Category Archives: language arts apps

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Mad Libs

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Over 120,000,000 Mad Libs have been sold to date. MadLibs.com gets 50,000 visitors per month. And now, Mad Libs is a FREE app for the iPhone/iPad with over 3,000,000 downloads. Mad Libs are stories with words left out. 21 stories are included with this app. A reader selects a story but doesn’t tell what it is about. Writers (the other players) give words to fill in the blanks in the story. The reader calls out the type of word needed for the blank  –  adjective, noun, collective noun, verb, verb ending with ing, etc. Once all the blanks in the story have been filled, the reader reads the story aloud. The result is usually a silly, funny story. Kids love Mad Libs and in order to play, they have to know parts of speech. Mad Libs are a great classroom activity when you have 10 minutes before lunch, at the end of the day, waiting for a guest, etc.

Mad Libs - Penguin Group USA

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Grammaroplois

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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).

Grammaropolis - Grammaropolis LLC

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Wee Sing & Learn ABC

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FREE again today (November 9, 2012), this app for the iPhone/iPad normally sells for $2.99. Wee Sing has been around for over 30 years. When my children were small, we always had a Wee Sing tape in our car. This app teaches toddlers the alphabet in a musically fun way. Every letter has a page with its own song featuring an animal with an instrument (both beginning with that letter). There are also three additional words for each letter which are pronounced and spelled. The real sound of every animal and each instrument are also included in the app. This app is well done with great attention to detail – a must have for every toddler 🙂

Highly recommended!!

Wee Sing & Learn ABC - zuuka incorporated

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ABC Games – Montessori Phonics-enabled Alphabet

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ABC Games – Montessori Phonics-enabled Alphabet for the iPhone/iPad is FREE for a limited time. It is designed to teach 2 – 5 year olds the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. Kids may explore the alphabet in any order that they wish. There are over 100 animations which correspond to the letters of the alphabet. The 3 words for each letter are pronounced and spelled. The illustrations are animated cartoons. Pages for each letter are uncluttered – simply presented but engaging. The app also has a parent section that shows how often your child has visited each letter. Nicely done!

Common Core Standards met:

  • K.RF.1 – Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print. Recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Recommended!

Interactive ABC HD - Pre-reading for Kids - Kids Academy Company

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Buildo Museum Sticker Book

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Download now for Halloween  – Buildo Museum is a spooky sticker book for kids. The goal of the Buildo series is to get  kids to thinking about creative story telling. Included in the app are 3 scenes inspired by ancient museums with 100 + stickers. Kids can scale, rotate and flip stickers to create a scene for their oral stories. This iPhone/iPad app is FREE for a limited time.

Buildo Museum Sticker Book - JAJDO AB
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ABC Alphabet Phonics – Preschool Kids Game Free Lite

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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.

ABC Alphabet Phonics - Preschool Kids Game Free Lite - GrasshopperApps.com

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Little Writer – The Tracing App for Kids

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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!

Little Writer - The Tracing App for Kids - Innovative Mobile Apps

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My First Riddle Book

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Answer: the cheetah 🙂

This 36 page riddle book for the iPhone/iPad is FREE today, Sept. 26. It is colorfully illustrated with child-like drawings. All riddles are kid-appropriate. There are two modes – read to me or read to myself. There is also the option of recording your own voice as you read. I have always liked using riddles with kids. They involve clever word play and make kids think “outside the box” to solve them. Riddles require kids to think about how things are connected or how words can be used in different ways. Kids also have to be familiar with figures of speech to appreciate many riddles. When kids are about eight or nine years old, they begin to understand & appreciate the humor in riddles. And…. they love the corny fun!

Thinking and fun combined – recommended!

My First Riddle Book - Fun Classic Riddles for Kids - Brave Tomatoes

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Marbleminds Phonics

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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.

Marbleminds Phonics - Iskandar, Inc.

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

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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!

ABCmouse.com Ham and Jam - Age of Learning, Inc. Ham with Jam     ABCmouse.com The Hen in the Pen - Age of Learning, Inc. Hen in the Pen     ABCmouse.com Big Pig and Little Pig - Age of Learning, Inc. Big Pig & Little Pig     ABCmouse.com To Run is Fun - Age of Learning, Inc. To Run is Fun