FREE today for your iPad – Peekaboo has kids looking for 7 cute little aliens who have come to explore our planet and play hide-and-seek! There are 10 colorful & beautifully illustrated scenes for kids to explore. There is a hint mode to help find the characters if needed. Each alien makes its own unique sound when it is located. And… the aliens hiding spots change each time the game is played. Very cute and sure to delight little ones. 🙂
FREE today – Suzy’s Zoo Storybook Collection: Witzy’s Friends Forever is the first in a series of e-books featuring the Suzy’s Zoo characters created by award-winning artist, Suzy Spafford. Witzy the duck is searching for a wishing puff so he can make a wish to be friends forever with his buddies – Boof, Patches, & Lulla.  Beautifully illustrated, this sweet story can be enjoyed in 3 modes: autoplay, read to me, or read to myself. Children will enjoy the animations on each page and looking for Tickles, the ladybug. After reading there are 3 activities: coloring, a matching game, & a puzzle. Download it for your iPhone/iPad today – it’s a sweet one!
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:
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!
FREE for a limited time for the iPhone/iPad – Talking Santa. Lots of holiday fun with this app BUT a few cautions for  parents.
FUN stuff – Talk to Santa and he will repeat your words then save as a video file and it can be emailed. Poke or tickle Santa to see how he reacts. Push the snowball button and a huge snowball runs Santa over. Push the milk and cookies button and Santa gets a snack. Touch Santa’s bag to open some gifts. Press the card buttons & send customized Santa Christmas cards via email or Facebook.All in all, cute and now for the cautions….
CAUTION #1 – Parents need to go into the setting and turn off the violence. Otherwise, kids will be able to hit Santa (and hear sound effects). CAUTION # 2 – If you press the blue card button, you will get a picture of Santa showing his polka-dotted underwear with Merry Christmas written across which cannot be disabled. FYI so you can decide what is appropriate for your child 🙂
FREE today only for the iPhone/iPad – super cute Christmas song app. Includes 5 animated songs: ♪ Jingle Bells, ♪ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, ♪ Frosty the Snowman, ♪ Up on the Housetop, and ♪ We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The app opens up to a snow globe which has 5 different scenes to represent the songs within the app. Lyrics can be turned on or off. Songs can be enjoyed 4 different ways: as an instrumental, as a piano solo, or sung by a female soloist or by children. Each song also includes fun interactive surprises – a very cute, MUST-have for the holidays!
Just released on December 1, Moving Christmas is currently FREE for the iPad. This e-book has 40+ pages of interactive fun with special sound effects & music. Christmas is in trouble because global warning has melted the ice at the North Pole. With Christmas only a month away, Santa calls on Frank Duffy, Mover of the Impossible. So Duffy and his dog, Bricks, fly off to the North Pole to take on the challenge of saving Christmas. Love this app! First of all, it’s a fun, smart story – written so it can be enjoyed by kids & adults. It has great whimsical illustrations by Max Micheli who has created for Disney, Nickelodeon, and more. The narration is wonderful but there is also the option of reading the book on your own. Rich in language, this book would be perfect to share in the classroom in so many ways. Use for a lesson on character traits, a lesson on inference (as the story setting changes), language lessons on similes, adjectives, and more!
This story is obviously the first in a series as there is an introduction to Frank’s next adventure at the end of this one – Frank is going to move Area 51. 🙂  I am looking forward to more from this developer!
ABC Expedition is currently $2.99 but I was able to download it on a FREE day. Captain Wallace leads a tour of the zoo in this aesthetically pleasing alphabet app. The alphabet letters are placed on large buttons  – easy for kids to push. Each button take the child to an animated page featuring that letter. The page contains both upper & lower case letters and an animal (with its word) that begins with that letter. The animated animals are appealing and include sound effects. GRReat! Both words and letters are pronounced when the child touches them. This app is simple but well done – love the unique color scheme! What a great app for toddlers who love animals and are learning the alphabet. Use it before or after a trip to the zoo! Keep reading my blog to find out when apps are offered for FREE.
FREE for a limited time – The Chicken & the Egg is an interactive e-book written by Allan Plenderleith for the iPhone/iPad. It is the story of Flo, a little chicken, who just cannot lay an egg. One rainy night something happens… An object rolls down a hill and lands next to Flo who thinks it’s her egg. She loves her egg & takes very good care of it. Then one night a “dark thing” appears… Even though all ends well, read this one first before you share it with preschoolers. You know if your child is sensitive to stories with “scary” parts.
Teachers – this story is perfect for teaching prediction. I would stop the story when Flo wakes up next to “her egg” and have students predict what will happen next. Is it actually an egg? If so what will hatch out? There are lots of possibilities for creative writing with this story. Then read the rest of the story to see how the author finishes it. The story is cutely illustrated with delightful narration. Its interactivity adds to the story rather than distracting the reader from the story. Definitely worth downloading 🙂
FREE for iPhone/iPad, Toca Tailor Fairy Tales has kids designing and tailoring clothes for two fairy tale characters. With a tap, the style of clothing can be changed. The length of the sleeves, pants, etc. is easily adjusted with a swipe. Kids then choose different colors & prints of fabric or they can create their own fabric using the built-in fabric camera. They can also access and use pictures from the camera roll. There are trims to add – buttons, pockets, etc. Finally, kids choose accessories – hats, scarves, shoes, etc. Kids can take a picture of their finished creations like they can in so many apps. BUT…. in this app you can use your own room as a background – how unique! Kids could create their own little elf, take pictures of it all over the house, and write their own “elf-on-a-shelf” story. The possibilities for creative writing using this feature are endless – LOVE it!! Very open-ended & creative for hours of fun!
Highly recommended!!
FREE for a limited time – Oh, What a Tangle is an interactive e-book for the iPhone/iPad. It normally sells for $4.99. It is a cute story told in rhyme about Kiki, a little girl who doesn’t take the time to brush her hair because there is always something better to do. A knot develops and Kiki allows it to get wildly out of control. Cute story with animation and interactivity found on almost every page. Kids can help paint Kiki’s nails different colors, use a magnifying glass to find the tiny knot in Kiki’s hair, make the birds fly around Kiki’s head, etc. Kids also collect hidden brushes throughout the story to unlock puzzles at the end of the story. Very cute story with rich vocabulary – great for a lesson on context clues 🙂
Recommended!
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