Reading/Writing Apps for Elementary Students
iStory App- iStoryBooks offers up a collection of standard educational book fare in
full page, read-to-me format for preschool and elementary ages.
Duck Duck Moose Reading App-Duck Duck Moose Reading is a colorful, visually
busy (and rather noisy, unless you turn off the background music) early reading app that
focuses on very basic reading skills, such as letter recognition and letter sounds.
Clifford's BIG BirthdayApp-Clifford's BIG Birthday is part of Scholastic's line
of Clifford products and is a fun, educational game that helps kids build literacy skills. Emily
Elizabeth and her friends guide kids as they help set up Clifford's surprise party and play some
party games. Kids play skee ball while making words from different word families (for example, _ay and _eg) or spell words while popping balloons. Happy birthday, Clifford!
Word Bingo App- Word Bingo is a sight-word recognition and spelling game app
for kids in kindergarten through third grade. Kids practice sight words as they play a bingo-style
word game, a spelling practice game, and two other mini-games. Many of the words are chosen
from the Dolch Word List of most commonly used sight words.
Monkey Word School Adventure App-Monkey Word School Adventure is an
early reading app for preschoolers and young elementary school-age kids. Monkey Word
School Adventure is for kids who are ready to start recognizing letters and words. It is welldesigned with young learners in mind, challenging kids ages 4 to 7 by using technology that
quickly adjusts the words to the appropriate level.
DotToDot App-DotToDot numbers & letters is a fun way for kids to practice
memorizing numbers and letters in sequential order and learn their multiplication tables. The
numbers and letters puzzles are tailored to younger kids, while the dot-to-dot puzzles with
multiplication facts are for grade school-aged kids.
SpellingCity App- SpellingCity is a companion app for the website
www.spellingcity.com, where teachers and parents can create customized word lists to help kids
improve spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. The app is designed for kids in grades K-12, but
getting started and navigating the app will be tricky for younger users who are just learning to
read.
Phonics Genius App-Phonics Genius is a flash card style app designed to help
kids learn words by letter sounds. It encourages kids to notice and think about the individual
sounds in spoken words. Phonics Genius has over 6,000 words grouped into 225 categories,
including single letter and letter combination sounds.
Starfall Learn to ReadApp- this is an app version of the stellar learn-to-read
website, Starfall. The app has the same content as the "Learn to Read" section of the
site. There are 15 mini-books, each focusing on a specific vowel, along with videos and
activities to enhance literacy learning.
SUPER WHY ABC Adventures App- Alphabet is very similar to the original
SUPER WHY! app. The main difference here is that the activities center solely on the alphabet:
capital and lowercase letters, letter sounds, and letter writing. Each character leads a cute minigame; kids earn a sticker to play with in the sticker activity when they finish a game. A couple of
new additions are some ABC sing-along videos and a progress tracker for parents to see which
letters their kids worked on.
Little Speller 3 Letter Words App-This app is an easy-to-use set of digitized
flashcards that lets kids practice spelling and recognizing basic words. It's fully customizable
from the level of hints to even recording your own labeling for each word.
Word Wall HD App teaches early reading skills through four colorful, creative
games that are easy enough for very young pre-readers to play, yet increasingly challenging
enough for new readers further along the path to practice their skills in fun, engaging ways. Kids
practice building and recognizing words through the use of word families (building many words
containing the "am," "at," or "ug" combinations, for example) and sight words.
Bob Books #2 - Reading Magic HD App is an interactive reading and spelling
app for very beginning readers. It presents 12 pages of a book, which can be played on four
different levels where kids spell most of the words in each sentence, one at a time. The pictures
on each page starts out as black and white, and slowly fill with color as kids spell the words. The
words, letters, and sentences are all read or sounded out for the child, with repetition and
spelling tasks teaching step by step. The four levels gradually increase in difficulty, from
dragging and dropping letters to match words, to selecting letters on your own to spell the given
words. On each level, tapping words or letters results in their being read or sounded out loud.
Once some of the pages on a level are completed, the level selection screen shows how many
pages out of 12 have been completed for each level.
iDiary for Kids App is a top-notch first experience in journaling for kids ages 5 to
13 to express themselves; make a photo, drawing, and text scrapbook of their day; and create
their first address book.
Strip Designer is an app that allows users to take pictures with their device's
camera, or import them from any other source, and implant them on a template to create their
own comic books. In addition to the dozens of clip art, icons, and flourishes, users' creations are
limited only by their imagination. Users can even export their creations to a universal PDF
format which can be viewed on a computer, printed out, and shared with anyone.
Kids ABC Phonics App helps early readers practice letter recognition by
matching the letter they identify to the proper phonetic sound in a fun bubble-popping game.
Kids learn phonics blending for three-letter words in a puzzle game.
Kids Learn to Read App is the third in a series of pre-reading and reading apps
created by Intellijoy. Cute character Tommy Turtle leads kids into blending letter sounds to form
words. There's also a game that encourages kids to build words, and a game that teaches kids
to recognize a completed word by sounding it out or by sight.
Speech with Milo Sequencing App is a sequencing and storytelling game for
young children. Slide the three picture cards into correct order (first, next, and last), then watch
the story you've sequenced come to life in a brief animated cartoon.
PBS KIDS Video App is an educational app for kids to watch a variety of clips
from more than a dozen PBS Kids shows. The app allows parents to share video clips with
friends through email, Facebook, or Twitter.
Kids can learn many pre-reading skills as Starfall ABCs goes letter by letter, first
showing each in capital and lowercase and sounding each one out, then showing fun pictures
(pepperoni pizza, pink pigs, puppies) while saying or sounding out words displayed below. Many
letters have activities like matching the same letter or sorting capital and lowercase letters into
piles.
Rory's Story Cubes is the app version of an award-winning dice game that
encourages storytelling and creativity. Shake the device to roll nine dice. Each die has a simple
picture on it, such as a lock, turtle, flower, or word bubble. There are a variety of ways to play,
but basically players use the images to create stories. Stories can be created individually or
cooperatively. The app version of the game also includes the ability to take a photo of the dice
or to lock the dice in play.
BrainPOP Featured Movie is produced by a well-respected educational
organization. The content changes daily (though everything is archived, so kids don't feel
pressured to use the app every day). Each day, there is a new animated documentary, and it
could be on just about any topic you can think of. Film topics have included the planet Mars,
dogs, asthma, blogs, and Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. These films and the information within are
geared toward older elementary school kids.
StoryKit is a free app that allows kids to edit and customize some old, classic
picture books, and also create their own books from scratch. They can type in text on each
page, attach photos (as long as there are photos stored on their device), take a photo, or draw
their own illustrations.
Chicktionary is a fun "edutainment" word game with a poultry theme. The goal
of Chicktionary is to create as many words as possible from seven letters displayed on a row of
cartoon hens. There are many levels, and play can be timed or untimed so the game can be
shared between kids. If kids choose to see a definition of their word, they are taken to a web
search that can contain unrelated results.
Bookworm is word puzzle game with varying levels of difficulty. Kids connect
letters to make words, and there are also definitions that build vocabulary. Burning letters spell
disaster, though, and could frustrate kids who feel insecure about their spelling abilities. The
game can be played in timed or untimed modes.
Wurdle isn't designed specifically for kids, but works really well for kids because
three-letter words count. Players can modify the number of tiles and choose from several timedgame options, plus there is the option to play without a timer. Multiplayer mode on the iPad
allows for simultaneous gaming for two players.