Monkey Word School Adventure

He's back............
that favorite little monkey that my kiddos love has a new game  Monkey Word School Adventure  It's an educational app for reading and writing.  There are spelling games, phonics games, word seaches and sight word reading games all intermixed.  While playing the games you earn creatures to store in your terrarium.  There are customizable settings and the difficulty increases as your child plays.  

The game is advertised for children ages 3 - 6, but in my opinion it is perfect to reinforce most grade one skills!  The games is priced at $1.99.

I can't wait to introduce it to my kiddos!




Thanks to Carrie for recommending it to me and you might want to check out the site that she follows Smart Apps for Kids.

Fun twist on homework!

Having my own little first grader inspires me in so many ways, it also "grounds" me.  I can see when the burn outs are coming and the reactions to homework etc when it hits home.  Fortunately for me, my little first grader LOVES everything about school.  Locking herself in her bedroom and playing school is a regular occurrence at our house.  So when she was balking at practicing her spelling I figured most others are too!

This weekend we played with 2 different apps:  Doodle Buddy and Max Doodle.  There was a lot of play involved but we also practiced those spelling words!

Doodle Buddy:

We played with the pens, colors and glitter options.  I dictated a word and she spelled the word for me.  This was lots of fun.  Oh the potential I see in the classroom.  No more dead white board markers!  

Max Doodle:  

With this app we got a little bit more adventurous.  We chose a background picture just for fun, but did not play with pencil options.  This time I was the recorder and she practiced reading her words, another essential part of spelling in grade one.

Our final bit of practice involved me writing again since I wanted to "learn" the app.  We played with the pencils, highlighters, crayons and colors.  

Through this whole process I taught my little first grader all about screen shots as well.  Something we have been working on in my classroom.  She was thrilled with this new discovery and I am finding screen shots of EVERYTHING saved to my camera roll!!!

Tip:  In case you don't know what a screen shot is, it is when you click the home button and the power button at the same time.  The camera takes a photo of whatever is on your screen at that time and saves it to the camera roll.  How fun!

 

Vocabulary Spelling City

One of my most favorite classroom websites now has a free app!  Vocabulary Spelling City!!!!  I was super excited to see that it was free and even more excited to see that all the spelling lists I had created on the website were accessible with the app!  All I had to do was search for my name and voila all of my lists came up!

The downfall I have noticed so far.... there are not as many games to play as there are on the website, especially since I prefer to use it for spelling purposes rather than vocabulary.  The kids can take the test and practice word by word or else play hang mouse (which is their favorite)!  All the other options are geared at vocabulary building using sentences which is a little tough at the beginning of grade one.



 

"Pod" trial

Outside was a miserable, icy, freezing rain kind of day. Not a typical northern Manitoba kind of day by all means! So while the weather had us all down, Lois and I tried using our iPads as a pod. We were able to round up 3 iPods for my trial and 4 for Lois's trial. We used it as a center during our reading time and both cLasses used the word bingo app I have talked about in other posts. They LOVED it! I had 6 kids at the center so they had to share. I briefly explained how to use the bingo part of the app. They enthusiastically played for a good 10 minutes before a few of them experimented on their own with the fling games and the falling brick words. Some of them even switched to harder word lists! That is always a bonus when they choose to challenge themselves! They had 15 minutes with the iPad which was enough time to have some fun but not get bored with the new app. A few were rushing home to purchase it for themselves!

So we can see how successful a small pod can be! I look forward to this last week before spring break where I have the opportunity to try this pod every day! Who knows where our icreativity will take us!
...

Songify your spelling

So today we took spelling to a whole new level (thanks Mrs. Malchow again for another great idea!)  We each got a turn to spell 3 words aloud speaking into the free Ipad app -  songify.  The app then took our words and turned them into a song.  The kids enjoyed hearing their own voices back, they had a little laugh at the robotic sounding one and were excited for their independent turn.

I had a special guest helper today (my son) who was the leader who sat with each student to teach them how to use the app.  A few students were very excited to go home and download it onto their Ipods!!!  Now there is a sneaky way to spell!