This week, guide Pango to fix up the islands in the fun logic puzzler Pango 1 Road. Create your own word and picture lists, or download one of the hundreds created for you then help kids learn with Special Words Plus. Finally, create stories for kids or with your kids, recipes, or sequences of anything you can imagine with Special Stories Plus.
Pango 1 Road
By Studio Tango
Pango 1 Road is a logic puzzle for young kids. The cute and cartoony Pango is tasked with plugging up holes dug by moles across several islands. Kids do this by creating a path for Pango to follow. The path has to guide Pango to pick up a plug for the hole, meet up with various animals along the way, and collect presents. The path must cross all of these things, but cannot cross itself, so the game requires planning and logic to complete each puzzle. Puzzles start off very easy, with only a straight line required, but become more complex with obstacles in the way, and turns required. However, the difficulty increases very gradually, and never becomes too complex. The production values are great and Pango 1 Road offers a fun and different set of puzzles for kids.
Special Words Plus
By Special iApps
Special Words Plus is the web version of Special Words, a special education app, which means it can be accessed via web-browser on any device rather than being restricted to iOS or Android. Special Words ask kids to match pictures, words and sounds in multiple ways. Kids can match pictures to pictures, written words to pictures, and the sound of a word to a picture or a written word. There are hundreds of pre-made word lists to download and use, ranging from household objects, to animals and nature, to emotions, and many more. However, the true power of the app comes from creating your own customized word lists. You can add an unlimited number of words and word lists using a simple interface by typing the word, uploading a picture and recording yourself speaking the word. The web interface supports 18 different languages, but of course you can record words in any language.
You can sign up for a two week free trail at their website: https://www.specialiapps.org/
Special Stories Plus
By Special iApps
Special Stories Plus is also a web app, designed to present sequences consisting of words and pictures. That could be a story, but also a schedule, the steps for a recipe, counting from 1 to 10, the parts of a cell, different types of trees, and much more. Much like Special Words, there are hundreds of lists to download, covering a broad array of topics, but the the true flexibility of the tool comes from creating your owns stories. Stories are created by adding text, uploading an image, and either recording yourself speaking the text, or letting a computer voice speak it for you. There is enough room to enter a nice long sentence associated with each image, but if you need to add more text you will need to reduce the font size (which is quite large by default). Kids can then select the story, and play it back, moving through the pages with simple arrows, or jumping directly to any page they wish.
You can sign up for a two week free trail at their website: https://www.specialiapps.org/
Additionally, the https://www.specialiapps.org/ website has how-to guides and videos for using the apps, plus you can view the resources that are available in both apps.
