KinderTown Blog | Educational App Reviews, Activites, and More!

iTrace | App Review & Activities

We’ve spent the last few weeks raving about this new app. Not only are we excited, but our large parent community is all abuzz about iTrace. They are noticing gains in their child’s ability to form letters on and off the app.

Just as infants and toddlers moved through many large motor developmental milestones. A similar progression occurs for fine motor development. Right through to the finest movements in the hand.

All too often, the fine motor skills get less attention due to the rush to tackle more “seemingly” academic skills. For my kids, there are attention was on running around, much to my distress. We eventually got to mastering the scissors (including the necessary concentration and perseverance that goes along with learning to cut). It just took some activities that were interesting and fun for my pack of boys.

Activity 1: Sewing

What You’ll Need:
• Wire cookie cooling rack
• Assorted colors of yarn, string, or ribbon

Lay out the wire racks and a variety of yarn, string and ribbon. Share that they can do anything they want with the materials. Work alongside them weaving through the racks. When they are interested, show the kids how to go over and above the racks to make interesting patterns and designs.

Activity 2: Tweezer Play

What You’ll Need:

• Drinking straw
• Tape
• Small assorted items around the house to pick up (pom poms, cotton balls, pasta, paper clips)
• Cup or jar

Fold the straw in half and attach tape around the folded section to make a set of child-safe tweezers. You can also find plastic tweezers at the craft stores. Many children are able to safely use adult tweezers at a young age. We just wanted you to have options.

Put out the objects you want your child to pick up out on the floor or table. Change the position your child works in each time. Laying on the belly uses a different set of fine motor muscles than tweezing while standing.

Have your child move the objects from the table to the cup. Add challenge by having your child move the objects from inside one cup to another.

Photography Activities for Kids

Activity 1: Photography Activities for 3-5-year-olds

You may not be be able to talk much about photography skills at this age but you can familiarize them with the camera and try some of these activities that involve a camera.

1. Learn the Colors: Have your child walk around the house or yard and look for objects of different colors and then photograph them.

2. Find and Seek Letters: Have your child find and photograph objects that begin with a specific letter or sound.

3. Phonics and Letter Search: Kids can either find objects that start with letters in their name or they could look for things that look like letters that make their name.

As your child gets older, start introducing three important elements of taking a picture:

Rule of thirds: Visually dividing a picture into 3 equal parts with each being a pleasing picture standing alone.

Negative space: The space around and between the subject should be interesting. The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition.

Pay attention to the sun: Do not take pictures into the sun. Keep the light source to your back.

Activity 2: Half and Half Picture

In this activity half the artwork comes from a photograph and half the artwork is drawn or painted by your child. An ideal activity for encouraging kids to think outside the box. Using part of a photo provides supportive guidelines, but the hand-designed portion allows creativity to take flight.

What You’ll Need:

• Old magazines.
• Scissors.
• Glue.
• Drawing paper.
• Pencil, charcoal or colored pencils.

Step 1: Look through an old magazine for a picture of a person’s face. Make sure it is somewhat symmetrical (a picture with similar halves).

Step 2: Cut the picture out, then cut it in half down the middle of the face. Glue one half of the picture on a piece of drawing paper. Discard the other half.

Step 3: Use a pencil to sketch in the other half of the face. Try to match the facial features. Then color it in with charcoal or colored pencils.

Once you’ve practiced this drawing technique, try sketching some other symmetrical pictures such as a person’s body, a penguin, or a house.

Geoboard Activities

Activity 1: Make a Geoboard

Your children are most likely using them in school. Yet, you might not have a clue what they are! Don’t worry, my first year teaching in the classroom I had to have someone explain what these awesome tools were.

Geoboards are a tool to help young children understand geometry as they develop spatial sense and mathematical thinking. There are endless possibilities for exploring and experiencing geometric concepts on the geoboard.

Have we sold you on how awesome Geoboards are yet? If you don’t have one, you can make your own!

What You’ll Need:

• Square board (without rough edges would be best)
• Rubber bands or ponytail bands
• Push pins or small nails

Press in the pins equally placed on the board. See the picture above for more details. We made this one to show you we could do it. Don’t want to make one? That’s okay. You can buy one on Amazon.

