FREE for a limited time – Bogga Vacation. Kids take a virtual vacation with this educational app – they pack their suitcase, fly away to a tropical island, build sand castles, make their own smoothies, and go treasure hunting! Cute & fun for little ones 🙂
FREE again, Art ABC for the iPhone/iPad. Like all alphabet books, this educational app teaches kids the names & sounds of each letter. What makes it unique is that it also incorporates famous works of art. Each letter of the alphabet is presented on a fine art background. There is also a hidden object (with the featured letter) in the background. Kids explore the page by tapping to reveal each object – each in a different way! The app also contains a list of all the famous art included in the app – titles, artists, nationality, medium used, year, and location of the painting. This app could also be used with older students in art class. Nicely done!!
Rock on… with Toca Band – FREE today!  This educational app for the iPhone/iPad encourages kids to explore music as they mix beats & sounds together to produce a hit song. The 16 characters in this app each have their own sound and rhythm. Kids drag different combinations of performers on stage to create their own musical band. How a character plays depends on where he/she is placed on the stage. Characters can also be chosen to give a solo performance. Even the names of the characters are fun: Bang Bang Chef on the drums, Dancy Nancy on the piano, Shaky McBones on the maracas,etc. Another great app from a developer that makes learning what it should be – fun, creative, and joyful!
Highly recommended!
FREE again for a limited time! Add a personal touch to your emails with Artmail, an app for writing and sending handwritten notes. This app is not billed as an educational app but it could/should be. 🙂 The app features several choices of stationery plus the option of using your camera to create a unique background. The writing is a brush style (similar to a fountain pen) with several color options. But the best part of this app is the scaling feature – which makes this app great for kids. Users can fill up the entire screen and the app automatically shrinks the word/words to fit in a letter format. Subsequent words are shrunk to match the size of the other words. A red cursor can be moved around to change the location of the words. Little hands will be able to write thank you notes to grandparents or to add a note of explanation to a photo. In the classroom, teachers could use it is SO many ways – for good copies of their writing, to communicate with parents, as an exit slip after a lesson, etc. I LOVE that this app preserves the child’s writing!! Very cool app – perhaps an upgrade will include the ability to pull in pictures from the photo library which would make it even better!!
FREE again for a limited time – Guess How Much I Love You – Interactive Episodes. From Australia comes this wonderful educational app based on the book Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and inspired by the animated TV series created by SLR Productions Pty Ltd. The book is beautiful – one of my all time favorites. Originally published in 1994 in the UK, it has sold more than 20 million copies in 37 languages. It is truly a book not to be missed!! That being said, this app conveys the same sweetness that makes the original story so special.
Kids join Little Nutbrown Hare in 2 interactive episodes – Can You Touch the Stars and Snow White Hare. Designed for 3 – 5 year children to explore with their parents, the episodes are integrated with simple games & puzzles. At the end of each episode, Big NutBrown Hare and Little NutBrown Hare express their love for each other. Don’t miss this one – it is SO sweet!
Another educational app, FREE for a limited time – The Mermaid’s Shoes, an interactive picture book for kids. On the last day of her beach holiday, Ida finds a pair of flippers. When she puts them on, she thinks she is a mermaid. Kids accompany Ida through the city as she searches for the sea. Beautifully illustrated with a gentle background music, the story ends with Ida finding the perfect spot for her to be a mermaid! Kids can create their own underwater scenes at the end of the story. Using the camera or photo library, they can even place themselves into the scene and/or turn themselves into mermaids – a fun start for writing story of their own!!
ABC Wildlife for the iPhone/iPad is FREE again today! The educational app is geared towards 3 – 5 year olds to teach them about 80+ animals. The app opens to a grid arranged in ABC order. Kids can tap on a letter to bring up animals that begin with that letter or they can tap on a specific animal. As an animal’s photo appears, a child’s voice says the initial letter then reads the name of the animal (which appears in writing at the bottom of the screen). A little cartoon person drops down on the left hand side of the screen with a link to a video clip about that animal or an interactive scene. The child can scroll to the left for additional pictures & videos about each animal. There is also an exclamation point to tap on each page that gives an interesting fact about the animal pictured.
This app needs an internet connection to work because the 100+ videos are actually links to You Tube videos. They are chosen by Peapod Labs and checked to be interesting and safe for kids. Kids cannot link from this app into other You Tube content. This app is nicely done and the facts make it interesting for adults too!
Highly recommended!
WOW – here are TWO educational apps that you don’t want to miss!!
FREE again – Cookie Next Door-Rainy Days. This educational app was a choice in the “New & Noteworthy” section of the app store in early February. Kids become storytellers in this animated adventure. Their speech, songs, and rhymes bring Cookie and his friends alive. The app includes a Creative Comic Book, a Voice Over Studio, and an Animated Stage Projector. Creative Comic Book utilizes storyboards to guide kids through the storytelling experience. In the Voice Over Studio, kids can change the pitch of the characters’ voices. As kids tell the story their speech, singing, etc. is transformed into the voices of the characters. Once the story is complete, the Animated Stage turns it into a play with dancing props! This app is very creative, very fun and it’s great for developing oral language skills. I am looking forward to more adventures of Cookie and friends!!
Cookie Next Door – Rainy Go Round is here!! This educational app is also FREE for a limited time. The sequel to Rainy Days, Cookie’s first adventure, this app has the same features – the Creative Comic Book, Voice Over Studio, and Animated Sage projector. The tale continues…
 Rainy Days        Rainy ‘Go Round (the sequel)
FREE on July 5 & 6 – The Really Groovy Story of the Tortoise and the Hare, an updated version of the classic fable for 4 – 8 year olds. This fun rendition of the Tortoise and the Hare is set in modern times and told in rhyme. This educational  app has two modes – Read to Me and Read by Myself. The Read to Me mode is professionally narrated. In either mode, kids will enjoy Christina Forshay’s colorful illustrations which fill the pages of this groovy tale. The story also features animations, sound effects, and background music – very nicely put together!
This book would be great to use in a classroom. You could compare and contrast this modern version to the classic tale. The story is also rich with rhyming words. You could use the book full group and identify rhyming twins (look-alike & sound-alike) and rhyming cousins (sound-alike only). Rich in vocabulary, it also makes a great choice for story time! Download it today. 🙂
FREE again – Ed Meets the Dentist, created by Jeffrey D. Holt DDS (a board certified pediatric dentist). This educational app contains a 7+ minute cartoon about a young rabbit’s first trip to the dentist. It explains the procedures and tools that a child might encounter. The app also includes interactive tools for kids to try out on Ed’s teeth. Very nicely done – this app should help your child be less anxious about his/her visit.
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