The Essential Children’s Book about Technology

If you read one children’s book about technology, it should be Dot. The message of Dot. is essential for our children. I saw this children’s book at a book stand a few weeks ago and instantly fell in love with it!

Dot is a young girl with curly-hair who wears a bow, a polka-dot pink dress and carries an iPad. Dot. is a book that is crucial for today’s modern technology-infused family. The message and language speak to the need for balance with technology and all the other key areas of childhood. The author Randi Zuckerberg, whose last name you may recognize from her famous brother, Mark Zuckerberg, talks about the need for childhood essential play such as running outside, building forts and painting pictures. The book begins by showing Dot engaging with technology, such as tablets, mobile phones, and T.V. The author uses relevant language like tweet, text, tap, swipe, and share. The artwork in the book is captivating and shows Dot using technology as kids would engage with it, on the go, on the floor or while lounging around. Once Dot is all worn out from the technology she runs outside to recharge and reboot. The author plays on words and Dot remembers while outside to play tag, tap nature, touch flowers, pretend to surf, and share food. The artwork captures her lively personality and excitement for the world. Dot. has the perfect message for our kids, and it is never too early to start talking about responsibility with technology. The message is accessible enough to read to a three-year-old and still relevant enough for a seven-year-old. Thank you, Randi Zuckerberg, for providing a meaningful, age-appropriate conversation-starter for our kids in the book Dot.

Randi Zuckerburg is the author of Dot., as well as Dot Complicated Untangling our Wired Lives, an adult book about her professional and personal story as well as a guide about how to understand technology and how it influences and informs our lives online and off. You can purchase Dot, the doll, who is the character in the story here. The book is available on Amazon here.

3 Fantastic Language Arts Apps for 4 and 5 year-olds

Do you have a child who is 4 or 5 running around with an iPad or your iPhone? Try these language arts apps.

Language Arts Apps

These apps would be a great way to support their learning at home, or provide additional activities if you are teaching or supporting a Kindergarten program at home. Children at this age are sponges for learning.

Their minds are rapidly developing understanding around letters and sounds, words, visual patterns, and language. Here are some great KinderTown selected apps for 4 or 5 year olds you can download from the KinderTown app to support their learning. Download the KinderTown app and explore these language arts apps, located in the Language category.

Reading Raven

Reading Raven is a self-paced, phonics-based reading app for emergent readers. “Emergent readers” is just teacher-speak for children who are starting down the path of learning to read. Young children need to spend time in front of letters and words. Repeated exposure to letters and words will help children when they start to blend the sounds together to read on their own. Reading Raven has done a wonderful job of creating a variety of phonics activities that support and motivate children in practicing skills that will help them be strong readers. The app will take your child from just discovering letters through when they are blending letters together to make words. The app also seamlessly connects writing each letter to the phonics activities which helps reinforces letter identification and formation in context. Parents and teachers are given in-app tools for customizing their children’s learning experience. Make sure to read the parent and teacher guide in the app and visit the Reading Raven website for videos and more information. Reading Raven is appropriate for children ages 4-6, and is $2.99 at time of publication.

iWriteWords Handwriting Game

iWriteWords makes writing numbers and letters engaging. Kindergarten is sure to be full of lots of letter and number writing practice, so provide your child with a different way to practice. This is a beautiful and entertaining app that children can use long before they can handle a pencil, which makes this a great purchase. It includes lots of settings, three levels that grow with your child and small fun activities to break up the tracing. Your child will enjoy the unique playback feature to watch how they formed their letters and numbers. Gdiplus, the developer, has done a nice job of updating the app over time. Try using a stylus with your child to develop fine motor skills. iWriteWords is available for $2.99 at time of publication as is appropriate for children ages 3-5. This is a must-have app for learning to write numbers and letters!