Activity 2: Geoboard Pictures

What You’ll Need:
• Geoboard
• Rubberbands

Have your child create a picture on the geoboard using rubber bands. Get started by providing open-ended or explicit suggestions. Your choice, but it is remarkable the difference in what kids create based on the questions you ask.

Explicit Questions
• Make an airplane
• Make a frog
• Make a house

Open-Ended Questions:
• Make something that flies
• Make something that jumps
• Make a place where someone could live

Activity 3: Geoboard Constellation Glossary

Do you have a child interested in space or the night sky? Use your geoboard for creative astronomy fun.

Go to the night sky activity in the Stella and Sam app (from “Backyard at Twilight”), or do a google search for some constellations. Copy down the simple outline of the constellation on paper. An older child can copy the drawing to dot paper. Now you can duplicate the drawing onto your geoboard. With your device’s camera, you can have your child take pictures of their constellation and create a picture glossary.

Beck and Bo | App Review & Activities

Beck and Bo is designed to inspire your child to build beautiful animated pictures while they play, discover and get absorbed in the joy of creating. Just when your kids think they have explored every aspect of each of the twelve thematic areas, another surprise appears.

Start the app by choosing from one of twelve wiggling stickers. You might want to go on a jungle adventure, jump on your scooter and tour the city or go grocery shopping, filling your cart with healthy foods. Each area you enter is filled with engaging objects and vocabulary which lead kids to get absorbed in each creative adventure. After finishing each theme, kids will find that each object they placed in the scene is part of their very own lightly-interactive vocabulary scrapbook.

Beck and Bo provide a type of creative play that is ideal for problem solving with your child. Each scene offers an opportunity for parents to bring real-life scenarios into the story line. Together, with the help of Beck and Bo, talk through problems and brainstorm solutions.

Creative play is more than just playing house or having a tea party. When you encourage your children to engage in playtime, you’re helping your child build essential learning skills. Some of these learning skills include (social interaction, decision making, leadership, imagination, independence, confidence, resilience, creativity). Children are curious and will initiate play no matter what the situation, but quality playtime includes a healthy mixture of structured activities, independent play, creative play and age-appropriate interaction.

Activity 1: Storytelling Cubes

You can spend $20 on a pack of story cubes or start making your own!

What You’ll Need:

• Plain small cube blocks or small flat stones.
• Marker.

On each side of the cube or stones draw stick characters (don’t forget to make your family members), settings, objects and so on. If you are drawing challenged (like some of our KinderTown team) print out some images from the computer and tape them on the cube or rocks.

Take turns rolling and creating your story. If you are using the stones, drop a couple out of your hand and tell a story using all the drawings you see on the stones.

Activity 2: Box Fort & Theater

Our family has a preference for transforming a box fort into a theater stage. These pictures are from our Christmas morning. Amazing how moving boxes and packing tape were the biggest hit.

I used a whiteboard to first write down characters, setting, plot, problem and solution generated by the “cast” of kids. Trying to keep small children, fathers and grandfathers focused on previous decisions proved difficult. Just warning you incase you have an extremely creative and energetic family.

Need some more inspiration? Here is a unique fort idea, featured on DIY.org this week, using leftover newspapers.

Christmas Apps and Activities for Kids

The Christmas season is in full force! This is a magical time filled with stories, songs and traditions that will stay with your child for a lifetime. To save you some time and energy, we have already played many of the holiday apps and are prepared to recommend our favorite games, ebooks and educational apps.

The holidays also mean kids are home for school and always ready for a holiday-themed activity or two, so we have a few recommendations there as well! Each activity is not only fun, but has lots of little moments for learning.

Holiday Games for Kids

Peekaboo Presents

Peekaboo Presents is joyful app for playing holiday peekaboo. You’ll find a bouncing present waiting to be tapped. Kids enjoy the surprise of finding a new toy or holiday character waiting for them inside. Ideal for the youngest kids in your home as there is nothing motivating besides the highly repetitive surprises that await you.

