Sail Through Math

February 1, 2013 | appydazeblog

Ahoy there!! FREE today (normally $1.99), Sail through Math from McGraw Hill – a fun way for students to practice their math facts/skills. There are 3 levels of play for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. Other areas covered are addition equations. subtraction equations, multiplication equations, two-step equations, names for numbers, patterns/factors/multiples, and compare numbers. This app provides of great practice built around a pirate theme – complete with music and firing cannonballs! At the end of each game, the child can see what problems he/she missed as well as a percentage score. What a fun way to learn basic facts – in the classroom, at home, in the car on a way to an evening activity. I used to tell my students to practice during commercials – 10 to 15 minutes a day works wonders. This app provides a fun way to accomplish that goal 🙂

Common Core Standards met:

1.OA.6 – Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10.
2.OA.2 – Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies. By end of Grade 2, know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers.
3.OA.7 – Fluently multiply and divide within 100, using strategies such as the relationship between multiplication and division or properties of operations. By the end of Grade 3, know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers.

Grammar Wonderland (Primary) & Grammar Wonderland (Elementary)

January 24, 2013 | appydazeblog

FREE today – the full versions of Grammar Wonderland (Primary) & Grammar Wonderland (Elementary). In both games kids lead their characters through different adventures as they practice nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more. The primary version is for younger children – the words are read and some levels include pictures. The app does not teach the parts of speech but it provides lots of practice for kids in a fun game-like environment. After teaching a lesson about parts of speech, teachers can have kids show what they know with this app. Practice is provided for the following: common nouns, proper, nouns, concrete nouns, abstract nouns, singular nouns, plural nouns, possessive nouns, pronouns, action verbs, present-tense verbs, past-tense verbs, future-tense verbs, linking verbs, adjectives, articles, comparative/superlative adjectives, and more! Many parts of speech are taught in both apps – perfect for differentiating your instruction for a variety of reading levels. Both also apps permit multiple player – great for the classroom!

Recommended!! – Download them today 🙂

Grammar Wonderland Primary

Grammar Wonderland Elementary

Preschool University – phonics/spelling apps

January 15, 2013 | appydazeblog

Moveable Alphabet option from ABC Spelling Magic

Wow!! Preschool University has 12 phonics/spelling apps available for FREE right now. There are links to all below. I have them grouped by the skills that they teach and from easiest to most difficult. The first group teaches letter sounds.

ABC Magic Phonics – initial letter sounds, 1 picture for each letter
ABC Magic 2 – initial letter sounds, 4 pictures for each letter
ABC Magic 3 Line Match – Kids apply what they know about sounds by matching. There are 2 modes: matching 2 pictures with the same beginning sounds or matching letters to a picture that starts with that sound.
ABC Magic 4 – Kids are given a letter and they must find pictures of 3,6,or 9 items that begin with that sound.
ABC Magic 5 Letter Sound Matching – Kids match sounds in 2 modes: picture to letter or letter to picture. As kids become more advanced, you can increase their number of choices (4, 6, or 9) and increase the number of matches per round (5,10,15,20,or 25).
ABC Magic 6 – is the same as Sound Beginnings (follows #8).
ABC Magic 7 Memory Match – A matching game with 2 options: match letter to letter or match picture to picture. Letter sounds and picture names are pronounced with the option of turning the sounds off. Grids of 12, 16, or 20 are available.
ABC Magic 8 Sound Matching – This app is an extension of ABC Magic 7. It’s another matching game with 2 options: letter to picture having that beginning sound or picture to another picture with the same beginning sound. Letter sounds and picture names are pronounced with the option of turning the sounds off. Grids of 12, 16, or 20 are available.
Sound Beginnings – This app is the most advanced of the letter sound teaching apps. It is called sound beginnings but actually teaches beginning, middle, and ending sounds. There are two options: a picture to letter and letter to picture. As kids become more advanced, you can increase their number of choices (3,4, or 5) and increase the number of matches per round (5,10,15,20,or 25). Awesome practice for beginning readers!!

The second group of apps uses letter sounds to spell words that phonetically regular. There are 2 ways to use each of these apps. Word Jumble provides the child with the letters of the word and the child puts them in order. Moveable Alphabet (the more difficult option) has the entire alphabet across the top of the page and the child must find the correct letters to spell the word. If a child touches a picture, the app reads the word. If a child touches a letter, the app gives the sound for that letter. Each vowel is taught in isolation but there is also a shuffle option which provides mixed practice. Vowels are printed in blue and consonants are in red so you can reinforce the CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) pattern.

ABC Spelling Magic Short Vowels – teaches short vowels
ABC Spelling Magic 2 Consonant Blends – teaches consonant blends and consonant clusters
ABC Spelling Magic 3 Blends & Syllables – GREAT practice spelling multi-syllable words
Sentence Reading Magic – Kids built 2 or 3 words sentences using phonetically regular words.

