One educational game that I found is very basic, and it is called First Grade Learning Games. This app is great for first graders to use to practice their math and reading/vocabulary skills. This game is great for ages 6-8. It is great for students just starting first grade, but it is also useful for students that need to review or brush up on these subjects. The recent reviews have given this app five stars, and say that their first grader loves it. In my opinion, this is a great educational game.
Another game I found is called RedFish. This game can be used for kids 3-7 years old, and it teaches them to count, read, spell, and even compose music. On this game, there are more than 50 creative exercises that the kids can use to learn. Most parents that have written reviews say that the game is wonderful and that they highly recommend it to others. There are learning activities and open ended play on this game.
123 Color HD: Talking Coloring Book is a wonderful for pre school and kindergarteners. There are many different pictures to choose from. Children could choose to color animals, nature, pumpkins, people, pretty much whatever they want! This is a great game to spark creativity. Children have many choices of colors, and they have the freedom to color whatever color they want. Parents have rated this game five stars.
This is such a great educational game called Haiku by PBS parents. This is a game for kids to be able to describe a memorable moment they've had and learn about syllables. I remember that whenever my teacher taught us haikus, I had such a hard time comprehending them. I feel that if I had had this game when I was younger, I would have been able to understand Haikus more. This is a great learning tool for kids learning poetry.
Point of View seems to always be a tough subject for students to understand. This game called Point out the View allows kids to click on different people and see a room from their point of view. Depending on where they are standing, the point of view changes. The point of the game is for the player to show what each person sees from their point of view. This game would have been so helpful for me when I was just learning point of view. I think this is a great educational game that all parents should use.
The first part of my learning contract was mobile devices. I searched through many different apps and found some that I thought were extremely creative. This project was not frustrating for me at all. I really enjoyed finding these apps. I even downloaded some of them. I love how technology has come so far and that we are using it for our benefit. Instead of just using technology to watch shows or play mindless games, there are apps that spark our creativity, and I think it is wonderful.
The second part of my learning contract was images. I used pictures I had taken on Instagram on my phone. I love pictures. I am the type of person that can go through pictures and look at the same ones over and over. This has been my favorite part of the learning contract because of my love for pictures, and it has been fun to go back through my old pictures and explain why I took them. I really think that a picture says a thousand words, and I think that if teachers showed their students pictures of things and made them think about every detail, the students would learn to think more critically.
The third part of my learning contract was puzzles and gaming. I found five games that I thought would be very useful for children ranging from pre school to elementary school. When I was doing this part of the project, I couldn't help but wish we had had these things when I was younger. Somehow technology just makes things more interesting and fun, and if I had had games to help me learn new concepts when I was in grade school, I would have enjoyed them a lot more. This part of the project was very cool to me and I am glad that I chose to do puzzles and gaming.
