Category Archives: FREE apps (for a limited time)

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Magic Sorter – Sea Tales

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Magic Sorter -Sea Tales

FREE today – Magic Sorter Sea Tales, an app for toddlers. The app includes 10 different games based around the theme of the sea. Activities include puzzles, color matching, size & shape matching, patterns, counting, a memory game, and more. Your child can work on one game at a time or there is an option to mix the games. Kids will enjoy the colorful animations & lively music that they receive as a reward after completing an activity. The app is very intuitive and suitable for kids of all languages  – there are no written or spoken words. If you have a little one who loves the ocean and its creatures, check out this app today!

Magic Sorter - Sea Tales - 10 in 1 - to develop important cognitive and fine motor skills - Igromatic

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Super Readers – A Dolch Sight Words Based Story Book App That Will Help Turn Your Child Into a Super Reader!

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super readers

FREE again for a limited time – Super Readers, an animated storybook app for early readers! This educational app uses the Dolch sight words in 10 vocabulary controlled stories at 5 different reading levels: kindergarten, beginning first, middle first, end of first, and beginning second. Kids can choose to have the stories read to them with automatic text highlighting or they can touch individual words to have them read. Another great feature  – kids can record themselves reading the book and then play it back. What a wonderful confidence builder for little ones trying to build their fluency!!

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).

Super Readers - A Dolch Sight Words Based Story Book App That Will Help Turn Your Child Into a Super Reader! - Jorge Sanchez

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Toca Hair Salon Me

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hair salon meOnly $.99 – Toca Hair Salon Me, the newest addition to the popular Toca Hair Salon apps. Using this app, kids can create a whole new look for themselves and/or their family & friends. They simply import a picture from the camera roll and “the styling” can begin. The salon is equipped with all the right tools to style hair. They can cut it, comb it, make it grow, shave it, color it, etc. They can also wash it, blow it dry, curl it or straighten it. Great sound effects add to the fun! After they finish the styling, they can add fun accessories – glasses, bow, mustaches, etc. They can even use their own photos for the background. Kids or parents can take a photo of the finished creation and save it to their camera roll. What a great springboard for creative writing – give yourself a whole new look and write a story to go with it. What a fun activity for a Wacky Hair Day!!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toca-hair-salon-me/id730873197?mt=8&uo=4

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YouTube Kids

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youtube kids

Just released in February and FREE – YouTube Kids, a child-geared version of YouTube. The app is designed for little ones to navigate – big buttons, easy scrolling, and instant full-screen. Kids can enjoy their favorites such as Sesame Street, Peppa Pig, and Reading Rainbow. They can find videos about things that interest them – science, music, crafts, etc. The app has four sections: shows, music, learning, and explore. I especially love the learning section which includes great programming from TedEd, Khan Academy, WhizKid Science, PBS Kids, and more. There is also a search option which is great for teachers looking for a video clip to enhance a lesson. Google is focused on kids’ safety so they’ve worked to build YouTube Kids to be a family friendly place. Parents can quickly notify YouTube if they see anything questionable. Even though this app greatly limits a child’s access to inappropriate content, supervision of your child’s online activity is always a good idea. 🙂

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube-kids/id936971630?mt=8&uo=4

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Little Bird Tales

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imageFREE – Little Bird Tales, an educational app that helps kids create their own stories and presentations. The app is very easy to use. First kids add text and/or voice to each page. They can import pictures or create their own drawings to go with their stories. Finished works can be uploaded to littlebirdtales.com for emailing, creating PDFs, and more. This is one of those apps with endless possibilities. Kids can create all sorts of original works with it. Teachers can create assignments for students to download, complete, and return for review. Parents can use the app for creating and sharing their children’s work with grandparents. Find out more about this great resource at the website: https://littlebirdtales.com. There you can also sign up for a free membership. Let the creating begin…

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/little-bird-tales-free-digital/id517996494?mt=8&uo=6&at=&ct=

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Grandma’s Kitchen

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grandma

Only $.99 – Grandma’s Kitchen, an adorable educational app for preschoolers. Kids join dancing grandma in her kitchen. The app features 8 educational games – all thematically linked. Kids will love helping grandma around the kitchen and they will be learning math & reading as they help. The app also features short videos of real kitchen tools in action. The following concepts are integrated into the games: consonant blends, telling time to the hour, colors, vocabulary, healthy eating choices, compound words, numeral recognition/counting, addition, identifying equal parts of a whole, pattern recognition, and more!

