EarlyApps :: Applications for iPhone

iPhone - Art

Android - Animals

Android - Animals

iPhone - Reading

Android - Math

iPhone - Alphabet

Android - Alphabet

iPhone - Preschool

With the release of Apple's Ipad, came newly designed educational apps for babies, toddlers and students. Another area that has been developing quickly is app development for children with special needs. These apps have been creating quite the buzz in special needs parenting communities. It has really been a blessing for parents to be able to use apps in order to help their children express their needs. Parenting is challenging as it is and even more so when you have a child in the special needs realm. Following are five apps that cater to these children. 1. First Then Visual Schedule A winner for children with Autism. Designed to to provide positive behavior support for those with communication needs. Also great for children with language delays or developmental issues. Facilitates moving from one daily activity to the next and overall dealing with changing daily schedules. 2. Sentence Builder Designed to help children learn how to build grammatically correct sentences in a creative and fun way. Especially beneficial for autistic children struggling with communicating ideas. Focuses on the connector words which make up over 80% of the English language such as “the”, “an”, a, etc. User. Very user-friendly interface that uses animations (100 pictures) and audio clips with optional correct sentence audio re-enforcement. And one of the best parts is that the sentence can be different each time! Really wonderful app. 3. Model Me Going Places Based on the Model Me Going Places, DVD, this behavioral modeling app is designed to help children navigate challenging locations in the community such as the hairdressers, Mall, Doctor, Playground, etc.. Especially useful for children with Autism who usually are comfortable at home in a familiar setting but once outside can easily breakdown. It offers parents a user friendly mobile solution to help them with their children when they are out. The social stories are easy to follow and appeal succesfully to autistic children who by nature are very visual. 4. Proloquo2Go™ Ok this is an expensive one ($189.99) but it is the AAC (Augmentative and alternative communication) device in your pocket! AAC devices range anywhere from $350.00 - $1000.00. Proloquo2Go™ provides a full featured communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking with many wonderful features such as natural sounding text-to-speech voices, , a default vocabulary of over 7000 items, and , powerful automatic conjugations. Many rate it as superior to current devices in its category. 5. ArtikPix A wonderful speech therapy tool, Artpix is an fun, engaging articulation app for children with speech and sound delays. It makes ordinary articulation drills exciting. Children tap and flick cards to practice sounds using fun activities. There are 14 decks - (th, f, v, ch, sh, k, g, s, z, l, r, s-blends, l-blends, and r-blends) with 40 cards in each for a total of 560 cards. The flashcard and matching activities include the following features: • color coded cards • auto-play of audio recordings • tap-to-play audio • record your voice and play the voice recording • collect data by tallying • tallies automatically convert to percentage based data • save the data • flashcard reordering • options for matching cards to hide or remain on the screen after matching • copy data to clipboard, email, and Google Spreadsheet Only available for Ipad but hoping to see a version for iphone and itouch soon. It's really great to see app development play a major part in the realm of special needs. There are just 5 but if you do a google search you can find so many more for different purposes.

This is a great list of fun educational apps for toddlers. Broken down into seven categories - Animals, Art, Music, Problem Solving, Reading and Writing, Math and Study Aids. Prices range from $.99 cents to under $4.00.

In a society which is becoming increasingly global, the desire to raise bilingual children is becoming a top priority for many parents. There are books, classes, playdates, CD’s, DVD’s and ofcourse Apps. I do think that learning from your immediate environment is a more enriching and organic experience, but the app craze coupled with the newly released iPad simply cannot be ignored as a very successful means to introduce children to another language. There are so many different approaches in the development of these apps that provide a dimensional platform for children to immerse themselves in and learn basic Spanish. These apps act as a great gateway to more advanced studies of languages as well as a passion for them. Below are some apps that teach Spanish to children. 1. Primeras Palabras Primeras Palabras from Early Apps is an exciting educational game for kids to learn their first words in spanish and develop their vocabulary. Through various exercises, your kids can learn how to pronounce and identify shapes, colors, numbers, animals, and the abcs. The illustrations and colors are very engaging. Categories are also really wonderful. Also available in English. Available at itunes. 3. My Bilingual Baby Developed by a speech therapist, this app is designed to help babies learn the different sounds of the Spanish Language in different formats. Available at itunes. ““My Bilingual Baby” goes beyond simple lists of words and phrases. Unlike other teaching methods for babies and children, in this system the baby is exposed to phonemically balanced words, carefully selected by trained speech and language professionals. In this product all phonemes of the language are presented in the three positions of the word: Initial, medial and final. “ – PR Log You can read the press release here. 3. Toddler Flash Cards Simple application which teaches the names of animals, foods, and other objects, as well as the alphabet and numbers. What I love about it is the real photos. Also teaches words in French and Spanish. Available at itunes. 4. Peekaboo Barn This is a fun way to teach your little one farm animals and the noises they make. They guess who is behind the barnyard door after hearing an animal sound. One tap on the door and they find out who it is! And to make it an even more exciting learning experience, the names of the animals can appear in Spanish or English! Available at itunes. 5. Hola! Hola! Teaches basic Spanish sounds (phonemes) of carefully selected objects in a fun and entertaining way. In this app your little one will find: • entertaining and eye-catching images • Spanish words’ sounds for common objects easily applied in everyday life activities (see list below) • words spoken by a friendly native speaker • a manageable list of words crafted for toddlers with limited attention span and a great love for repetition • easy navigation through arrows and intuitive finger slide for them to be in control • easy activation Are you a parent who is kind of fluent in Spanish and need some extra help with saying certain phrases? Apps like Jibbigo and iSpeak Spanish are great for this kind of thing. Jibbigo is a speech to speech translation app which speaks back to you whatever you want translated in the language of your choice by just speaking in the phrase you need. With itranslate Spanish, you type into a window what you want translated and a text translation comes up. You can also have the option of hearing it spoken. A great web site for parents who are raising bilingual children or interested in doing so is: http://www.spanglishbaby.com/ Great resources and a wealth of information on everything from homeschooling a bilingual child to Spanish immersion programs to bilingual toys. Simply awesome! So if you are a parent interested in raising a bilingual child this is really a great time to take advantage of the latest trends and technologies available. There is so much out there it really makes it possible!

