Analog Activities

Technology is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it's great to turn the electronics off and let the kids use their hands and get dirty. Real dirt, not digital dirt. Since Easter is coming up I thought it would be great to show you a couple of easy peasy Easter crafts.

The first one comes from The Mother Huddle. It's a simple cotton ball and construction paper rabbit made from a cup! I think you could easily just cut eyes and a nose and whiskers from construction paper as well, if you didn't have pipe cleaners and spare buttons.

See? Easy, huh?

The second craft of the day is foam Easter egg magnets. Detailed directions are available at No Time For Flash Cards. My daughter loves to color and draw and she thinks that every picture she does should be hung on the refrigerator, so extra magnets always come in handy around our house. In addition to eggs, it would be easy to do cotton ball rabbits as magnets instead. Enjoy the crafts!

Very festive!

 

Little Stars

Opening Screen

Game Play

The Little Stars Toddler App on the iPad by Alligator Apps is a fun and well laid out app for toddlers. It covers everything from the alphabet and numbers, to letter sounds and farm animals. Within the settings menu, they even give you the option of which flash card topics to include. Also, they allow you to customize the success sounds and game effects to suit the child. There is even a two player mode that allows two children to play at once.

Sticker Reward

Mission Report

There is an audible voice that tells the child what it should look for. Every few questions that is answered correctly, the child is rewarded with a sticker that they can choose and stick to their solar system background.  The stickers seem to have a broad option so that the child doesn't get the same one over and over. My daughter loves the sticker part as well as the success sounds telling her she has done a good job. Once they have completed the mission, they get a mission report telling them, and the parent, the success rate and what was included in that particular mission. This is a great app that I would recommend to anyone with a toddler.

Bright Start Pre-K ABC 123

Opening Page

Example of tracing a letter.

The Bright Start English App does a great job of showing the child how to trace the letter on the screen, and then rewards them for tracing it correctly by showing them something that corresponds to the letter or number they just traced. For example: 1 orange, B for banana, etc. The full version includes a report card that you can access on the Bright Start Apps website. It will show the user the number of attempts at a letter, the amount of errors, and gives you the option to see the data by date so that you can see any progress being made. You register directly from the device and this allows the website to track that specific device.

Registration Page

The app seems intuitive, but only if the child has played similar tracing games in the past. Otherwise there is no audible directions for the child. Another drawback I see, is that the same child cannot be tracked across devices. For example, an iPhone or iPod and an iPad. It will create separate sub accounts for them. Another limitation is that if you have multiple children, it only allows you to set up one child's name and age. All in all, it's a decent app and better than some other options out there as it doesn't have ads popping up on the screen. 

YouTube Video Reviews

This is a simple, but effective, video review posted by www.previewkidapps.com about an Alphabet Tracing App. Check out their YouTube channel for more video reviews.

There are so many!

There are nearly FIVE THOUSAND apps for toddlers on Apple's App store!

Okay, so technically 4,691 apps.

When is the last time you did a search on the iTunes app store for an app for a toddler? If you never have, you really should. There are so many apps on there, it is difficult to figure out which ones are worth your time and which ones are perpetual ads that will just frustrate you and your toddler. You think that you can narrow it down by being specific? Ha! It doesn't help at all. That is where my blog comes in. Hopefully some of the app reviews that I will post will help you in your search for educational and entertaining apps for your toddler. 

Along the way I will also post some gadget reviews and some fun and simple kid crafts (because they need to go analog sometimes, too).