These apps provide a lot of good practice for preschoolers and early readers!!

Common Core Standards met:

K. RF.3 – Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant. Associate the short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

Snowflake Station

December 11, 2012 | appydazeblog

Purple glittery snowflakes !! FREE for a limited time, Snowflake Station for the iPad helps kids discover the beauty of symmetry – a key concept in math, science, art, & architecture. The app has 3 sections: Trace a Flake, Creation Station, and Make it Snow. Trace a Flake includes step-by-step instructions for cutting 36 different snowflakes/other symmetrical shapes. In the Creation Station, kids create their own flakes/shapes. There are six different folds, 10 different colored paper, and 10 different colors of glitter to choose from. Kids make “cuts” with their fingers. The tape button works as an undo button. Kids can monitor their progress in the upper left hand corner of the cutting board. Creations can be saved to use in the Make it Snow section of the app which does exactly that! Kids use their creations to make it snow in a photo of their choosing. They can use the iPad’s camera to take a picture or use an already saved photo from the camera roll. There are also 10 winter scenes included in the app. Another option in this app is the ability to set up a Juddly (a safe, secure email) account for your child to share his/her creations with you. Very creative & very fun – all while learning about symmetry 🙂

Common Core Standards:

1.G.3 – Partition a shape into four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, fourths, and quarters, and use the phrases half of, fourth of, and quarter of. Describe the whole as two of, or four of the shares. Understand for these examples that decomposing into more equal shares creates smaller shares.
4.G.3. Recognize a line of symmetry for a two-dimensional figure as a line across the figure such that the figure can be folded along the line into matching parts. Identify line-symmetric figures and draw lines of symmetry.

Not only does this app meet CCSS in math, it can also be used in creative writing – The Day It Snowed Orange, Alien Invasion, etc. Awesome – highly recommended!

Grammaroplois

November 18, 2012 | appydazeblog

Grammaropolis is billed as the place where grammar lives. It teaches 8 parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, interjections) using animated characters based on the roles that they play in sentences. Every part of speech has its own neighborhood. Kids follow a map which takes them through a series of activities (songs, books, videos, and quizzes) to learn about the featured part of speech. If they complete everything on the map, they earn a badge. Cutely designed and simple to use, this app teaches parts of speech in a fun, “Schoolhouse Rock” like way. The songs are catchy and upbeat so kids will love them 🙂

Nouns is a FREE download with the other parts of speech available as in-app purchases. I was impressed that this app covered so many kinds of nouns – common, proper, concrete, abstract, compound, and collective. This app would work well to introduce/teach nouns in a one iPad classroom.

Common Core Standards:

1.L.1 – b. Use common, proper, and ~~possessive nouns~~.

2.L.1 – a. Use collective nouns (e.g., group). b. Form and use frequently occurring irregular plural nouns (e.g., feet, children, teeth, mice, fish).

3.L.1 – b.Form and use regular and irregular plural nouns. c. Use abstract nouns (e.g., childhood).

Marble Math Junior

November 2, 2012 | appydazeblog

FREE for one day, November 2, 2012 – Marble Math Junior for the iPhone/iPad. Kids solve a variety of math problems as they roll marbles through a series of mazes. There are three levels. Level 1 covers addition to 10, equivalent numbers, sequencing of ordinal and cardinal numbers, and shape recognition. Level 2 covers adding coins to $1.00, addition/subtraction to 20, time to the hour, and comparing/sequencing numbers to 100. Level 3 covers money to $2.00, telling time by 15 min. intervals, fractions (1/2, 1/3, 1/4), multiples (2,3,5,10), addition to 100, and sequencing to 1000. Currency can be customized 5 ways: Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Euro, British pound, & U.S. dollar. Not only does the game supports multiple players but it also allows you to customize specific skills for each player to practice – what a great option! Another great thing about this app – when a player answers incorrectly, he/she can choose of 3 options: try again, show me, or next problem. Kids earn marbles as they answer correctly and high scores are recorded. Worth downloading!

Common Core Standards met:

K.OA.2 – Add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.
K.CC.2 – Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.
1.OA.6 – Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10.
1.MD.3 – Tell ~~and write~~ time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.
2.MD.8 – Solve ~~word problems~~ involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, using $ and ¢ symbols appropriately.
2.OA.1 -Use addition and subtraction within 100

Recommended!

