Apps, Apps and More Apps!

The buzz all around Lindbergh is the iPad and how they can best be used in the classroom. I am very fortunate to have 5 student iPads and a teacher iPad. I spent a large part of my holiday break searching for FREE, educational apps appropriate for kindergarten. There are so many to weed through! I believe that half of the battle is simply finding what will compliment our curriculum, be intriguing to our students and is free.

Here are a few that I like so far:

Rhyming Bee: this game takes two word families and has students sort the bees to the rhyming word family. It bounces back if you chose the correct flower. Once you've filled all the petals of the flower, you move on to a new set of word families.

Number Magic 2: this app helps students practice their numbers 1-9. It helps with number recognition and 1-to-1 matching. They use beads, playing cards and the number.

Storia: which I think everyone knows about from Scholastic. I love that there are activities to connect to many of the books and there is an option to have it read aloud to the kids. The challenging part is collecting a nice library of books which each cost money. I have several free ones and I keep trying to save up my bonus points to acquire more.

Rocket Speller: currently my students are using this app. They love that they can build their own rocket by answering the questions correctly. Each "stop" the student has to build the word that the alien says out loud. Students listen to the beginning, middle and ending sounds and sort the letters. The early levels include the correct spelling to help guide the student. The letter bounces back if it is not correct.

Google Voice

I recently set up a Google Voice account. With Angie's help it was so quick and easy! I sent an email to my students' families, requesting that they call in, state their name, and then tell me how they can show caring. Caring is our school's character word of the month. We don't have many days in December, plus there is a LOT of assessment and holiday activities. We don't often get a lot of opportunities to explore what caring means and how we can show it: especially in half day kindergarten!
I posted the phone number and an example of what I was looking for on my blog. I played the example in class and told my students that when they went home they should talk to their mom or dad and call in. I had 7 students call in out of 21. Not wonderful odds, but the content of what I received was so touching. To hear, directly from a 5 year old, how they can help their mom around the house or play with their sibling is very touching.
I played several of the examples in class and the students cheered for each other as if they were celebrities! It was a wonderful way for students to build each other up and show that they care for one another. I love that it allowed many of my students, who can not always communicate through writing, a chance to share their great ideas!! I plan on doing it again, but changing the activity to reading a list of 5 sight words, or read the attached sentence. I hope to post more great results on my blog!