Activity 1: Make a Pattern

Patterns are everywhere. The stripes in candy canes, the colored lights on the Christmas tree and in the words of our favorite holiday songs. Here are some ways you can add more patterning activities into your holiday fun.

Make patterns a part of your santa hat craft. Add a band or two at the bottom of the hat and have your child create a pattern using stickers or with thumbprints on one of the bands. On the second band, have your child show the same pattern in another way or let a sibling create a version of the pattern.

Try an ornament pattern. Cut out a simple circle to use as an ornament. Draw lines across the circle so your child sees clearly defined rows. On each line of the ornament your child creates a pattern. For young kids, that might be an “AB AB” pattern of stickers across each line. Older kids might create growing patterns starting with AB at the top of the circle and adding a B to each pattern as they move down the ornament.

Holiday Educational Apps for Kids

FirstWords Christmas

FirstWords Christmas will support your beginning reader in building winter holiday words, sound by sound. For children already blending sounds, First Words Christmas becomes an app for practicing spelling. Parents can set up the appropriate environment for their child by adjusting the variety of settings. Thematic words paired with colorful pictures for young children and options for parent customization are what make this app a success.

Starfall Snowman

Starfall Snowman practices counting from 1 to 10 with three varied activities. Listen to a snowman story and follow the directions to dress a snowman. Practice counting while singing along with 10 little snowmen. Practice matching numbers to quantities and colors to color words with the memory match games. We like how this app can be played independently or be a lot of fun to use with a friend.

Starfall Gingerbread

Starfall Gingerbread is a creative way to learn about shapes and patterns. Children learn shapes as they are prompted to decorate a boy or girl gingerbread cookie with different shapes and colors, all done in a story format. Your child saves each gingerbread cookie creation on a baking sheet and then chooses a favorite cookie to run through a maze, jumping along on the same shape or on repeating shape patterns. Challenge is added as the maze changes each time you play.

Activity 2: Gingerbread Glyph

What You’ll Need:

• Gingerbread outline
• Glyph directions
• Coloring materials

A glyph is a fantastic activity for your child to show how well they follow directions while having a great time customizing their own Gingerbread boy.

The glyph directions guide kids step by step on ways to decorate their Gingerbread. You have to listen carefully. You use specific colors and shapes based on how you answer given questions. For example, if your child likes milk with her cookies she’ll draw a black nose, but your child likes hot cocoa he will draw a red nose.

Glyphs are fun for home, especially when kids get inspired to make their own glyph directions for the whole family to follow. In the classroom, glyphs are great activities that lead to discussions about graphing, more and less and are generally an ideal activity for reinforcing listening to directions.

Activity 3: Don’t Be a Grinch

What You’ll Need:

• Black and White Grinch picture
• Various art supplies you have in your home

Challenge your child to disguise the Grinch character! Think through together what other job the Grinch could have besides stealing Christmas. Using a black and white master copy of the Grinch, have your child decorate the paper with the new role the Grinch will play. Now you are ready to retell the story. Our young ones loved giving the Grinch the role of firefighter or police officer. (A much better life choice, don’t you think?)

Want a simpler activity? Here are few everyday objects you have around the home that work well for “coloring” in the Grinch without using crayons or markers:

• Tissue paper
• Rice (add some food coloring to liven up the rice from white)
• Ripped up construction paper or wrapping paper
• Fingerprint painting

Rounds: Franklin Frog | App Review & Activities

Nosy Crow is introducing a new innovative series of eBooks based on non-fiction characters whose real life stories start where they end. Rounds: Franklin Frog is their first.

Your child is lead through the life cycle of Franklin. The story magically allows you to get involved with the characters. Your child will read and play while learning “frog” facts” from Frankly about his life-cycle journey.

Visit the parent page for options. We like that the hot spots are blue dots which keeps your child from pounding all over the screen. The technology is amazing and the story is beautiful with simple narration.

Rounds: Franklin Frog is our favorite eBook thus far! Thank you Nosy Crow; we’re looking forward to your next release.

Activity 1: Find it Game

How many dogs on leashes did you see today? We don’t walk around keeping track of this, however, if you do a FIND IT GAME walk you will find yourself paying attention to these things. Take a walk, scan and scout. Be on the lookout for dogs on leashes. This intense focus places a value on visual observation.