Puppet Pals HD

Four and Five year olds love to invent stories, and Puppet Pals HD is an app that will bring out the creative story-teller in your child. One set of characters comes free with the app and additional characters can be purchased through in-app purchases. Check out the in-app purchase, Director’s Pass, for the most beloved feature of adding your own characters. We love the open-ended feature of this app for crafting and sharing stories. While making these stories, your child is developing critical vocabulary and language skills. In addition, children can learn to create a story that has a beginning, middle and end. Use a background from the app or again, add your own. Record yourself retelling and acting out (as you move the puppets around) your favorite parts of your fishing trip, family vacation or just a silly moment that you have on your camera roll. Export or play your new video right from the app. Check out the the website for the Parent and Teacher Guide. Puppet Pals HD is available for free with in-app purchases and is appropriate for children ages 4-8. Happy storytelling!

Show What You Know:

Playdough Letters

Children love playdough and there’s sure to be some around your house. In addition, learning letters and their sounds is a big part of Kindergarten. Take some time to practice this multi-sensory letter experience.

Tools:

Playdough

Stick, rod, pencil or building block for poking

Playdough roller or Kitchen Roller

Roll the playdough in long snakes. You child is sure to love this part! Roll lots and lots of snakes. Then have your child form letters using the pre-made snakes. Recall which ones were difficult or tricky from the apps you have been using with your child. Now, for each letter have your child say the letter name while poking holes in the playdough letter using a stick, rod, or building block. Make the holes follow along the same direction as they would write the letter (typically top to bottom). Alternatively, your child could say the letter sound if they know most of their letter names. See how many letters you can create, poke, and say the sound!

KinderTown Favorites

I’ve spent priceless time with my children and our iPad. My children like to climb in bed and enjoy an app together, or we explore an app on the go on the weekends. I have a few favorite apps from the KinderTown store I’d like to share with you.

Favorite Apps

Bugs and Bubbles

My whole family is in love with this app! The app is centered around a theme of realistic bugs and bubbles. Bugs and Bubbles offers educational puzzles and areas for free-play. Kids tap, swipe, pinch, laugh and learn while popping bubbles and playing with bugs. The learning concepts are presented in playful ways and include counting, patterning, mind play, sorting and much more. You will find familiar games repackaged in easy to play activities that increase in difficulty quickly to keep kids engaged. Stay close by your child as the games progress so that your child does not get frustrated. In addition, be on the watch for Morty, the playful bug in command that allows your child to earn extra stickers and rewards. This app is appropriate for children ages 4-6. Bugs and Bubbles offers 18 games for children for $2.99 which makes it a definite must have for parents.

Toca Kitchen

Toca Kitchen is a wonderful app that your child will enjoy using while you are making dinner, driving in the car or while playing “restaurant” at home. Within the app, jazz music and conversations fill the background while you chop, blend, boil, pan sear and heat up foods for four different characters. My son enjoys the reactions each character makes as you feed them food they like and dislike. Make sure to read the parents page to get tips for using Toca Kitchen and questions to ask while playing with your child. Toca Kitchen is appropriate for children ages four to six and is available for $2.99.

Show What You Know: Sticker Stories

My children enjoy stickers, and I have fond memories of my own sticker collection. Try this activity with your child with any kind of stickers you might have around your house.

Materials:

Stickers

Plain Paper

Markers

Tell your child that for this activity they are to choose a few stickers or select the stickers for your child. Have a conversation about the stickers. Provide lots of ideas about what the stickers could be doing or how the stickers could be part of a bigger picture. Have your child place the stickers on the page and create a scene around the sticker. Have your child tell you their sticker story. Add to the story, or invite another chapter of the story with another sticker. Older children may choose to write a sentence about their sticker story. Collect the stories and retell them with your family. Through this process your child is developing their vocabulary, imagination, and artistic skills.

Download the KinderTown App and these must haves for your family and enjoy them with your child. Share your sticker stories with us and let us know what your must haves are by:

Liking the KinderTown Facebook page.

Following @KinderTownApp on Twitter.

