Category Archives: FREE apps (for a limited time)

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Mindshape Limited – Story Apps

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Here we go again  – today is going to be a another record-setting day for FREE educational apps thanks to Mindshapes Limited! They are offering 18 of their story apps for FREE!! Teachers, if you are a planning a unit on folktales this year – download now. 🙂

Little Red Hen

Many of these stories are classic fairy tales. They are nicely illustrated, professionally narrated, and can be enjoyed in four modes: read, watch, learn, and play. So here are links to 18 FREE e-books from the Mindshapes. Enjoy 🙂

Rumpelstiltskin Rumplestiltskin - Mindshapes Limited

Princess and the Pea The Princess and the Pea - A Fairy Tale - Mindshapes Limited

The Boy who Cried Wolf The Boy who Cried Wolf - Mindshapes Limited

The Glass Mountain   The Glass Mountain - Mindshapes Limited

The Leaping Match The Leaping Match - Mindshapes Limited

Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves   Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves - Mindshapes Limited

The Ugly Duckling   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-ugly-duckling-a-fairy-tale/id578076786?mt=8&uo=4

 The Snow Queen The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen - Mindshapes Limited

The Tale of Cinderella   The Tale of Cinderella - Mindshapes Limited

Thumbelina   Thumbelina - A Fairy Tale - Mindshapes Limited

Hansel & Gretel   Hansel and Gretel - Grimm's Fairy Tales - Mindshapes Limited

Nutcracker – Ballet School   Nutcracker - Ballet School Stories - Mindshapes Limited

Aladdin –  The Arabian Nights   Aladdin - The Arabian Nights - Mindshapes Limited

The Little Red Hen   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-story-of-the-little-red-hen/id583950594?mt=8&uo=4

The Tortoise and the Hare   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-tortoise-the-hare/id572867513?mt=8&uo=4

Sleeping Beauty   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleeping-beauty-a-fairy-story/id584847816?mt=8&uo=4

Brer Rabbit & the Prickly Patch https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brer-rabbit-prickly-patch/id578074771?mt=8&uo=4

The Story of the Dog and His Reflection   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/story-dog-his-reflection/id578072856?mt=8&uo=4

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Counting Bees

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Counting Bees

Pi’ikea apps are FREE this weekend!

Kids lead bees to flowers and learn to count (to 20) using Counting Bees, an educational app for preschoolers. Counting is taught in ranges of increasing difficulty: 1-5, 1-10, 1-15, and 1-20. Using this app, kids also can learn to count in multiple languages – English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, and Japanese. Simple to use and nicely done!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/counting-bees/id481053635?mt=8&uo=4

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Mask Jumbled Animals

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Mask Jumble AnimalsPi’ikea educational apps are FREE this weekend!

Mask Jumbled Animals is a fun educational game for kids. It turns their faces into animal faces! Kids look into the app’s mirror and animal parts will appear on their faces. They tap to match the ears, nose, chin, and hair in order to complete 1 of 20 different animal masks. When the mask is complete, kids catch strawberries in their mouths to unlock a new mask. The mask puzzles are really cute for preschoolers who will be delighted to be an elephant, a lion, a panda, etc. But… the best part of this app is the ability to take pictures of kids in their masks which makes this app a fabulous resource for creative writing! Pull those pictures into a story writing app and off you go. 🙂

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mask-jumble-animals/id548763608?mt=8&uo=4

Mask Jumble Halloween

Also free this weekend from the same developer – Mask Jumble Hallween. Download now for creative writing in October. 🙂

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Memory Train

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Memeory Train

Pi’ikea educational apps are FREE this weekend!

Memory Train is fun game of concentration and focus for preschoolers and primary students. Kids hop on the train with Spacey the elephant to help him remember what he sees on his way to the circus. They earn stars, badges, and peanuts (of course) as they advance through 10 different levels. This educational app includes slots for 4 players so that friends & family can join the fun. There are no words spoken (just music) so this app can be used by children of all languages. Another excellent educational app from Pi’ikea!

Download Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/memory-train/id465224643?mt=8&uo=4

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Interactive Alphabet ABCs

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Interactive Alphabet ABCs

Pi’ikea apps are FREE this weekend!