Genre: Education Price: $1.99 Release Date: May 04, 2010 Seller: Taste Digital Media EarlyApps.com presents First English Words for the iPad. This app offers an exciting set of educational games for your child to learn their first words in English. The First English Words App offers a variety of exercises for learning the alphabet, shapes, colors and much more. Check First English Words now on the Apple Store!

Below is a list of five paid educational apps worth checking out for the iPhone. These apps are all 99 cents & were hand picked according to certain criteria suitable for children such as content, graphics, music, entertainment, etc. 1. Wheels on the Bus Genre: Education Price: $0.99 Release Date: January 27, 2009 Created by parents, Wheels on the Bus is a fun, interactive musical book, based on the popular children's song. Come aboard the bus to spin the wheels, open and close the doors, swish the wipers, pop some bubbles, make a dog bark, and much more! Delight your children while encouraging cognitive, language, and motor development: - Sing and read with your children. - Listen to the song in English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian. - Record your children’s singing! - Hear the music played on a violin, cello, piano, and even a kazoo. - Touch, explore, and discover fun surprises in the captivating, interactive illustrations. 2. KidClac 7-in-1 Math Fun Genre: Education Price: $0.99 Release Date: July 28, 2009 KidCalc teaches number recognition, counting and math to pre-schoolers, kindergarteners and elementary school aged children using flash cards and puzzle games, with engaging artwork, animation and voice-overs. KidCalc includes animated addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division lessons. KidCalc is easily configurable to adjust how challenging the counting and math puzzles are, with settings for toddlers learning numbers, for preschoolers learning to add and subtract, and for elementary school aged kids learning to count as high as 1000 and to multiply and divide. KidCalc is jam packed with features and now teaches the following skills: • Writing numbers • Number recognition by sight and sound • Quantity recognition with icons • Counting forwards and backwards, with voice-overs, by increments of 1, 2, 3, on up to increments of 100 • Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with operands up to 1000 Added this week: • NEW: Voice-overs by adult speakers • NEW: Birthday Party theme with presents, birthday cakes, cupcakes, candles and party hat icons! Added in January: • Flash Card Challenge making KidCalc 7-apps-in-1. See how quickly you or your child can solve 10, 25, 50, or even 100 math problems. • Flip flash cards over to watch animated illustrations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division math problems. • Running timer and totals can be shown or hidden. • Choose any combination of beginner or intermediate addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems. Other Features Include: • One-touch skill settings to configure all learning games appropriately for a wide range of ages 2-4, 4-6, 6-8, 8-10, or Little Geniuses • Counting puzzle and Counting Snowflakes game • Animated and voiced math puzzle • Animated and voiced calculator with icons that animate and illustrate mathematical operations as they are entered • Additional themes including Sports, Outer Space, Springtime, Valentines Day, Easter and more. 3. TeachMe: Kindergarten Genre: Education Price: $0.99 Release Date: November 12, 2009 TeachMe: Kindergarten is an educational iPhone app which teaches four different age appropriate subjects to Kindergarten aged children: sight words, addition, subtraction and spelling. Parents can select which subjects they want, set different difficulty levels, and even choose specific questions. Parents can review performance history for each subject to check how their child is doing. TeachMe: Kindergarten keeps children engaged with a rather unique reward system where children earn a coin for every three correct answers. Coins can then be used to purchase stickers to place in fun sticker scenes. Sticker scenes can be exported as wallpaper or emailed to family and friends. The simple and intuitive user interface is designed to be child friendly, which allows children to play without help from an adult. An animated teacher (Mimi Mouse) gives verbal instructions and feedback to the child which makes learning fun. FEATURES: • 4 different sticker reward scenes: beach, underwater reef, pirate cove, city • Over 70+ different stickers for adding to a scenes • Save learning information for up to four different children • Select which subjects are displayed for each child • Turn on/off specific questions within a subject • Change the number of correct questions to earn a reward • Tracks performance for each subject item (last five) • Export sticker scene to Photos, for emailing or using as wallpaper LEARNING SUBJECTS: • Sight Words: Dolch (Pre-K), Dolch (K) • Addition: up to a total of 10 • Subtraction: from 10 down • Spelling: complete words by choosing the first letter 4. Preschool Adventure Genre: Education Price: $0.99 Release Date: July 31, 2008 Contains eight simple activities parents can do with their young toddlers and preschoolers: - Dot-to-Dot Numbers - Artist Coloring Book - Typing the ABC Animals - Ocean Colors - Space Shapes - Monkey Body - Farm Sounds - Animal Matching *SUPPORT If you have any technical problems or questions, then please email support@3dal.com before posting a review. Please take a look at our other fun and educational children apps (only .99 each): * Preschool Music * Preschool Arcade * Bumblebee Touchbook * Suzy Dress Up * Make A Martian 5. KiddySong Genre: Education Price: $0.99 Release Date: April 24, 2010 "Come and get our latest creation!" - Special dedicated to young childrens, KiddySong is a fun and engaging musical iphone app. Entertain your children with popular kids song plus an animated illustration. APP FEATURES: - Consist 6 songs (Wheels On The Bus, Railroads, Incy Wincy Spider, London Bridge, Twinkle Little Star and Old Macdonald) - 3 different voices featuring Angelo: The Panda, Gavin: The Monkey, Delius:The Cow - Bright and lovely colors - Touch to discover sounds surprise - Easy to navigate