Emailing us at SayHello@KinderTown.com

Ladybug Number Count | App Review & Activities

Ladybug Number Count

Ladybug Number Count was developed by parents and their children along with some guidance from early childhood educators. Ladybugs are placed in images of the real world for kids to count. A wonderful meshing of animation with photography.

There are two ways to play the app. Choose to count the ladybugs by tapping one at a time or count by themselves and touch the correct number from a choice of three. The app has a very relaxed and slow moving pace. Kids also hear language like, more and less each time they get an answer wrong.

You won’t find an endless amount of scenes, so be prepared to see the backgrounds repeat frequently. Reminder: repetition and practice are needed to learn numbers and their order.

There are three languages to choose from: English, French and Spanish. Switching between them is an excellent way to introduce children to new languages!

We appreciate that for $.99 you get an outstanding counting app with no in-app purchases.

Activity 1: What Did I Do?

What You’ll Need:
• Pennies (or a collection of small objects)

Hold up pennies in your hand and ask, “How many are there?” Then, “Close your eyes so I can make a change. Did I add or take away some pennies?” Repeat using the same dialog.

The first time you may be amazed at how much effort it is for your child to figure this out. Two ways you can help:

1) Give your child time to think
2) Have your child re-enact what you did, comparing and counting.

Let’s say you started with 3 and while your child closes his eyes you add 1 to make 4.

“How many did I have in my hand before? Take 3 clips and put them in your hand and hold your next to mine. Do you think I added clips or took away clips?”

This is a great game to play while waiting for food in a restaurant. All you need to do is pull out some pennies and you will liven up a boring time. This can also make a road trip more fun for everyone, assuming you are not the driver.

Activity 2: Fantasy Stories

We spend a lot of time in the car as a family and I wanted to share another “car” favorite. There is great power of number stories, making them fantastical adds more fun to the thinking. Try one (or a few) of these fantasy number stories about the zoo:

• Your Uncle Steve went to the zoo and saw 6 elephants and 3 monkeys. How many animals did he see?

• Someone accidentally left the monkey cage open and one of them escaped. How many were still in the cage?

• Your uncle went after the runaway monkey and he ran directly into a clown selling peanuts. Monkeys love peanuts you know. 5 bags of peanuts fell on the ground. When the monkey realized what had happened it came running to get the peanuts. Before anyone could stop the monkey she grabbed 2 bags and ran off again. How many bags were left on the ground?

If you are a passenger, help you child draw each wacky problem to make them more visual.

Meet the Insects: Village Edition | App Review & Activity

Meet the Insects: Village Edition

Meet the Insects: Village Edition is best described as a multimedia encyclopedia. Unlike the encyclopedias of my youth, this one gives kids ways to actively engage in the learning and dig deep into the insects and ideas they are interested in.

There are 5 areas in the app that provided varied learning experiences:

• Insect Story
• See Insects
• Multimedia
• Observational Journal
• Quiz

We also really enjoy the 6 high-quality short videos:

• What are insects
• Life Cycles of Insects
• Dazzling Colors
• Diverse Patterns
• Why Do Cicadas Cry
• What Happens at Night

The app has over 30 insects to explore! Kids investigate by interacting with fact pages, watching videos, perusing photos, taking quizzes, going on insect hunts and a variety of other in-app features.

You’ll find TONS of text in the app, but with a simple tap, a narrator reads aloud the rich information. Meet the Insects gives kids a wealth of information and actually supports them to consume it. We love apps that understand that kids are smart and don’t need content “dumbed down.”

Make sure to spend some time with the observational journal. It is perfect for getting kids outside and looking for each insect in real life. Any app that has kids apply and expand on the digital experience really makes us smile. We don’t see enough apps that take this small extra step to get kids thinking beyond consuming content on the screen alone.

There is also a forest edition if you want to learn about insects that exist outside of the village and into the forest.

Activity: What Do Insects Like to Eat?

