Even though the traditional school year has ended, learning can continue year round. In fact, summer is a great time to practice skills gained from the previous school year, build a life-long love of reading and research and explore areas of personal interest.
BridgingApps has created a list of our favorite must-have educational apps for summer fun and learning. These apps are geared towards learners ages 2-7, have been trialed with children of various abilities and reviewed by professional educators and therapists. All of the apps listed below are educational, engaging and fun. Click the links for the full review information and links to download.
Scholastic Storia FREE
Scholastic Storia is an interactive e-reading app for children. The free app includes 5 e-books and access to a collection of thousands more books for purchase. The Storia e-book library is geared toward children with customizations for younger readers. Books are leveled which makes choosing them easier for the reader and/or facilitator. This app features a dictionary, note-taking and highlighting tools.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=491014756
Learn With Homer FREE
Learn with Homer is a personalized learning app that incorporates drawing, voice recording, stories, songs, and more, along with more traditional phonics exercises. There is also some incorporation of classic literature and folklore. The illustrations are gorgeous and the language is rich and engaging. It is apparent that literacy and education experts developed Learn with Homer because the app is very closely aligned to the Common Core Standards.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=601437586
BrainPOP Jr. Movie of the Week FREE
BrainPop Jr. is an independent learning animated video library hosted by Annie and Moby now available in both the Android and Apple market. Brainpop Jr. videos cover a variety topics and subjects from math to social issues available on an easy to navigate mobile app. Every video is followed with two quiz options of easy or hard, a comic strip, and joke all related to the topic, while keeping score within the app. It is a wonderful tool for young students to independently seek the answers to their burning questions or further expand on difficult to understand concepts. When used in a group it promotes proper social etiquette of taking turns, patience, and improves listening. BrainPOP Jr. is also an effective tool in differentiation to meet the needs of all students.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=536371867
Sushi Monster FREE
Sushi Monster is a clever and challenging addition, subtraction and multiplication practice app that meets 1st – 3rd Grade Common Core Math Standards. Students practice the skills by feeding the monsters numbered plates of sushi, creating a number sentence to reach the monster’s requested number. If the answers are correct, the students earn points, stars and trophies. If the numbers are wrong, the monster throws a temper tantrum. The monsters’ antics are silly and the music is fun so children enjoy playing it.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=512651258
Fiete $.99
Fiete is a wordless interactive storybook. It is visually calming and does not contain any written or spoken words–no reading required! The graphics are very appealing. The app has many short, simple games that are intuitive to young children. There are 16 games including 3 memory games of increasing complexity. One memory game requires the child to pick the two items that go together, rather than the two matching items. Other games include putting apples in a basket, matching cheese to bread to make a sandwich, putting tires on a car and more.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=586669403
Toca Store $2.99
We cannot say enough good things about the Toca Boca series of apps. Toca Store is awesome for turn taking. The child can choose to be the storeowner or the shopper and there is natural turn taking as the play continues. This app is also great for counting, pretend play skills and eliciting language from children who are beginning to use oral language.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=442705759
Sago Mini Doodlecast $2.99
Sago Mini Doodlecast is a super cute and fun digital storytelling app for students to express themselves artistically and verbally. This app is great for preschool, elementary, speech therapy, students with autism spectrum disorder and ELL students. This app is a unique drawing app that records your voice as you draw. Capture every stroke, word and giggle. Play back your drawings and share them with friends and family.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=469487373
LetterSchool $2.99
LetterSchool is a writing app to teach proper handwriting in a fun, non-traditional way. The settings are customizable and the app uses a multiple step learning approach. First, it introduces the letter. Then the student taps on the dots and watches how the letter is written. Lastly, the child practices tracing and writing the letter free form. The graphics are bright and colorful. And, the sounds are not annoying or distracting. The students’ settings and progress can be stored for later play. Children enjoy playing and learning with this app and it is a great supplemental handwriting resource for classrooms, homeschool families and therapists.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=435476174
Love to Count by Pirate Trio $3.99
Love to Count by Pirate Trio is an app that helps students understand why math skills are important. This app teaches from an early age why numbers have meaning and how basic math problems and concepts help us solve basic questions of everyday life. The basic concept of the app blends simple math skills into fun pirate games and is aligned with Common Core Standards for Math K-1st grade.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=456939423
Reading Raven $3.99
Reading Raven is an app that is designed for preschool through 1st graders. A phonics-based app includes game-style interactive reading activities. There are five progressive lessons that are customizable. When the child masters a skill, they receive a sticker. Each lesson is displayed on a map and the student journeys along a path as they play. The app is aligned with the Common Core Standards for Literacy for K-1st grade.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=508474629
Todo Telling Time $4.99
Todo Telling Time is an app that contains six games that that focus on teaching the full range of time concepts. It is a great app for a large range of cognitive levels. Each mini game has multiple levels moving from a prekindergarten level to a forth grade level. With this app, children will learn to tell time to the hour and minute, calendar concepts, digital time, and the components of a daily schedule. Todo Telling Time also addresses secondary factors necessary for mastering time telling. These include practice with ordering numbers around a clock face, counting by 5s, elapsed time, and estimates of time. The games do not have a time limit so a child can work at his or her own pace. This app also uses no-fail or “errorless†learning and will give auditory and visual hints if needed. We have used this app with children between the ages of 6 and 10 years old with diagnoses of autism and learning disorders.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=666462848
Endless Alphabet $6.99
Endless Alphabet is an app designed to teach letter sounds and new vocabulary. Each word features an interactive puzzle game with talking letters and a short animation illustrating the definition. The child drags the correct letter into a word and the letter takes on a personality and makes the sound as the child drags it to it correct place in the word. Before you know it, your child will be using words like gargantuan and cooperate.
Click on the link below for full review:
http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=591626572
To view this list in our App Search Tool click here:Â http://bridgingapps.org/list/?id=47485
Click here for a pdf version of this list BridgingApps-Summer-2014-List-for-Ages2-7 copy