I love this app – it seamlessly integrates important educational content into fun thematic games. And, little ones will learn how kitchen items work. I especially like the when Grandma asks for a kiss on the cheek – so cute! Highly recommended.

Download: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grandmas-kitchen/id602808356?mt=8&uo=4

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Factor Samurai

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Factor Samurai

FREE again for a limited time – Factor Samurai, a fun game to practice multiplication/division while looking for prime factors. The goal of the game is to cut falling numbers down to their prime numbers. So if the number 14 is on the screen, it would be cut once to become 2 and 7. If the number 18 is on the screen, it would be cut twice – first to 3 and 6 and then the 6 would be cut to 2 and 3. The game has three levels – grasshopper, apprentice, and master. The speed of the falling numbers increases in each level. Once a player has cut 3 numbers that are already prime, the game is over. The score (showing how many numbers were cut down to their prime) is displayed! There is an option to play the game through the Game Center. This educational app is fun – a game that helps kids with an important math standard!

Common Core Standards met:

  • 4.OA.4 Find all factor pairs for a whole number in the range 1–100. Recognize that a whole number is a multiple of each of its factors. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1–100 is a multiple of a given one-digit number. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1–100 is prime or composite.

Factor Samurai - Third Rail, LLC

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My Incredible Body – A Kid’s App to Learn about the Human Body

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my incredible body

My Incredible Body – A Kid’s App to Learn about the Human Body is now 50% off. This educational app takes kids inside the body to see how everything works. Kids start by choosing an area to explore – brain & nerves, digestion, lungs & air, skeleton, kidneys & urine, senses, muscles, or circulation. Each of the 8 content areas provides information in a variety of engaging ways. Kids can watch short movies & animations that explain the different functions of the body. 3D models can be rotated or zoomed to allow kids to see inside the body and discover how body parts work together. Kids will spend hours reading and listening to all sorts of fun facts about their bodies. For example: extraocular muscles control eye movements and are the busiest muscles in the body. This app is fabulous – it’s easy to use, visually appealing, engaging, and full of information. Kids will LOVE it!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-incredible-body-kids-app/id853953105?mt=8&uo=4

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Endless Alphabet

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endless

Once named an Editor’s Choice in the app store, Endless Alphabet is only $2.99 for a limited time. This adorable, interactive app combines learning letter names/sounds with learning vocabulary. The app now features 50+ words. Its initial release only featured 26 words but the developers promised that the app would be truly endless. So, new words are periodically added to the app as it is updated.

Kids tap a letter and a word appears of the screen. Then silly monsters come by and knock it over. Kids work to reconstruct the word with animated, talking letters. To teach the meaning of the word, there is also a short animation included. Words featured include: bellow, cooperate, gargantuan, portrait, quarrel – clearly not words found in the average ABC book. The vocabulary development in this app makes it appropriate for a wide range of kids.

I LOVE this app – it’s silly, fun, and educational. My friend’s grandson learned all the letters and sounds of the alphabet because he loved this app so much. 🙂 It’s super cute!!

Endless Alphabet - Callaway Digital Arts Inc.

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Word Wizard – Talking Movable Alphabet

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word wizard

On sale for only $.99 – Word Wizard – Talking Movable Alphabet. This educational app features advanced text to speech capabilities to help kids with reading and spelling. Emergent readers can utilize the phonics movable alphabet to explore and play with words and sentences. As they do so, the app pronounces and spell-checks their work. Consonant letters are blue and vowels are red – helping kids to become aware of the differences. The short pronunciation of the vowels is featured as the letters are moved onto the board. Once a word is spelled, the app changes the vowel’s pronunciation for that word if necessary. If a word is not recognized by the app, it is still pronounced (according to the rules of phonics) but it is highlighted in red. How cool is that?!

Word Wizard can also be used for spelling practice. The app features lists of words – more than 1,400 words in all. I love that it includes the 1000 most frequently used words. Learning to recognize these words is important to a child’s overall reading fluency. The app also lets you add your own word lists. Teachers can add in their weekly spelling list and track the progress of their students. Reports can be emailed from teacher to parent or from parent to teacher. There are lots of possibilities for using this app – teach letter sounds, explore word patterns, small group word building, spelling practice, the list goes on… It’s no wonder that this app was featured in the New York Times, featured by Apple as “New and Noteworthy” and named a winner of a Parents’ Choice Award.
Highly recommended!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-wizard-talking-movable/id447312716?mt=8&uo=4