Items You’ll Need:

• Small plates or shallow bowls
• Something sweet: syrup, soda, fruit snacks (candy)
• Something sour/bitter: lemon, pickle juice, coffee
• Something wet: ketchup, ice cube, lemonade
• Something dry: crackers, rice, chocolate

In your backyard or on a patio, place out four plates. Make sure you place the plates away from your home, this activity is all about attracting bugs!

Put one item from each category on the plates. Now, wait and watch. Set a timer to go off each hour. Then go and inspect the plates. Some questions to ponder:

• Which plates attract more insects?
• Do any foods trap the insects?
• Do the insects move any of the foods?

Continue the experiment for as long as you want. It is fun to leave the plates out overnight and to run out in the morning and see what happened.

The Best Handwriting Apps | App Reviews & Activities

iTrace

iTrace supports and rewards kids with the goal of learning letter formation. Over 30 levels of difficultly, extensive feedback, plus both structured and self-driven play is their equation for success. The app is designed so kids feel control, challenge and enjoyment while playing. Parents and teachers are treated to tons of customization and a simple design which makes it quick and easy to set up! Both adults and kids get instant feedback while playing in the settings. One of the best handwriting apps featured in KinderTown!

iWriteWords

iWriteWords makes writing numbers and letters fun! A beautiful and entertaining app that children can use long before they can handle a pencil makes this a great purchase. Lots of settings, 3 levels that grow with your child and small fun activities break up the tracing. Your child will enjoy the unique playback feature to watch how they made their letters and numbers. Gdiplus, the developer, has done a good job of updating and integrating user suggestions. This is a must-have app for learning to write numbers and letters!

Write My Name

Write My Name blends a variety of learning experiences together in one well-designed app. Children will be practicing writing while learning letter names, sight words and increasing their vocabulary. Start by tracing and writing your name. Move on to working on uppercase and lowercase letters where children hear the letter name and are guided through how to form each letter. Finally practice writing over 100 commonly used words and watch a quick animation that models the words meaning. Two tracing modes allow children to practice with the app making the lines or in fingerpaint mode to see their own work. Parents, go on the app first to set up your children’s names and read through the information pages.

LetterSchool

LetterSchool is another best app to add to your child’s collection of letter and number writing experiences. LetterSchool clearly introduces each letter, sound and numbers 1-9 with an additional 3 levels of interaction that supports your child from tracing over a line to forming the letter all on their own. A variety of animations keep the content fresh. The positive, motivational feedback encourages your child and will keep them wanting to use this app! Check out the lite version to try out some of the content for free.

Handwriting practice can get so repetitive. Tracing lines and letters can get boring for both parents and kids. Handwriting it much more than learning about forming shapes and lines. It is also building up the fine motor muscles of the arms and hands. Instead of focusing on the output of writing, you are getting two activities focused on building those key fine motor muscles.

Activity 1: Marshmallow Engineer

What You’ll Need:
• Mini Marshmallows
• Toothpicks

Leave out a bag of marshmallows and the toothpicks for your child. What will emerge are the most creative structures and buildings he or she can imagine! Using toothpicks for the structure and the marshmallows for the joints you can build just about anything. The smaller pincher grip the child needs to form letters is the same grip they will use with is activity. They will focus as they place the marshmallow onto the end of the small pointy toothpick. It is great for muscle building and coordination. Parents, you’ll want to get in on this activity. It is both tasty and a fun family challenge.

Activity 2: Feed Me!

What You’ll Need:

• Tennis ball
• Spoon
• Small objects like cereal that is easy to scoop

Take your tennis ball and cut a slit about 1/3 of the way across the middle. You are forming a large mouth for your child to feed, so create the slit at your child’s ability level. Draw some eyes on your tennis ball and give it a name. Prepare a bowl with a cereal, Rice Krispies works well. Have you child take a scoop of the cereal using the spoon. Squeeze the tennis ball so the mouth opens nice and wide. Now feed your friend all those yummy treats. As your child squeeze the tennis ball they are building lots of arm and hand muscles. The attention to detail necessary for the other hand to carefully take a scoop of cereal and make it to the mouth is also muscle and brain building.