Anything can serve as your search objective. What you look for will depend on where you look. For example: in the city, you would not be looking for cows but perhaps someone carrying a briefcase. In Spring you might search a pond for signs of life, like tadpoles. Remember, we recommend having your child keep a Science Journal to document what he sees and how he observes changes.

You and your child can both be active participants. Warning! It is really difficult to make sure you let your child make the discovery. I know this from experience. I have had to bite my tongue often over the years.

Activity 2: Frog Development Wheel

Things You’ll Need:

• 2 Paper Plates (cheaper ones work best)
• Crayons
• Scissors
• Pencil
• A gold brad fastener

Color the three to six stages of the frog life cycle on one plate. If drawing and coloring is not your strength, here are some printables your child can color and cut out. Cut the second plate with a slice cut out and then attach them with the brad. Your story wheel is complete and ready to use as a story prop.

Monkey Word School Adventure | App Review & Activities

Monkey Word School Adventure uses mmini-gamesto help lay the foundation for a successful reading experience. Each game adjusts to your child’s ability level. Many of the games also allow kids to self-correct to solve the given problems. Beyond the educational design, the games are really fun which means kids come back to the app again and again.

With Monkey Word School Adventure you are able to customize the play for up to three children. The language learning ranges from letter recognition and writing to spelling and phonics introducing word components such as consonant blends, digraphs, and irregular vowels. Kids even get to collect flora and fauna to play with in their custom terrarium.

We also love the amount of control parents are given to make sure their kids are successful! Use the “Knack” mode to allow the app to auto adjust, based on your child’s answers. The level your child is currently on is noted in the settings page. Not only are you able to easily find your child’s level, but they provide information about what is happenning in the level your child is on.

Activity 1: Hide and Seek

What You’ll Need:

• Index cards
• A black marker

1. Begin with four cards. Write one letter on each card. For young children start with familiar consonants, like the ones in their name. Review the letters and the sounds each letter make together with your child.

2. Have her close her eyes as you hide the cards around the room. Try hiding behind pillows or under a lamp with a small corner visible. Have her open her eyes. You might say something like this, “Somewhere in this room is a letter that makes the sound fffffffffffff (/f/). Look and you will find it. If you are having trouble I will give you hints.”

3. You might provide HOT and COLD clues or if the house is being destroyed remind them that drawers and closets do not need to be emptied. Depending on your child, you can move from easy letters like “t” to the more difficult like “q” /kw/ and “x” /ks/. You can also check to see if your child knows both sounds for “c” (/s/ & /k/) and “g” (/g/ & /j/).

Activity 2: Rhyming Riddles

You might begin the fun by saying something like this, “I am thinking of something you wear on you hands in the winter. It rhymes with kitten. What can it be?” or “I am thinking about something you find in a family room. It rhymes with hair. What can it be?”

A few rounds of this game takes no time at all. But, here is what happens in those few minutes. Your child begins looking for something in the room that rhymes with hair. She starts with a table. Table-hair-table-hair. Rhymeless. How about sofa and so on.

It is important for children to rhyme so they can detect relationship between cat, sat, hat (word families). They will be able to read words they have never seen before with this method and sometimes without a moments thought. Rhyming builds a sensitivity to sounds. It takes a sharp ear to tell that tap and lap rhyme while tap and lab to not. This will give them a distinct advantage when reading.

Martha Speaks Word Spinner | App Review & Activities

Martha Speaks Word Spinner

Martha Speaks Word Spinner is a fun, interactive board game that the whole family (up to four players) can enjoy together.

Bonus for parents = no clean up!

The app is hosted by your child’s favorite characters from the PBS television series Martha Speaks. Start by choosing your pup piece, then spin the wheel to see which of the 6 mini-games you get to play. The variety of games has everyone listening, sorting, telling stories and playing charades.

Games include:

• Name 5 things: Hear a category and name 5 things that belong in the category. Pop balloons as correct names are given.

• Story sounds: Listening is very important in this game. You get a setting to create your story and then tap buttons on a box to hear 5 sounds. Your job is to create a short story incorporating the setting and each sound. Super fun!

