May 2015
Recommended Apps for use at School and at Home
Literacy:
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May 2015
BookCreator – one of the most versatile apps available for your class to
make fiction/non-fiction books using text/sound/video. Links well with iMovie.
ArtofGlow – highly visual app for early/emergent writing.
First Letters – Match the letters and listen to the song. Teaches the
youngest children phonics.
ABC Alphabet Phonics – A simple game where children locate the correct
letter.
Story Ideas – Can you guess what this one does? A slick new app.
Comic Touch – Make your photos go all cartoony warping images and
adding speech bubbles.
Toontastic - A great little app that allows children to create characters,
settings and their own cartoons.
Chicktionary - As the blurb says ‘Unscramble a roost of letters and create
as many words as possible’.
Puppetpals HD - Create your own puppet shows with animation and audio
in real time.
Hangman - An oldie, but a goodie!
Word Search Kids – Again, no prizes for originality here, but still lots of fun.
StoryKit - Create your own electronic storybook.
Adventure Books – Trying to encourage your boys to read? Who could
resist an exciting adventure?
Storyrobe - Create and share digital stories
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May 2015
Verses – Poetry, Poems and Poets – Fridge magnets with a 21st century
twist!
Sparklefish - Another iPad version of an old favourite, complete a story in
turns then see what you get.
Sock Puppets – Create and share your own lip synced videos
Alphabet Tracing – A fun series of animations to help children learn to form
letters
Pocketphonics - A highly rated phonics app that covers letter sounds,
letter writing and first words. Great to use in EYFS and beyond.
Bluster
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A vocabulary building game from McGraw-Hill
Learn to Spell – Reception – A nice looking app that does exactly what it
says on the tin
Sentence Builder – Designed to help young children build grammatically
correct sentences
FUNIMAL PHONICS iPhone/iPad – £0.69. Children and parents are wellused to phonics alphabet-learning now, and this stylish flash-cards app
gives the discipline a friendly animal face. It’s also notable for its inclusion of
both US and UK English accents when speaking sounds.
MY A-Z iPhone/iPad – £1.49. There are lots of alphabetical flash-card apps
for iPhone, but this one stands out for its personalisation. Children can add
their own photos and sounds for letters – a picture of their dog and its bark
for “D”, and so on.
THE SINGING ALPHABET iPhone/iPad – £0.69. A stylish app that does
what it says on the tin: letters that sing. Specifically, they sing their own
phonetic sounds, and can be combined to make harmonies and tunes.
Given five minutes, your child will be singing along too.
Garage band: Music and literacy resource. Children can record/sample
and sequence. Creative tool that can be podcast or linked directly to your
website.
COLLINS BIG CAT BOOKS (Free) A range of animated and interactive
storybooks. Transfer reading to writing using Story Creator: make your own
book using pictures, characters and key vocabulary from the story,
transforming readers into writers.
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May 2015
Maths:
Sushi Monster (iOS - Free) Scholastic's app offers children multiplication and
addition problems. They'll have to reach a target number by picking the
correct factors and addends listed on different pieces of sushi.
Math Flash Cards (iOS - Free) A traditional skill-and-drill app (yes, the
asterisk is part of the title), Math Flash Cards. Helps children practice their
times tables by customizing the number and difficulty level of each question.
This app has a simple interface that makes it easy for kids to play.
Math Monsters - Bingo (iOS - Free) Students can practice all operations
using this bingo app. They'll solve each problem and then find the answer on
the bingo board. Players need to be strategic if they want to win the game.
Math Vs Zombies (iOS - $4.99, Android - Free) This silly app asks children to
add, subtract, multiply or divide single- and two-digit numbers. Students need
to answer each question correctly in order to zap the zombies back into
humans.
FARM 123 – STORYTOYS JR iPhone/iPad – £1.49. Farm 123 aims to be a
digital version of pop-up books, based on a character called Farmer Jo and
his animals. It’s aimed at pre-school-age children, teaching them to count
from one to 10 with cows, pigs and eggs.
LITTLE DIGITS iPad – £1.49. This marvellous numbers app gets your child to
count by placing fingers on the iPad’s touchscreen, with cute cartoon
numbers appearing, depending on how many fingers are pressed. Simple
maths tasks give it an educational angle too.
NUMBERLYS iPhone/iPad – £3.99. Despite the name, this beautiful app is
more about letters than numbers. It’s a mixture of games and storytelling to
explain the origins of the alphabet, with a visual style influenced by films
likeMetropolis and the original King Kong.
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May 2015
TIMES TABLES: SQUEEBLES MULTIPLICATION iPhone/iPad/Android –
£0.69. This UK-developed app is aimed at 5- to 11-year-olds, providing a
series of multiplication questions to earn stars and rescue cutesy characters
from a nefarious Maths Monster. Up to four children can save their progress
on one device.
COUNTING WITH THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR iPhone/iPad –
£1.99. Eric Carle’s famous book about a fruit-munching caterpillar has been
turned into a fun educational game with a mathematical skew. Your child
identifies, counts and adds the foods over five levels, ensuring it appeals to a
range of ages.
Computing:
SCRATCH JNR: (Free)
Scratch is one of the most popular languages used in Islington schools when
children are learning computer programming. ScratchJr took the idea to
tablets this year, from a team including MIT, which was responsible for
Scratch. It’s an app that gets children to create stories by slotting together
blocks of code: fun and creative.
Garage band (Free): Music and literacy resource. Children can
record/sample and sequence. Creative tool that can be podcast or linked
directly to your website.
iMOVIE (Free): Create, edit, and enhance digital videos, turning them into
dazzling movies, complete with special effects, voice-overs, music scores,
transitions, titles, credits, and more.
PUPPET PALS (Free):
Create your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time.
A.L.E.X (Free) A.L.E.X. is a fun puzzle game and a great way to train your
brain. A.L.E.X. helps you think and plan logically as you program your robot
A.L.E.X. with a sequence of commands to get through each level from start to
finish.
DAISY THE DINOSAUR (Free) Learn the basics of computer programming
with Daisy the Dinosaur! This free, fun app has an easy drag and drop
interface that kids of all ages can use to animate Daisy to dance across the
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May 2015
screen. Kids will intuitively grasp the basics of objects, sequencing, loops and
events by solving this app's challenges.
BEE-BOT (Free) This app has been developed based on the well-loved,
award-winning Bee-Bot floor robot. The app makes use of Bee-Bot's keypad
functionality and enables children to improve their skills in directional
language and programming through sequences of forwards, backwards; left
and right 90 degree turns.
KODABLE (Free) Kodable is a free educational iPad game offering a childfriendly introduction to programming concepts and problem solving.
HOPSCOTCH (Free) Hopscotch is programming designed for everyone! In a
few minutes, you'll be making characters move, dance, draw, and interact.
Interactive controls, including tapping, tilting, shaking, and even shouting at
your iPad. Use the easy-to-follow videos help you make a range of games.
CARGO-BOT (Free) A puzzle game that challenges your brain and helps you
learn programming concepts. It's a puzzle game where you teach a robot how
to move crates.
PIXEL PRESS FLOORS (Free) Pixel Press Floors allows anyone to be the
creator, publisher and player of their own video game. With the Pixel Press
creator platform, you can literally draw your own video game – no coding
required.
LIGHTBOT (£2.29) Lightbot is a programming puzzle game- a game whose
game mechanics require using programming logic to solve levels. Simply
guiding a robot to light up tiles and solve levels using commands, Lightbot
cultivates a real understanding of procedures, loops, and conditionals for
players.
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