Geography Drive USA | App Review & Activity

In Geography Drive USA your children will test their geography knowledge of all fifty states, with a few history questions thrown in. The app increases knowledge of rivers, oceans, time zones, major cities, landmarks, major geographic regions and more.

Kids travel the highways while answering questions to unlock airports and gas stations which are essential to staying in the game. Bonus games allow them to visit the state fair to take the capital and state shape challenge and earn trophies and headlines. The app thoughtfully keeps track of 3 players/teams. This helps to avoid any “it’s my turn” demands between siblings (and parents!).

The game-play format makes learning easy and fun. I wish I had technology like this when I was in grade school. I have bad memories drilling state capitals.

Activity: Photographic Treasure Hunt

We did this activity with our little ones over Thanksgiving. We had the two 7 and 8-year-olds prepare maps of the area around our home for their younger siblings. The group of kids then used either an iPhone or iPad to photograph details they observed. They then marked their individual maps with their observations. Older cousins helped the younger ones.

I was surprised at how nurturing and supportive these same children were who had been fighting just moments before. Activity time was about 20 minutes. We then met back together to at the red ‘X” to compare findings.

Knock Knock Family | App Review & Activities

Knock Knock Family So, your toddler is getting past the beloved traditional peekaboo stage. Growing up too fast? You both enjoyed the activity? Knock Knock Family by Curio Makers takes the traditional peekaboo game to another level.

The game can be customized with your child’s family and friends as the visitor. Voices can be recorded on the device. I recorded my voice wishing one of ours a “Happy Birthday” and bringing a flower (each visitor is paired with an object for the embedded shape matching puzzle). Praise happens frequently in the app and gets repetitive, but the gameplay is engaging.

The FREE app includes six sample family members. Interesting add ons can be purchased. If you add on, you need to hit “restore prior purchase” top Right. We really love that parents and kids can customize the app with their own pictures, text, speech and choosing a special gift for each guest to bring.

Activity 1: Hide and Seek with Balloons on a Rainy Day

What You’ll Need:

• 10 balloons blown up
• Permanent magic marker

1. Blow up 10 balloons and number them 1 to 10 with a permanent marker. For older children, you could use numbers counting by 2’s, 5’s perhaps 100, 200, alphabet, ABC order.

2. Hide the balloons around the house. If you play this with more than one of your children have one child do this part. Have your kids work as a team to find the balloons in order. If they find the 8, they can’t get it out of its spot until they have found 1-7.

Our youngest son loved playing this game with his big brothers. After finding all of the balloons, he enjoyed counting all 10 and identifying the numbers. It was wonderful watching the kids work together to accomplish a group goal. Hiding the balloons upstairs and downstairs worked out well because it got my active boys moving around indoors on a rainy day.

Activity 2: Making Faces

Get out those old magazines you have around the house. Cut out the eyes, noses, and mouths of the people, animals, and drawings from the magazine. Shoot to have 3 to 5 different choices for each body part.

Put the cut-outs out for your child to choose from. Using a baking sheet or colored piece of paper, watch your child make and match the body parts together to make silly faces.

Farm 123 App Review

It is a week of giving for us at KinderTown! In partnership with StoryToys, the developers of Farm 123, we are giving away a $25 iTunes gift card and 5 codes for Farm 123.

Here’s How to Win

Our contest is via Rafflecopter, which makes it much easier for us to notify you of winning. Winners will receive an email the Monday after the contest ends. Double check to be sure you don’t have KinderTown emails ending up in your spam folder!