With more & more mobile applications becoming accessible it is sometimes difficult to decide on which educational app is worth your time or money. Below we will discuss the 5 main components for discovering & choosing a great app. 1. Simplicity & Functionality There’s nothing like finding a great tool only to discover that it requires a lot of work to get it going. This should be the same mentality when choosing the right app; Pick an app that you feel comfortable with it & that way the only thing you have to do is enjoy the experience. 2. Graphics It seems like something very simple yet a visual display can make or break an app’s quality dramatically. In terms of educational apps, graphics can also make the difference when maintaining focus on a subject because a user may find it distracting. This theory is similar to walking into a room & noticing a painting that is tilted rather than the actual room itself. 3. Music Countless studies have linked the benefit of music in conjunction with learning. The selection of audio is important when choosing an app because sound can help relate certain words, formulas, equations, etc. 4. Content The most important component in my opinion! If you’re in need of an SAT prep application then chances are you have come across several. When finding the right one, make sure you choose the one that has content very similar to how the SAT is taken & also make sure it is an app that many people have found useful after taking the actual exam. 5. Replay Value The term replay value describes the entertainment value of using an app/game more than once. In some cases, factors that influence replay value are the result of the app’s programming (extra content, alternate endings, etc). Other times, the replay value of an app might be based entirely on the individual's tastes; a user might enjoy an app because he/she likes the music or graphics, finds the app entertaining, or (in the case of licensed products) because of loyalty to the product line.

Now that we've discussed the benefits of educational apps in previous blogs, below are the top 5 free iPhone apps (in no particular order) that you may want to check out for you or your child.. 1. Open Culture This iPhone app gives you free mobile access to thier educational media collections. Free audio books, university courses, foreign language lessons, science podcasts and much more. Per Apple rules, you will need to use wifi to download files. 2. Dictionary.com Pretty simple, but handy. A good dictionary in your pocket. • More than 500,000 new words and definitions • Shake device to see a randomly-selected word • Spanish Word of the Day 3. Shakespeare Shakespeare is a nice app that puts the complete works of Shakespeare on your iPhone. As you’ll see, the app comes with some handy functionality: you can search the text by keyword and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app automatically remembers the last page you read. 4. Kindle This free app from Amazon lets you download books straight to your iPhone. The Kindle store contains many free classics books, but one of the easiest ways to access these books is to visit their collection of Free eBooks. 5. NASA Discover a wealth of free great space travel information on this free app. The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources in a convenient mobile package.

