by Helen Wagner | Aug 21, 2017 | App Reviews, Bluebee News, Helen's Corner |
It’s back to school time! We have some new, enjoyable apps on our classroom iPad to share with you!
SPOTLIGHT APP: Lively Letters – Phonemic Awareness & Phonics by Telian-Cas Learning Concepts Inc
Lively Letters is an exciting new app developed to teach letter sounds. This app goes beyond traditional drill and practice, by actually teaching letter recognition using memory skills, hand and mouth cues, and songs associated with each letter.
Letters are taught through the use of colorful alphabet letters which have been individually embedded with memorable characters. There are three activities to choose from Flashing, Tracking, and Matching. In the flashing activity, a thorough explanation of how to produce each letter is provided, along with an associated hand/mouth cue, and a matching song for the letter. Each letter is represented by a character, and the story behind each letter provides visual memory cues to help remember the letter name. There is also a letter tracing task! In the flashing task, up to 10 consonants and vowels may be selected to work with. Students investigate letters to create both real and nonsense words. There is a letter tracing feature here also, along with space to draw a picture of a created word. In the matching task, students tap letters to make matches, while practicing producing the sounds they make.
The app tracks progress and allows for customization in choosing the type of letters to use (character letters vs plain letters), and background theme. A recording feature is provided so that the child can practice saying sounds and words. This app is a stand-alone companion to the Lively Letters program.
What a great little jewel to teach foundational sound-symbol association skills. Plus, you can connect your Bluebee Pal for extra fun during the sing-a-longs and sound production practice!
The Adventures of the Three Little Pigs by Irene Deev
My students love storybooks, and this one is a new favorite. This is the traditional tale of the little piggies’ encounters with the big ‘ole bad wolf, told with a modern twist. The story is interactive and, of course, has a happy ending. There are random interactive questions during the story that my students like to watch for. It is a winner when Bluebee reads to my kids!
Tiggly Chef Addition: Preschool Math Cooking Game by Tiggly
In our classroom, we love Tiggly! Learn early addition facts while you assist the Chef in following directions and counting out ingredients to create clever, outlandish dishes! Features 3 different kitchens with math skills progressing in difficulty. This app is lots of fun for learning beginning addition skills! This app can be used with or without the Tiggly Learning System manipulatives for iPad. My kids get s kick out of it!
Think & Learn Code-a-pillar™ by Fisher-Price
Computers are here to stay, and it is a great idea to start kids out learning the basic concepts of coding. In this app, children use thinking, problem solving, memory and math skills to help Code-a-pillar follow a path to navigate obstacles and complete a maze. The difficulty of play increases as you master each maze. Engaging, child-friendly graphics and great directions during gameplay make this a winner!
by Helen Wagner | Jun 9, 2017 | App Reviews, Helen's Corner |
Yes / No Barn: Answering Yes No Questions by Smarty Ears-Yes/No Barn is a great app to help work on thinking and reasoning skills, and answering yes/no questions across a variety of contexts. Featuring over 300 questions in a colorful, attractive barn scene format, the app focuses on 6 question types: Basic Questions, Look and Answer, Fact-Based Questions, Variable Answers, Comparing Pictures, and Questions About a Scene.
You can track data across multiple users and question types. I love the simple, clean interface and my students love answering the questions when we connect to our Bluebee Pals! I love to set up our Bluebee Pals at my table as the “teacher “ while students sharpen listening and language skills. This app is also fun to use to work on recognizing absurdities, problem-solving, and generates lots of conversational interactions! Bluebee Pals really foster active engagement!
Funny Directions
Many of my students have difficulty with listening, comprehending, and following directions! This is a basic skill needed for academic and life-long success. We use this app in speech therapy to work on these skills, and of course, our Bluebee Pals help us out by giving students the directives to follow!
Funny Directions provides 4 familiar environments/picture scenes, for interactive fun while working on listening and comprehension skills: Beach, Bedroom, Park, and Classroom. There are three difficulty levels on which to build listening skills. Children enjoy investigating colorful objects in each scene and talking about the funny directions they are given!
Animal Math Games for Kids in Pre-K, Kindergarten and 1st Grade Learning Numbers, Counting, Addition and Subtraction Premium by Eggroll Games LLC
Math Games, from Eggroll Games, offers fun math practice with correlation to kindergarten common core objectives ( they also offer similar apps for preschool, first and second-grade math skills- just pick your desired app for your child’s level). Featuring a farm setting, children have fun, colorful practice in building and maintaining math fluency skills. Activities include counting, number recognition, addition and subtraction up to 5, categories, and geometry. Students will count to 100, recognize shapes, compare numbers, and answer “how many”questions. My students and parents really enjoy the variety of math skills targeted. Graphics are colorful and the narration is excellent!