Log into the Rafflecopter to like, rate, tweet and share! We will randomly select winners via the Rafflecopter entries. The contest will end this Sunday, May 19th at midnight EDT.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Take 2 minutes to watch our video review of Farm 123

Farm 123 ~ StoryToys Jr
Subject: Math
Category: Number Sense
Concept: Counting/Reasoning, Number Recognition
Age: 3 to 5
Price: $2.99 (There is a FREE, try before you buy, version too)
Device: Universal

Farm 123 StoryToys Jr is a delightful app for the youngest of app users. This interactive ebook makes counting come to life with colorful animals that kids need to count, tap, move and interact with while hearing and seeing numbers. The app is playful with plenty of interactive hotspots, silly kid-friendly language, and counting/number games. A new favorite app at KinderTown, having Farm 123 on your iPad or iPhone is money well spent!

Kid in Story Book Maker | App Review & Activities

Every so often we come across a story creation app that we just have to share. Kid in Story Book Maker is one of our current favorites. While story making takes some extra effort from an adult, you’ll find features that help make the process move a bit quicker.

Templates: You’ll find a variety of templates already created in the app, with more coming in future updates. Titles like “The Playground” and “Let’s Get a Haircut” show how you can create a simple early reader book or familiarize your child with a new experience. The great thing about the templates is you can edit pictures, text, and delete or add pages. It is nice not to have to create every story from scratch.

Picture Editing: Each story is built around pictures. You can use the pictures from stories in the community library or create your own from scratch. Instead of having to edit your pictures outside of the app to work with Kid in Story Book Maker, you can do the editing right in the app with the easy to use, move and scale tool. Our only suggestion is to be careful with your changes as there aren’t undo buttons in all areas of the app yet!

Alpha Tool*: Pictures alone don’t really put kids in the middle of the story. Being able to “add kid” does! In Kid in Story Book Maker you can choose to “add kid” into any page in any story. The trouble with most apps is that you have to find a close up of your child or fit their face into a circle cut out of the image, but not with Kid in Story Book Maker. They included an alpha tool that lets you choose any picture and remove the background from the image.

*As with any alpha tool, it is best to choose a picture with contrasting colors between your child and the background for the clearest results.

Text and Speech: Each page allows you to easily type in text and add speech. Kids can tap to hear the speech read more than once per page.

Sharing: You can read all your stories right in Kid In Story. If you don’t want to keep your story creations to yourself, LocoMotive Labs have solved this issue as well. Each story can be emailed, added to dropbox and then viewed in the free Kid in Story Book Maker app. It would be just as easy to read the book in iBooks or another tool already on our devices, but quality books don’t easily transfer to those apps. This app allows you to have a much more engaging and kid-friendly reading experience.

Overall we see a lot of value in Kid in Story Book Maker. If you have ever purchased a set of early reading books you realize how expensive it can be, and how quickly they are consumed. We highly recommend this app for parents who want to create a personal, short story library using the words their kids favorite words and subjects. What a great way to be reading at home!

Activity 1: Paint Swatch Fun!

Identifying syllable patterns in words are important for helping your child to learn to visual decode full words.

Stop off at your local home goods store and pick up some paint swatches. Try and grab the swatches that have a square cut already on the swatch. If you can find any, take a razor and cut a window in the paint swatch.

When working on your spelling lists or reading a book drag the paint swatch along the text, word by word. You’re using the paint swatch to help your child isolate individual words and the syllables in longer words. This also works great on the iPad as you can touch the screen using a paint swatch without the screen reacting!

Extend the specific syllable pattern learning by having your child rewrite the spelling words using a marker or other bright color on the specific syllable pattern to call attention to the pattern in each word.

For kids not yet decoding multi-syllable words, use the paint swatch to move from word to word while reading a books. Young kids can also lay the swatch to reveal a sight word or letter they know well.

Activity 2: Printable Books

As we mentioned earlier, keeping the just-right early readers that your child needs can get expensive! Here are a few of our favorite websites for free early readers that you can easily print, fold, color and add to your child’s home library.

• Nellie Edge Read and Sing Little Book Masters.
• Make your own mini-books with DLTK’s educational printables for kids.
• Reading A-Z has a few of their leveled reader master books free for printing.

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