Educational apps to help your child start Kindergarten on a positive, confident note

With summer in full swing, most kids enjoy spending their time running, swimming, and playing outdoors. Yet summer is a long period of time without consistent learning, and if your child is getting ready to start Kindergarten in the fall, you won’t want to miss this opportunity to reinforce early learning.

Help your child prepare for Kindergarten while still having fun‎ with the apps detailed below!

ABC Letter Tracing
Learning to form letters properly when writing can be challenging for many students. This app helps children learn to form letters correctly and gives them ample practice tracing them. Players are presented with both upper- and lower-case letters and work on tracing these letters with proper top-to-bottom formations using their finger (great tactile reinforcement!). A colorful picture corresponds to each letter, giving students a visual aid for remembering the sound each letter makes. This app is useful for both early learning and fine motor skills development. Free on iTunes

Montessori Rhymetime Learning Games for Kids
Learning to rhyme is a key component of reading success. In this app, students learn to identify different sounds in words and match words that rhyme using bright, colorful pictures. ‎ The app contains six hands-on activities, starting with basic rhyme games and progressing to more challenging ones. The games can be played independently, or parents can engage with their children by having them articulate their reasoning for why they selected certain pictures. This multi-sensory app is one students love playing, and helps solidify phonemic awareness, a precursor to reading. Free on iTunes 

Moose Math by Duck Duck Moose
This app helps build several important Kindergarten math skills, including ‎addition, subtraction, counting, and sorting. The app contains five different activities, including Moose Juice where kids make “smoothies” (and practice addition, subtraction, and counting skills); Paint Pet, where players count dots to match pets; Pet Bingo, where kids answer counting, addition, and subtraction problems; Lost and Found, where players sort colors and shapes; and Dot to Dot, where players connect dots. $1.99 on iTunes

Starfall Learn to Read
This app is a great tool for building and reinforcing basic phonics concepts, including sound/letter recognition and blending. Similar to the Starfall website, the app presents fifteen “mini books” that each focus on a certain vowel pattern, including short sounds, long sounds, vowel teams, and r-controlled sounds. The app also includes whimsical, fun-filled videos to reinforce reading  (like “The Amazing Silent e” and “Y can be a Vowel!”) and other engaging phonics-based activities. $2.99 on iTunes

Stumpy’s Alphabet Dinner
This is a great app for teaching kids to recognize letters and shapes, while they “feed” colorful characters.  To play the letter segment, a word pops up and kids must “feed” ‎Stumpy the monster by identifying and dragging specific letters. Likewise, they feed Stumpy’s friend Lexie shapes in a similar manner, while building key early academic skills. Free on iTunes

The post 5 Apps for Preparing Your Child for Kindergarten appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Kids will love these fun educational apps that will keep them learning even during the summer months. Dr. Levy’s 5 picks include apps for kids ages 4-16 that help build reading and math skills.

During the sunny months away from school, reading, writing, and math frequently take a back seat to summer fun. Students can lose important skills they gained during the school year without continuous instruction over the summer. In fact, research tells us that students score lower on standardized tests at the end of the summer than at the start of the season.

Help your child avoid losing critical academic skills over the summer with these five apps:

Starfall Learn to Read
Ages 4+
$2.99
Download for Apple or Android

With this multi-sensory app, students can listen, read, and touch letters and words to practice basic reading and spelling skills. The app includes 15 short books for kids to read, each emphasizing a different sound pattern, along with animated videos, songs, and funny characters. At the end of each book, students can play reading-related activities, including matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises. The app is fun, engaging, and interactive.

Sentence Builder
Ages 6+
$5.99
Download for iPad

Students have fun developing their grammar and sentence-writing abilities with this app. To play, they create sentences describing various pictures using slot machine-style wheels for selecting words. The game format is simple, starting with basic sentences and moving into more complex ones. The images and animations are colorful, and students build critical written expression and sentence-structure skills.

Hungry Fish
Ages 4-8
$1.99-$3.99
Download for Apple or Android

This app is an engaging tool for reinforcing basic addition and subtraction as well as mental math. To play, kids drag and combine numbers in bubbles and feed them to a floating fish. The fish expands when it receives “food” (correct answer combinations) and shrinks when it does not receive food. As players complete and “win” each level they move on to more advanced ones, while receiving immediate feedback along the way. It’s a valuable learning tool disguised as an arcade game!

Montessori Crosswords
Ages 3-10
$2.99
Download for Apple or Android

This app is a great one for helping students develop basic phonics skills. For each exercise, the player is given a picture and is asked to drag letters from the bottom of the screen to spell the item depicted. The app starts with basic three-letter (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and moves into more complex words with blends, digraphs, and multi-syllabic words. Children can create single words and, later, multiple words using a crossword-style format. The exercises are helpful for both reading and spelling.