Interactive Alphabet is one of the best alphabet apps that I have seen for babies, toddlers, & preschoolers. It’s so cute and well designed! To start you choose an accent (American or British) and a mode. It has 3 modes for your developing child – baby, explore, and trace. The baby mode takes your child on a guided, touchable tour of the alphabet. The explore mode lets children discover the sights & sounds of the alphabet at their own pace. It features fun activities that kids will want to explore multiple times. In the trace mode, kids learn to properly trace letters (lower case, upper case, or mixed) and words. The app keeps track of your child’s progress by starring the letters & words that are traced most often. The app can also be personalized by adding your own words and pictures. Your child can learn to trace his/her own name as well as the names of other family members, family pets, etc. This educational app truly lays the foundation for reading and spelling! Fabulous – this developer seems to have thought of everything!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/interactive-alphabet-abcs/id383967580?mt=8&uo=4

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BuzzMath Middle School

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Buzz Math

FREE with an option to upgrade to premium features – BuzzMath Middle School, a math practice app for 6 – 8th graders based on the Common Core State Standards. All you need to use this educational app is an iPad 2 or higher and an internet connection. The app has 2800+ problems arranged by topic – number sense & operations, fractions & decimals, geometry, measurement, data & probability, patterns, algebraic equations, and more. Parents/Homeschoolers can register their kids individually or teachers can register their classes. Teachers who register are given a class code to distribute to their students. Once students register with the teacher’s code, the teacher can make a class assignments. The teacher also has the ability to make assignments specific to individual needs. And, as the students work, their data is being tracked and reported! Wow, individualized practice across all of the math strands, all of the work graded and reported – what’s not to love? 🙂

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Fraggle Friends Forever

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Fraggel Rock

FREE for a limited time – Fraggle Friends Forever. Celebrate Fraggle Rock’s 30th Anniversary with this story app from The Jim Henson Company and Cupcake Digital. There are 3 ways to enjoy this educational app – Read & Play, Read to Me, or Just a Book. Kids will find animations on every page and silly special effects throughout the story. At the end, there are fun games and coloring pages. There is also a Grown-Up’s Corner with suggested questions to get your kids thinking and talking about the story. The Common Core State Standards for ELA Literacy that are met by this app are also listed in the Grown-Up’s Corner. If you grew up with Fraggle Rock, you may enjoy this app as much as your children do. 🙂

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fraggle-friends-forever/id641259280?mt=8&uo=4

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Cultiwords

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Cultiwords

FREE for a limited time – Cultiwords, an educational app for systematically building your vocabulary. The app comes with a 40-words set which includes definitions, anecdotes, and review questions. There are 3 additional sets of words available as in-app purchases. The app introduces each new word by posing a multiple-choice question with 3 possible answers. After you answer, it tells you if you were correct, gives the word’s definition, and provides additional clarifying information about that word. Words are then added to your personal dictionary. The review mode quizzes you on words in your dictionary. Review questions test a deeper understanding of the word – synonyms/antonyms, contextual settings, etc. Once you answer 3/3 questions about a word correctly, that word moves to the Acquired List. Well-organized and simple to use – this app would be great for kids in upper elementary and beyond. My only wish is that it had more words!!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cultiwords/id585437267?mt=8&uo=4

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Monster Coloring Book

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Monster Coloring Book

FREE for a limited time – Monster Coloring Book. Kids can paint 175 different monsters with no clean-up necessary! As they paint, they listen to classical music by Rachmaninov, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Kids can paint with their fingers or use the “touch and fill” option. Enhancements include: stickers to accessorize the monsters and patterns to make the monsters unique. Once kids have designed their monster images, they can save them to their gallery. There they can turn their monster into a puzzle for use with Monster Puzzles – available in the App Store for $1.99. Creations can also be shared via email or they can be printed. This educational coloring app is well-designed!

Teachers – use this app to inspire creative writing! Kids could create their own monsters for a variety of language arts activities – a lesson on adjectives followed by descriptive paragraphs, conversation between two monsters, compare & contrast two monsters using Venn diagrams, creative stories, etc.

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monster-coloring-book/id435676573?mt=8&uo=4

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TypeDrawing

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TypeDrawing

FREE for a limited time – a VERY cool educational app that permits you to draw in type!

TypeDrawing is super easy to use and perfect for creating typography art. The app allows you to input whatever text you want. Then you can use those words to draw a  shape in any color you wish. You can also change the font and the size of the text. This educational app would be perfect for writing concrete poetry. Kids could write a tornado poem in the shape of a tornado, a cloud poem in the shape of a cloud, etc.

Creations can be saved to a photo gallery. So from there the sky is the limit – you can email works of art/poetry to parents or grandparents, bring them into another program to create a book, etc. Wonderfully creative!

Highly recommended!

TypeDrawing for iPad V3.0 - Hansol Huh