The Trip Little Critter Reading Adventure
The Trip Little Critter Reading Adventure is an interactive story app that puts your child in the drivers seat. In addition to the traditional eBook, you get to go on a reading adventure told by the little critter characters with the help of your child to choose where to go on the map and solve problems the family runs into. The story also has many hot spots for your child to explore and learning games that are connected to the story. Overall, kids are generally following the guidance of the app but there is plenty of variety in the app to keep kids interested. You will need to be ready at the end of the story as there is a text based advertising for other Little Critter apps with open links.
The Word Monsters: Learn to Read
The Word Monsters: Learn to Read is an excellent decodable book series. Multiple books for Kindergarten and 1st grade present high frequency words, focused phonics practice and interesting stories with hot spot interactivity to support kids learning to read. Help comes when ever you need: by tapping a word, from a resourceful robot pal built into the app or through the free online and printable support materials designed for adults. After working through each decodable book, enter the activities page to check on comprehension and play with words and sounds. The series is built around in-app purchases so you can purchase exactly what you need. Currently there are a handful of books, but more will be added to complete a series of 24 books.
Wander Our World
Wander Our World awakens your child’s interests in learning about our world. Designed to make kids aware of countries around the world through free exploration. Kids tap on larger geographical regions, then countries and important places to see and hear the name, swipe through pictures and listen to iconic music. The app isn’t always easy to tap an navigate, but kids are persistent as the discovery reinforces the engagement. We are also pleased to share that the developer has more plans for adding to and improving Wander our World.
Simple Machines
Simple Machines is a brilliantly designed app that keeps both kids and adults longing to learn more. This is a large app filled with animations, activities, vibrant images and more facts about simple machines than you probably remember learning when you were in school. Activities in the app include puzzles, a mind-bending spelling machine, ideas for simple machines you can make at home and a quiz to see how much you have learned. This app doesn’t have the text read aloud, but our curious kids didn’t seem to mind making all kinds of meaningful connections from the pictures when we weren’t able to read aloud.
The Trip Little Critter GamePak
The Trip Little Critter GamePak provides ten learning games that gets kids reading, puzzling and playing with stickers. There are two play areas to start, the GamePa” and with the Digistix. Digistix are not an external product, but a set of Little Critter sticker images in the app that are interactive as you place them in different parts of the app. Games include basic learning mini-games, but not just the same ones found in most apps. Free play sticker areas are very well designed with a blend of discovery as the stickers you choose come to life in different areas of each scene. Overall a fun app filled with a variety of learning games. Note that when kids complete the “games” series of activities there is an ad with open links to more Silver Dolphin, Little Critter apps.
5 Things Every Parent Should Know About Social Media | Guest Post