Word Wizard is a phonics-based spelling app that allows the user to build and practice words and hear them pronounced in English. It features a moveable alphabet where the user drags letters to a board to build words.
There are two ways to play:
Moveable Alphabet: This is an area of free play where the user can play with the alphabet letters and spell any desired word to hear it spoken. Tap on a letter to hear it’s sound. Drag letters to the spelling board to make words. Separate the letters in a word to hear the individual sounds in a word, then put them together to hear the whole word. Since this is a phonics based program, when the letters sh, th, ch are put together, the correct pronunciation for the diagraphs is spoken.
Spelling Quizzes: Included in the app are built-in spelling quizzes to practice CVC words, Dolch words, 1000 most frequently used words, numbers, colors, animals, body, clothes, family members, food, sports, nature, and shapes. While in this level, the user can click on an icon to hear the targeted word repeated, and can tap on a question mark icon to receive a spelling hint. Additionally, the user can easily customize his/her own words lists! Practice your own spelling words! The app will track progress by providing the number of words spelled with and without hints.
by Helen Wagner | May 12, 2017 | App Reviews, Helen's Corner |
Let’s Expand Vocabulary: This is a wonderful app to use to target expressive language, vocabulary, categorization skills, thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, word retrieval, and wh questions! There are 4 levels of play-Odd One Out, Matching Pairs, Categorization, and Add Another. All of these games are focused on working on categorization skills.
You can add 2 fun games to the mix and you have a winner! We love to work on vocabulary skills using our Bluebee Pals, to foster engagement and interactive play. Our Bluebee Pal reads the category task aloud, and each student selects the appropriate answer.
Sound Salad: This app is a sound-association game designed to help your child attend to and discriminate various sounds we hear. It supports auditory perception, memory, sequencing, and critical thinking skills. From easy to more advanced listening tasks, this game enables students to listen for critical information.
My students love it when we use it with our Bluebee Pals! Our Bluebee Pal “says” the sound, and the students listen and respond by matching sounds to pictures.
Is That Silly? : This is a great app to use for practicing answering questions, logical thinking, expressive and receptive language, thought organization, listening for information, and recognizing absurdities.
The student is presented with a colorful picture scene and has to state whether the accompanying sentence describing the picture is Silly or Not Silly. Then, the picture is presented again for the student to tell what is or is not silly about the picture.
This is awesome for critical thinking and problem-solving skills, too! Using a Bluebee Pal to read the silly sentence, the student then responds by giving the answer. The interactivity with our Bluebee Pal makes the learning even more fun!
by Helen Wagner | Feb 15, 2017 | Helen's Corner |
Wagner’s App Recommendations/Favorites: February 2017
Helen H. Wagner, M.S., CCC-SLP
In my classroom, we do lots of apps with our Bluebee Friends, to learn communication, language and academic skills. Learning with Bluebees is always entertaining, engaging, and fun!
In February, we celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday and we read lots of his classic stories with our Bluebee classroom friends. We use these books with lots of repetitive text to develop attending, listening comprehension, rhyming, sequencing, wh-questions and more! My students are always thrilled to read along with a Bluebee Pal! Dr. Seuss books are classic reads, great to elicit lots of conversation, emotions and opinions! Some of my students’ favorite Dr. Seuss storybook apps, from Oceanhouse Media, are:
Another app we have been having fun learning with is the Reading Train Learn to Read Books, Songs & Games from The Learning Station, LLC. This is a great app for beginning readers. Featuring three levels of play, there are storybooks and related games which help build phonics, vocabulary and reading skills.
I love that Bluebee Pals integrate very nicely with the Reading Train! Listen, read, and record books! We like to let our Bluebee Pal read a letter book to us, (like the D book), then we read it back to him, and then we record the books in our voices and our Bluebee Pal, in return, reads it to us in our own voices! What interactive fun! Teaches colors, numbers, shapes, life science, animals, letters and lots more!
For Valentine’s week, my preschoolers will be learning about Valentine’s Day and some of its’ traditions. Our Bluebee friends will be reading Biscuit’s Valentine’s Day, by iStoryTime. It is a simple, sweet story about passing out Valentines. We will work on Valentines’ vocabulary, asking and answering wh-questions, talk about sharing, loving our friends and family, and talk about making valentines (before we make our own valentines). The app also has a coloring book, sticker book, memory game and puzzle…great for cognitive skills development and early learning fun.
