Some New FREE Apps!

So I was scanning through the app store,

For educational games for children,

and I found a BUNCH of great {and FREE} Apps!

Have you read this great article about what great educational strides apps have made?  My friend told me about it, and it's so fascinating!

It's called The App Gap and it talks about how important it is to get apps in the hands of all children.

My first and favorite app I found recently is called Play 123

It encourages mastery in shapes, but it is so so much fun to play,

and helps kids use their imagination. My daughter LOVES this one!

Cost: Free {for a limited time}

Click on the pic for more details.

Here's its sister app called Play Lab

It is a similar app,

but it only comes with about 10 pages,

and then it asks you to upgrade.

Cost: Free with a $.99 upgrade.

The next one is called Icky Jungle

It's kind of like the little monster on Cut the Rope that eats the candy, but this monster eats shapes.

The cool part is that it gives you status reports on what your child is learning.  It also has an option when you first open it up to not allow any pop ups for your children.

Cost: Free (for now)

There are a few more educational apps from this creator,

They are almost as fun!  

There is Agnitus, Icky Shapes Learner, Peekaboo Animals Learner, and Peekaboo ABC Learner. Cost on all of the above: Free

The 3D Shape Sorter is great for kids too.

It's has a 3D box that can be rotated and 3D shapes are place in.

Cost: Free

This one is called Shape Builder Lite

This is a puzzle game that you can build letters,

cars, instruments. After your child builds the puzzle then they say the vocabulary word. There are lots of puzzles for this free app!

Cost: Free

Elmo Love's ABCs Lite

My daughter LOVES this app, we have the full version,

but we downloaded it when it was free.

This version seems to have almost as much and it is worth checking out.

Cost: Free, upgrade: $4.99

This is how I found these free apps:

I went into the App store on our iPad and selected "Categories".

Then I selected "Education," and then up on top there is a bar, and I selected "Release Date". Hundreds of apps come out each day, your best chance of finding free apps to try out is by finding new apps.  They want people to review them so often they will put out great versions of apps out for free, just to get recognition.

Fishy Learning

When I start a unit, I dig out everything in my house related to that subject. 

This past couple weeks it was fish.

I tried to find everything under our roof that had to do with fish.

I love doing this because it's a great way to rotate toys,

and it helps my kids cross reference everything we are learning about in our unit.

First I made a Quiet Time Box,

Lately our quiet times have become a little more academic.

She has been staying up for most of quiet time,

So I have had to find printables and other variety to keep her focused.

In this box are printables from Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1,

I have just slipped these into sheet protectors,

and had M. use a dry erase marker.

There is also a letter puzzle, magnetic fish, and lots of books!

Including Yertle the Turtle, The Pout-Pout Fish, and Exploring the Deep, Dark Sea.

Next I pulled out my Fish Manipulatives,

They look like this,

except mine didn't come with any books.

 

I actually got mine at an education conference {for free}

and I have used them a lot with the kids I have taught over the years, so I decided to use them with my kids.

P.S. I don't mean for this to be a commercial, go out and buy this post. I am just super visual and I thought you would like to see what I am talking about :)

I pulled out the numbers 1-6 and the dots into my touch and feel box, and had M. pull them out and match them.

She actually like doing this,

despite how serious she looks :).

Baby H. loved hooking them together too,

they have different textures on the back,

and he loved scratching those textures.

Sweetness in the Chocolate Chips

I have waited my whole life to have a four year old & a two year old.

I have always thought that four year olds are the secret of life.

I love the way my little M. smiles at the world.

I love the way she wakes up with a smile on her face.

And I love the sweet and funny things she says everyday.

Today I learned a little lesson.

While baby H. was taking a nap,

M. and I made some cookies.

I let her help me, but it was not a leisurely task.

We still laughed and had fun,

but I was a little stressy.

In the end, the cookies were a total flop.

The same recipe that I made last week turned into cookies that couldn't even be scraped off the pan.

I felt like I wasted an hour and a half.

I ended up adding tons more flour than the recipe called for,

and saved the last couple of dozen.

But as I looked at M. sitting and eating the last bit of the cookie dough, I realized I missed the boat.

She was so content and happy to have spent time with me and enjoying the fruits of her hard work,

and I had a furrowed brow.

My time would have been better spent enjoying the moment.

Next time, even if we have somewhere to be,

or a deadline.

I just want to enjoy the sweetness in the chocolate chips.

Maybe like slow down now, and hurry later.

A Home for Hermit Crab

On with our ocean adventures!

Time to learn about Hermit Crabs...

We read the book, A Home for Hermit Crab

by Eric Carle

It is a cute story about a hermit crab who needs a new shell,

but he wants to decorate it,

so he goes around the ocean floor,

collecting things in the ocean that will make his shell more homey.

After we read the book we decided to make our own

 fancy hermit crab shell.

I pulled some colorful pages out of magazines.

and then she cut small pieces out.

I cut a square of contact paper, and taped it sticky side up.

You can see it taped to the blue file folder above.

You can find contact paper at the grocery store next to the shelf liners.

That made it so easy for her to cut out colorful pieces,

and stick them onto the paper to make a mosaic.

Then I painted her hand red,

to make it look like a hermit crab body.

After it dried,

I cut out the hand. 

I added some more contact paper on top,

 cut her magazine mosaic,

and drew a shell shape on top.

I think they turned cute!

Seriously this would be a great classroom craft.

super easy, and easy to make look great.

I know Mother's Day is past,

but this would be an easy way to make into

flower onto a Mom's Day card.

Just sayin'

:)



Ocean Adventures

Last year, we studied fish,

and this year we decided to study about the whole ocean!

We dove into some great books about the ocean,

and then we used fishy stamps,

And tempera paint watered down.

Baby H. did not want to come paint,

until he saw how much fun his sister was having.

Let the mess begin!

I always take pictures at the beginning,

because I never know what will happen!

He preferred to smear the paint around with the fish,

So Miss Sweetie followed suit.

First, we tried to make our ocean mural out of butcher paper and gel paint,

But when it dried, it was one big mess!

The paper shriveled up into a small clump.

We also tried it on a smaller paper and let it dry flat,

but same result.

So if you want to make gel paint, make sure you use heavy duty paper!

Take two:

We used shaving cream and tempera paint.

Kind of a disgusting picture,

but I wanted you to get the idea.

It turned out to be easier to to squirt the paint and the shaving cream directly onto the paper.

It was so sensory,

they loved getting their fingers gooey.

And we ended up using much less paint.

So much fun,

and so ocean like!

It dried with great texture,

and then we attached the fish.

Okay so the only downside,

was that they were really hard to attach.

We ended up using a glue gun.

So you might want to use this idea for painting alone.

Here are great books we studied before hand:

My favorite book we read only has a tiny picture avaliable...sorry!

It is called How Big is the Ocean.

It is totally on level for 4-6 year olds.

It answers questions about the ocean in a simple and cute way.

I also like Way Down Deep

By Patricia Demuth

It talks about the interesting and scary creatures that are found in the depths of the ocean.

So interesting!

Boys would love this book.

It is also an easy reader, so perfect!

The last book we read is called Oceans,

it is meant for upper elementary aged children,

but the pictures were well done.

So we enjoyed flipping through the pages.