Learning Fundamentals: Reading Comprehension at the Paragraph Level
Ages 9-16
$3.99
Download for Apple

This app builds a myriad of skills, including attention, memory, and reading comprehension. It’s also useful for developing processing and higher-order thinking skills. Students can choose from 37 stories about various topics, including adventures, nature, and history, among others. After reading each passage, they answer main idea, important details, and inference questions in multiple-choice format, along with an opened-ended question that can be used for discussion.

The post 5 Apps to Keep Kids Learning in Summer appeared first on EBL Coaching.

14 apps for developing children’s reading and writing skills from pre-K through high school

Though many parents lament the distractions that electronic devices can present, much of what makes tablet and smartphone content so engaging and addicting—interactive games, visually rich graphics—can help students develop the skills and enthusiasm necessary for success as readers and writers. To help you sort through all that’s on the market, we turned to Dr. Emily Levy, the founder of EBL Coaching—a local, one-on-one tutoring program for K-12 students—to share some of her favorite reading and writing apps.

READING

Montessori Crosswords (Pre-K-Kindergarten) 

This app helps students develop their decoding, spelling, and writing skills by teaching them to build words with different phonics patterns. Students start by building basic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, then move into words with blends, digraphs, silent Es, vowel teams, and other combinations. Students are initially given a picture (like “bag” or “kid”) and are asked to drag letters from the alphabet at the bottom of the screen to spell the displayed word. Later, students spell words following specific phonics patterns in the form of crosswords. Students can also choose themes for the activities, like animals, food, clothes, and more. $2.99, iTunes, Google Play &amazon.com

Short Vowel Word Study (Grades K-1)

This is a great app for reinforcing basic word decoding at a Kindergarten/grade 1 level. The app contains three main sections: Word families, short vowels, and longer words. The first game is “Sort It,” where the child must sort a word into its proper vowel category: I, U, or A. In the “Find It” game, the child must find the “oddball” word that doesn’t belong in the same vowel family, and drag it to the bottom of the screen. The “Spell It” game reinforces spelling by displaying an image (like a hat) and the child must drag letters to spell the word. The “Write It” game teaches students to trace and then independently write words. Other related fun and engaging reading games are also integrated into this app. $2.99, iTunes &Google Play

Super Why! (Pre-K)

This app is a great one for building reading, spelling, writing, and phonemic awareness skills. It includes four games, each led by a different character: Alpha Pig, Princess Pesto, Wonder Red, and Super Why. In the Alpha Pig game, students find letters on a path to form different words. In the Princess Pesto game, students practice writing letters to form words that are first modeled by Princess Pesto’s magic wand. In Wonder Red’s game, students identify rhyming words, and in Super Why’s game, students build their reading comprehension skills by identifying words that complete sentences in a given story. $2.99, iTunes, Google Play & pbskids.org 

MeeGenius (Ages 2-8)

For a wide selection of interactive, digital story books, MeeGenius is a great app that provides access to more than 700 children’s e-books for children up to age 8, which are accessible on iOS, Android, Windows 8, Amazon, Nook, and online. Free,meegenius.com 

Reading Comprehension at the Paragraph Level (Middle School)

With this app, students read a series of stories on stimulating topics and are then asked various types of comprehension questions, including identifying the main idea and important details and making inferences. At the end of each story, an open-ended question is included to generate discussion. With practice using this app, students will develop critical thinking, reading comprehension, attention to detail, and memory skills. $3.99, iTunes

iAnnotate (High School)

This app helps high school students develop active reading and note-taking skills by reading, highlighting, underlining, striking out, and annotating text to create effective study guides and improve overall comprehension. Students can import Word, Power Point, and PDF documents and use the app’s built-in tools to engage with the text while reading. $9.99, iTunes; Free, Google Play & amazon.com

SAT Vocab By MindSnacks (High School)

This app is a great one for learning SAT-level vocab words or for simply developing vocabulary skills. Students learn definitions, antonyms, and the proper spelling of words by first reviewing a set of words and then playing nine different colorful, uniquely-illustrated games. The app includes 25 levels and more than 500 words, and tracks students’ overall progress. Free, iTunes

WRITING

iWriteWords (Pre-K-Kindergarten)

This app is helpful for developing handwriting and fine motor skills for preschool and Kindergarten students. Students choose from numbers, lowercase, or uppercase letters, and practice writing with their fingers using proper formation. They help Mr. Crab “collect” numbers in order to properly form each letter or number. Students are rewarded with a colorful picture at the end of each segment. $2.99, iTunes

StoryBuilder (Grades 1-2) 

