real understanding of the underlying mathematics. MathLands was designed by game lovers and teachers to remedy this problem. In this app kids will be asked to think deeply but in the context of gameplay and puzzle-solving. iPad |
App News
| Stack the Countries by Freecloud Design, Inc.: now available for Windows Phone 7 |
| Alien Buddies by Artgig Studio: updated to include a new puzzle game. iPhone and iPad |
| Bo’s Bedtime by Heppi: now available for iPhone |
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Punflay is proud to announce that Frog Dissection and Cell Structure were both showcased briefly in the Apple Keynote Presentation on Education. |
| Feed The Monster by Huminah Huminah Animation: now available for iPad |
