As a part of our school’s tech team I am often asked questions that begin with, “Do you know any good apps that…?” So here are some early learning apps that I use in my class regularly for literacy and numeracy centres. Now, I don’t really like recommending apps because I know that apps can be learner and teacher specific. What works for me and the learners in my class may not work for you and your learners. Most of these do not cost that much (with the exception of the first one that I talk about, but it is so great that I can’t not talk about it!). So, play around and keep an open mind!
Smarty Pants School allows you to assess students’ reading abilities then opens up fun activities for them to do related on areas that they need extra practice in. This app focusses on letter recognition, letter sounds, recognizing sight words, and spelling sight words. You can enter many students in the app and it saves each of their progress. Levels are not opened up until students master the level before it.
Endless ABC is a charming app that was created by the creative team at Callaway Digital Arts. It introduces children to the meaning and spelling of fun words like bellow and flop. As you drag letters into their appropriate spaces, the letters come alive and repeatedly speak their sound.
Syllable Awareness Animals is a simple app that flashes animals and asks you to tap out how many syllables the animal name has.
Word Wall HD encourages word recognition and word building through simple games that highlight word families. This app allows you to set up the games for different reading levels.
Bugs and Buttons is another app that covers many areas and can be suited to varying levels of abilities. Visually stunning images encourage users to practice skills involving sorting, patterning, number recognition, subitizing, problem solving, and basic ipad gestures.
Friends of Ten: There aren’t many apps out there that use ten frames at an early learner level. I found this app does a good job of providing practice using ten frames for counting objects to ten, subitizing, counting on from a higher number, partitioning of objects to make 10 and recognizing more and less.
Adding Apples is a motivating app that provides practice solving addition questions from 1+1 to 9+9 and counting from 1 to 18 both visually and verbally. Students can earn trophies for the number of equations they answer correctly.
Animals Counting Writing Game is a very simple app that students can use to practice writing numbers, counting, and recognizing number words. There are many apps that do this, but I liked that this one had the number word associated with the number.