This app gives students practice creating their own stories using picture prompts. Students are asked a series of questions about a picture. Aided by an initial written phrase, they must answer each question in a full sentence while being recorded, creating a well-sequenced narrative. After each exercise, students can listen to themselves telling the story and can then email it to anyone who’d like to hear it. Using this app, students strengthen higher level comprehension skills (including inferencing), sequencing, paragraph formation, and storytelling abilities. $7.99, iTunes

Sentence Builder (Grades K-5) 

This app teaches elementary school students to form well-written sentences in “slot machine” format. To play, students select words to form a sentence that best describes a whimsical picture presented at the bottom of the screen. Through these exercises, students build grammar, punctuation, and pronunciation skills, starting with shorter sentences and gradually moving into more complex ones. $5.99, iTunes & Google Play

Kidspiration Maps (Grades K-8) 

This app is a great one for brainstorming, prewriting, and helping elementary and middle school students organize their ideas. Students create visual diagrams using shapes, symbols, and images that they can connect together in a web-like format to organize their ideas—a great first step before writing! Students can also work on reading and writing, social studies, science, and math skills using pre-set activities. This app develops many skills, including critical thinking, creativity, verbal expression, written expression, and organization. $9.99, iTunes 

Writing Challenge for Kids (Grades 5-7) 

Many students have trouble beginning the writing process. This app is a great one for combating that challenge—it helps students begin their writing and keep their creative juices flowing. After pressing “Start,” students are given a prompt, such as: “Start writing a story that takes place in an evil river. Include the word rabbit.” After every minute (or whatever time is set), the student is given another prompt for adding details, characters, and other ideas to help them form a more elaborate story. $1.99,iTunes & Google Play

Writer’s Studio (Grades 6-12) 

This app is useful for aiding middle and high school students in creating eBooks and presentations. Students can import graphics, photos, music, and clip art, and can also add drawings and paint to their text to create innovative visual stories and presentations. Students strengthen their writing skills while “bringing stories to life” with creativity and color. $4.99, iTunes

Inspiration Maps (Grades 6-12) 

As the “higher level” counterpart to Kidspiration Maps, this app helps middle and high school students plan, organize, and brainstorm their ideas before writing. Students can take notes in a web-like format while integrating icons and different bubbles, and can easily translate their web into outline form. $9.99, iTunes

The post Top Tech Tools to Help Kids Read, Write, and Learn appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Princess and the Pea (and other interactive storybooks)

In this app, students either practice reading the Princess and the Pea or listen as the story is read aloud to them, reinforcing auditory comprehension, auditory processing, and listening skills. They can also play interactive games related to the story that are contained within the app, such as matching pictures, completing puzzles, and filling in missing items to complete a picture, all of which reinforce early learning skills.

This app is free and available on iTunes –> Click Here

Short Vowel Word Study

This is a great app for reinforcing basic word decoding at a Kindergarten/1st grade level. The app contains three main sections: word families, short vowels, and longer words. The first game is “Sort It,” where the child must sort a word into its proper vowel category; i, u, or a. In the “Find It” game‎, the child must find the “oddball” word that doesn’t belong in the same vowel family, and drag it to the bottom of the screen. The “Spell It” game reinforces spelling by displaying an image (like hat) and the child must drag letters to spell the word. The “Write It” game teaches students to trace and then independently write words. Other related fun and engaging reading games are also integrated into this app.

This app is $2.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

Montessori Crosswords

This app helps students develop their decoding, spelling, and writing skills by teaching them to build words with different phonics patterns. Students start by building basic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, then move into words with blends, digraphs, silent e, vowel teams, and other combinations. Students are initially given a picture (like “bag” or “kid”) and are asked to drag letters from the alphabet at the bottom of the screen to spell the word displayed. Later, students spell words following specific phonics patterns in the form of crosswords. Students can also choose themes for the activities, like animals, food, clothes, etc.

This app is $2.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

Nursery Rhymes with Story Time

For younger children (ages 5 and younger), this app is great for building phonemic awareness and early reading skills. The app presents classic rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty, Three Blind Mice, Jack and Jill, and others, in an interactive, playful format. While listening to the rhymes, children can “play” with the images. For example, when listening to Jack and Jill, children can drag a bucket of water up a well and watch flying fish and bubbles burst out of the water. The interactive illustrations make listening to rhymes and building core phonemic awareness skills great fun for children.

This app is free and available on iTunes –> Click Here

SuperWhy!

This app is a great one for building reading, spelling, writing, and phonemic awareness skills. It includes four games, each led by a different character: Alpha Pig, Princess Pesto, Wonder Red, and Super Why. In the Alpha Pig game, students find letters on a path to form different words. ‎In the Princess Pesto game, students practice writing letters to form words that are modeled first by Princess Pesto’s magic wand. In Wonder Red’s game, students identify rhyming words, and in Super Why’s game, students build their reading comprehension skills by identifying words that complete sentences in a given story.

This app is $2.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

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