The back-to-school season is a great time to find apps that can playfully stretch childhood interests toward factors that have a positive impact on school performance and enjoyment. Here we will look at five examples that help increase vocabulary, widen a child’s school interests, create fun with Q & A, promote social awareness, and encourage creative collaboration. Let’s make getting ready for school a fun, enriching experience! – Frances Judd, early childhood educator and Master kindergarten teacher.
1. Increasing Vocabulary:
Happi Spells HD (by Happi Papi) gives young returning students 48 beautifully illustrated crossword puzzles that are sprinkled with needed letter tiles. Simply drag & place. Charmingly effective picture-clues allow young students to work with complete autonomy in upper/lower case letters. An “idea” button gives faded answers when stumped. Great game for building spelling skills and vocab needed at school!
2. Widening A Child’s School Interests:
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox (by THUP) has an adorable and dynamic flipping monkey who offers encouragement, sticker rewards, and joyful feedback that woos kids toward new interests in school topics of colors, letters, matching, sizes, shapes, differences, and healthy eating.
3. Creating Fun with Q & A:
Penguin First Grade (by Mrs. Judd’s Games) is a very fun example from this graded suite of penguin games. Each is designed to help kids enjoy questioning and memory tasks with addition, subtraction, patterns, reading and other Common Core areas. Playful mini-games mirror classroom Q&A, recess fun, and sticker art that kids can securely send to a parent (using the proprietary Juddly delivery system created for quality developers in the Juddly network).
4. Promoting Social Awareness:
Avokiddo Emotions (by Avokiddo E. Katsantonis & sia e. e.) is a fun app with 3 animal friends who look directly at the player, offering compelling expressions and social interaction. A player’s choice to add disco glasses, party hats, art materials, musical instruments, costumes, props, bees, or food result in smart, dramatic reactions. As in real classroom relationships, these smiles, winks, glares, gasps, or whimpers have roots in social cause & effect, and individual preference.
5. Creative Collaboration:
Pirate Scribblebeard’s Treasure (by Kidoodle) is an art & story app with incomplete sketches, dramatic narration, and fun animations of kid creations. It cleverly entices reluctant “Arrr-tists” to jump into this pirate adventure, and even share their images with a parent. Special kudos for kid images that subtly embrace gender and racial diversity in an app that promotes working together!
As a former classroom teacher, I understand firsthand the difficulties parents and educators have in finding appropriate educational games and apps for children. That’s why I am so thrilled to be a part of the Moms With Apps community that makes it so easy to discover helpful titles for you and your young learners.