• Who Am I?: Charades! Everyone but the chosen player closes their eyes. The player sees a person in a specific career on the screen. Act out the job so that everyone guesses it correctly.

• Stuff Sort: See a box with a category and tons of pictures on the screen. Sort the pictures that belong in the category into the box.

• Word Connector: This game takes some thought. You see 6 pictures, 3 on each side of the screen. You drag pictures that “match” or have something in common together.

• Bucket Ball: Kids love this one. You are told a category. Each basket floats by on the screen with a picture. Slingshot a ball into the baskets with pictures that belong in the category

Younger children may need some assistance with reading or having you explain word meanings. The vocabulary in the app ranges from simple words like “clothing” to more advanced concepts like “prehistoric animals.” Don’t let this stop you. The learning potential is tremendous and the quality family fun time is priceless.

Activity 1: Words That Go Together

Sometimes good ideas can pop into your head out of nowhere. Learn to go with it! This is a vocabulary building activity I came up with sitting in traffic one afternoon with my oldest son who was four at the time.

I glanced out the window and saw kids at the park playing on a playground. My son and I alternated naming playground words (swing, trashcan, litter, frizbie). Whoever ran out of words first lost the game.

Make sure to include some words unfamiliar to your child too. If you are at the grocery store you might introduce words such as bargain, quality, and so on. Just be careful not to introduce too many new words at a time.

This has become a car game in my family. As my boys got older they would often initiate this game rather than make some bad choices and get into trouble. Sometimes our game would end after only two or three words.

Here are some category suggestions:

• Fairytales
• Terrible smells
• Winter words
• Fall words
• Silly words
• Baseball words
• Angry words
• Plants
• Nursery rhymes

Activity 2: Marble Maze

When I was a kids I loved marble mazes. In my classroom I always had to have blocks and tubes for my kids to create marble obstacle courses.

You can buy your own maze (see below) or set out on gather stuff from your house and get CREATIVE!

What You’ll Need:

• Cardboard box
• Marbles
• Straws
• Glue or tape
• Pencil

Starting with your pencil, draw out the main path for your maze inside the cardboard box. After deciding on the path, add extra little twists and turns for some challenge. Then take your straws and outline the path. The straws act as the walls of the maze. When everything is dry, add your marble and start rolling!

Toca Tailor | App Review & Activities

Toca Tailor

The aim of Toca Tailor is to combine dress-up play with the tools for kids to create their own outfits from shapes, patterns and colors around their world. There are four characters to make clothes for. Choose from a boy, girl, lynx or sloth. Tap, swipe and pinch to customize each character’s clothing and accessories. As with most Toca Boca apps, the characters give feedback to kids through facial expressions and sound effects as design choices are made.

What makes the app really special is that you use your device camera to photograph anything around you to be a potential print for your outfit. One of our girls used her device camera to take pictures of her dog’s black and white fur to make clothes.

The parent section has a must see video for you to watch before playing with your child. We know many parents consider apps disposable toys but this app has a long shelf life and is well worth $1.99.

You can easily stretch Toca Tailor to extend play off the app. Today’s first activity helps you add some math and logic play. The second activity is for helping children read facial expressions.

Activity 1: How Many Outfits?

The objective of this activity is to find as many combinations of outfits possible from cut out clothing.

Steps for getting started:

1. Gather paper, drawing tools and scissors.
2. Cut out a doll pattern (oak tag or cardboard works for your child to reuse again and again). Click here for a pattern we found online.
3. Cut patterns for clothes. We made 2 different colored shirts, pants, and 2 pairs of shoes.

After completing the steps above, crafting your paper clothing patterns, ask your child:
“How many different outfits can you make with 2 pairs of pants, 2 shirts and 2 pairs of shoes?”

Set your child off to figure out a strategy for how to solve the problem. Offer suggestions only when necessary. Part of the learning is struggling through to find the answer. To wrap up the activity, document how the problem was solved. Lots of learning happens when kids write and draw how they solved the problem. Grab your Doodlecast for Kids app and use the recording feature to draw and share how the problem was solved.