ABC Alphabet Phonics – Preschool Kids Game Free Lite

October 2, 2012 | appydazeblog

This FREE app is designed for the iPhone/iPad for 0 – 6 year olds. It gives kids practice in letter identification – both upper and lower case. Settings can be switched from plain letters to letters with animals, kids, monkeys, and sketches. With the letter/animal option, an animal that starts with the letter is next to it. You can add your voice or your child’s voice to customize the app. You can also turn letters on and off, mix and match upper and lower case, etc. I did find a glitch when mixing the upper and the lower case letters – the instructions said to touch the f, both F and f were displayed as possible answer but only F was correct. Needless to say, that could be very confusing to a child learning letter names. The other concern that I have with this app is the title – ABC Alphabet Phonics. Phonics is not part of the app at all. This app does not introduce any letter sounds. It simply gives kids practice differentiating between letters – touch the Q, touch the g, touch the H, etc. That is it – with plain letters or letters with illustrations. If your child would benefit from this kind of drill, you may want to download this app.

Common Core Standards met:

K.RF.1 – ….. Recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Little Writer – The Tracing App for Kids

September 28, 2012 | appydazeblog

This FREE letter writing app for the iPhone/iPad is designed to teach 3 – 6 year olds how to write upper & lower case letters, numbers, shapes, and words. It starts by showing the shape of the letter and naming it. The child traces along lines to write the letter. Then the child is praised and told what letter, number, shape or word he/she has just written. When writing a word, the letters are presented one at a time with the full word shown in the upper right-hand corner. When the word is finished, a picture pops up with the child’s writing underneath it.

There are a lot of great things about this app. I like the size of the letters – nice and big for little hands. I also like that there are subtle dotted lines on the page. But, the best part of this app is the ability to customize it. You can turn items on or off in order to introduce letters, numbers, etc. slowly. You can record your voice or your child’s voice pronouncing the names of the letters, numbers, etc. You can add in your own pictures & words so that your child can learn to write his/her own name and names of family members or whatever you wish! You can add additional letters for foreign words so that you can use it to teach simple words in another language. SO many possibilities……

Common Core Standards met:

K.RF.1 – Recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Highly Recommended!

Marbleminds Phonics

September 17, 2012 | appydazeblog

In this app for the iPhone/iPad (which normally costs $2.99) kids practice phonics in four different ways: picture to letter (choose the beginning letter for a picture), letter to picture (find the pictures that start with a letter), memory (match letters to pictures), and sounds like (choose the letter for the sound). In the game mode, all four methods are mixed and kids earn marbles as they play. This app provides some good practice for kids with letters/sounds for over 150 pictures.

Be aware of a few issues that will hopefully be addressed in the next update. The sounds of c and k can be the same. When c is followed by a,o, or u it makes a k sound. In the app when looking for words that start with the k sound, the correct answers were kettle, kangaroo and kettle but other choices included cat and candy cane – too confusing! Also, vowels can be tricky. When looking for the short i sound, one of the correct answers was iron which is incorrect because it has a long i sound. When looking for the short o sound, two of the correct answers were orange and onion – neither make the short o sound. Even though this app has some mistakes, it is better than many of the other phonics apps that I have seen.

Common Core Standards met:

K.RF.3 – Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.a.Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.

Keep reading my blog to find out when apps go FREE. There is a lite version of this app that you can try.

ABC Mouse.co – Ham with Jam, Hen in the Pen, Big Pig & Little Pig, To Run is Fun

September 15, 2012 | appydazeblog

These apps for the iPhone/iPad are from the ABC Mouse word family beginning reader series. I chose to downloaded The Hen in the Pen to review the series. Each story emphasizes words from a particular word family. There are also easy sight words in the stories. There are several ways that the books can be read: Read to Me, Read with Pause, I Can Read It, and Hear the Words. I really like the Hear the Words option. It allows the child to read alone but tap any word that he/she gets stuck on. There are parent tips on the title page that explain word families and sight words for beginning readers. There are also parent tips throughout the books. The illustrations are colorful and support the text so that kids can use picture clues as they read. The story lines are very simple. But, that is not a negative thing because these apps are more about the process of reading than the actual story. When my son was an early reader, he loved books like these because he could read them “all by himself” and that alone makes them worth downloading 🙂 And…. they are currently FREE.

Common Core Standards met:

K.RF.3 – Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. c. Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does). d. Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

Recommended!

Ham with Jam Hen in the Pen Big Pig & Little Pig To Run is Fun

appydazeblog

educational apps for kids and the adults in their lives

Category Archives: apps that link to the Common Core Standards (CCSS)

Sail Through Math

Grammar Wonderland (Primary) & Grammar Wonderland (Elementary)

Preschool University – phonics/spelling apps

Snowflake Station

Grammaroplois

Marble Math Junior

ABC Alphabet Phonics – Preschool Kids Game Free Lite

Little Writer – The Tracing App for Kids

Marbleminds Phonics

ABC Mouse.co – Ham with Jam, Hen in the Pen, Big Pig & Little Pig, To Run is Fun

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