Technology’s impact is insurmountable. It shows no bias or prejudice toward its consumer audience. While we cherish time away from our screens, it is difficult to negate their convenience and our dependence upon them. Understanding that technology is the way of our future, it’s increasingly imperative that we ensure that the hours our children spend on their tablets, phones, and/or computers are productive. One way to do this is by introducing them to educational mobile applications to assist in enhancing their learning experiences.
There are many benefits to using mobile applications for educational purposes. Mobile applications can provide an enhanced interactive experience, novel learning methods, portability, sustainability, unlimited accessibility, and the ability to easily track progress. Electronic learning is the reality for most of us right now, further formulating the case for finding mobile applications to support learning. With thousands of applications to choose from, finding the right one for you and your children can be overwhelming. Listed below are a variety of mobile applications to support your child’s learning with a brief description of what it can do for you!
- Reading Eggs: An app designed to help your children learn to read. It boasts over 2,000 digital story books while using interactive reading games, guided reading lessons, and fun activities to aid in learning.
- Teach Your Monster to Read: An app designed to teach children to read in a fun and simplistic manner. This app covers the first two years of reading, from matching letters and sounds to appreciating and enjoying books.
- Kids Academy: An app designed to help with math, science, reading, language arts, and social studies. It has over 5,000 learning activities including educational games, videos, interactive and printable worksheets, songs, flashcards, and puzzles.
- ABCmouse.com: An early learning preschool curriculum app focusing on foundational learning within reading, math, the world around us (i.e., beginning science and social studies), and finally art and colors. ABCmouse.com has games to help children three and up learn sounds, shapes, and numbers.
- Khan Academy Kids: An educational app designed for two-five year old children. This app provides a customized series of interactive activities, books, videos, and creative lessons, providing a holistic approach to subjects ranging from literacy to math while encouraging creativity and building social emotional skills.
- Khan Academy: A free education app offering over 4,300 video lessons in math, science, economics, and humanities. Learners are able to study at their own pace utilizing practice exercises and instructional videos through a personalized learning dashboard.
- BrainPOP: An app made to add excitement to learning lessons and captivating students. This app uses cross curricular educational content through animated videos, educational games, interactive quizzes and online activities.
- News-O-Matic: The very first daily newspaper made just for students, providing an exciting and engaging nonfiction experience. This app provides a window into the world for young readers and encourages children to become responsible citizens by providing innovative solutions covering nonfiction reading, social studies, geography and science.
- K-5 Science Apps for Kids: An educational app engaging children on 100+ science topics. This app uses fun experiments, stories, and games to teach a wide variety of subject matter within science.
- NASA: An app designed to teach students anything and everything they could ever want to know about our solar system and NASA’s missions. Students will navigate videos, photographs, live feeds, and lots of text to uncover an enormous collection of information about NASA and the solar system.
- Mazaam – The Musical Genius: An app designed help children develop their understanding of music through a range of games and levels. The app is engaging and animated, full of fun and color.
- Flocabulary: A learning program for students K-12 providing a library of songs, videos and activities using educational hip-hop music to engage students and increase achievement across the curriculum. The app uses rhyme and rhythm to help kids learn many school subjects, life skills, and vocabulary.