This is an activity designed for children ages 5 and up. Depending on your child’s development, you can modify the activity by adding more or less clothing options. You may also find it necessary to leave out the documentation part of the activity, but we hope you find a way to make it work for your child.

Activity 2: Mind Reading

One of the reasons that Toca Boca apps are so successful is that each playful toy involves characters responding to your child’s choices in the app. Continue encouraging the development of empathy and recognizing the feelings of others with a simple game of mind reading.

Explain that the game you are going to play together is like 20 questions. The special rule is that only the person asking questions is allowed to talk. Think of an item for your child to guess. Choose something simple. With young children, share a theme like “foods” or “games” to get them started.

Encourage your child to ask you yes or no questions to guess what item you are thinking of (most young kids will struggle with the questioning, but it’s fun for them to play anyway). Respond by only making facial expressions that express “yes” or “no.” Take inspiration from Toca Boca by sticking out and buzzing your tongue for “no” or panting and nodding your head for “yes.”

Handwriting Without Tears | App Review & Activities

Throughout my years of teaching, lessons on handwriting often were unenjoyable for both my students and myself. I tried to make the explicit directions of how letters are formed not be boring for the kids. There were also a handful of kids in the class who would get frustrated because writing was very new to them and they couldn’t grip the pencil or form the letters like their friends. Consistently, it was the students whose parents provided many opportunities for coloring, drawing, writing and learning letter formation at home, who took to formal handwriting the best.

I was delighted to finally see the Handwriting Without Tears app. Having used the program in my classroom, I know first-hand how supportive this program is. Parents now have a trusted source to get their kids started on letter formation even before their fine motor muscles are strong enough to control a pencil.

In the app, kids learn how to form all the capital letters and numbers. No lower case letters are available for practice (hopefully there will be an update later). Kids start by watching the formation on the screen and then get support and plenty of practice with follow up tracing activities. Parents and teachers can set up the app for four kids. There are also options to customize the sensitivity for tracing and support provided through three levels to make sure kids aren’t getting frustrated (or bored).

Kids earn stars while playing, but this app is not a game. The activities are the same for each letter:

• Watch letter being modeled with chalk on a chalkboard.
• Wipe the letter off with a sponge.
• Dry the letter with a towel.
• Write the letter yourself with the chalk.

Activity 1: Popcorn Writing

What You’ll Need:

• Two bowls of popcorn (One for eating and one for writing)
• Large paper with a letter written boldly
• A bottle of glue

Talk about the letter on the paper. Think about the sound the letter makes, what words start or have that letter, and if there are places around the house or neighborhood where your child has seen the letter.

Get ready for making the letter. Start at the top and put the popcorn in order to correctly form the letter. Depending on your child’s ability with the glue bottle, have them add a dot of glue to the paper and then add a piece of popcorn. If that is too advanced, have them draw a short line of glue and add a few pieces of popcorn to the line.

This activity is working on two important writing skills at once. Kids are learning letter formation but, it’s also fantastic for developing fine motor. Think about how defined your child’s pincher grip needs to be to take one piece of popcorn and carefully place it on the paper. Not an easy task!

Use this activity to help a child who often flips or reverses letters in writing. Prepare the letters J, F and R for your child to outline with popcorn.

Activity 2: 12 Playful Ways to Write in Your Home Without Paper

We can not stress enough that practice is a must and we understand you’ll probably feel some stress as a parent. The trick is to get kids writing in ways they enjoy – my boys particularly liked writing the names of their favorite superheros. You’ll also begin paying attention to how your kids are developing their pencil grip.

Here are 12 playful ways to make writing even more fun in your home:

• Chalkboard & chalk.
• Magnetic board.
• White board.
• Sheet protector placed over a page from your favorite book.
• Windows & window markers.
• Mirror & washable markers.
• Cookie sheet filled with sand.
• Cookie sheet filled with rice.
• Shaving cream & a straw or paint brush for writing.
• Paint in a ziplock bag.
• Large appliance box with markers. Let your child create some graffiti.
• Sidewalk chalk.

Practice is what is important here. Remember to keep playful and fun.

It’s important to change the position of the surface your child is writing on. Use a table, wall, refrigerator door or easel This helps your child build different muscles in their arms and hands.