Source: FastCompany It is difficult to imagine that at one point we never had such things as the iPhone, Internet, Youtube, & text messaging. Nowadays the feeling of the Internet going offline is like the thought of someone dumping you on Valentines Day. Technology has taken a front seat in not just our lives but in the lives of our children as well. It can easily be said that this is a generation where the youth show more interest in a mobile phone than in a yo-yo or Barbie doll. Despite its popularity, some parents are under the belief that we have created a monster because children are too dependent on technology. Although this is a valid point, others around the world have embraced this revolution & are using technology to their advantage when it comes to kids. Children Love Mobile Devices There’s nothing like a shiny iPhone or touch screen device to call the attention of a child.  These gadgets have the ability to let them press buttons, hear weird noise, & view bright lights through its interaction. There is no toy on the market that can compete with countless hours of entertainment through the use of apps like a smart phone can. Educational & Entertaining Apps Apps have taken on a shape of its own when it comes to how it can affect a child. These apps have proven to be an incredible tool for educational purposes. Below is a quote from a mother who backs up the discussion of the power of apps: “They loved to push the buttons and see it light up." The girls knew most of the alphabet by 18 months and are now starting to read, partly thanks to an iPhone app called First Words, which lets them move tiles along the screen to spell c-o-w and d-o-g. They sing along with the Old MacDonald app too, where they can move a bug-eyed cartoon sheep or rooster inside a corral, and they borrow Mom's tablet computer and photo-editing software for a 21st-century version of finger painting. "They just don't have that barrier that technology is hard or that they can't figure it out," - Fiona Aboud Singer It’s the Cool Thing to Do “American children now spend 7.5 hours a day absorbing and creating media -- as much time as they spend in school. Even more remarkably, they multitask across screens to cram 11 hours of content into those 7.5 hours. More and more of these activities are happening on smartphones equipped with audio, video, SMS, and hundreds of thousands of apps.” – Anya Kamenetz Read Anya Kamenetz’ full article at: FastCompany.com

Pampers has joined the app revolution and introduced an app that let's parents track their their developing fetus. Hello Baby made it's debut last month during Apple's iPad launch. It is Pamper's first presence in the mobile device landscape. The app, Hello Baby is available on iTunes and is free. It is the only app of it's kind developed for the iPad. Users can track the progress of their pregnancy from week to week and by holding the iPad up to her tummy a user can see an accurate, detailed representation of the baby's growth. You can even enter measurements from your last ultra sound and see the result. I had my son last June, and was constantly logging on to web sites to track my baby, what size he was at what week, what changes were going on, etc.. This app will be great to use with my second pregnancy. Makes it much more intimate and personal. I'm sure with updates it will only become better. You can get this FREE app at itunes.

There are many apps out there especially geared towards babies and toddlers. Parents have found them to be an instant solution to meltdowns, boredom, long waits at the doctor's office, airports, or just plain, everyday fussiness. Here I have selected 8 of my favorite. Some incorporating Spanish which is a great way to introduce your child to basic Spanish words and concepts. 1. Primeras Palabras Primeras Palabras from Early Apps is an exciting educational game for kids to learn their first words in spanish and develop their vocabulary. Through various exercises, your kids can learn how to pronounce and identify shapes, colors, numbers, animals, and the abcs. The illustrations and colors are very engaging. Categories are also really wonderful. Also available in English. Available at itunes. [caption id="attachment_265" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Spanish app for toddlers"][/caption] 2. Toddler Flash Cards Simple application which teaches the names of animals, foods, and other objects, as well as the alphabet and numbers. What I love about it is the real photos. Also teaches words in French and Spanish. Available at itunes. 3. Wacky Safari Your child can learn about animals with this fun, awesome app that uses games and sounds to teach! In Mix and Match you put together three pieces of a photo to discover beautiful wildlife. You can also do other fun tasks like call animal friends with Wacky Phone and hear them say wacky things. Safari DJ let's you create different fun sounds with your choice of three different paws. The educational Laugh & Learn teaches your kid interesteing facts about his/her favorite safari animals. Available at itunes. 4. iWritewords An award winning handwriting game for children. Lots of fun while also teaching writing and spelling. Very intuitive with rich graphics. High entertainment (and educational) value for kids. Voted by The New York Times as one of the best iPhone app for kids. Available at itunes. 5. The Pianist From meltdown to Mozart? This very well designed music app transforms your iphone into a 3D 88 key piano. Keys depress when touched giving it a nice real feel of a piano. Compositions can be recorded and played back to adoring fans! Available at itunes. 6. Scribble Transform your iphone into a miniature sketchpad with a multitude of colors, pen-sizes, and canvas options. You can also import your own images and draw on them. After you’ve created your masterpiece, simply shake to erase. Available on itunes. 7. Peekaboo Barn This is a fun way to teach your little one farm animals and the noises they make. They guess who is behind the barnyard door after hearing an animal sound. One tap on the door and they find out who it is! And to make it an even more exciting learning experience, the names of the animals can appear in Spanish or English! Available at itunes. [caption id="attachment_281" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="farm animal app for children"][/caption] 8. Shape Builder Children will have a great time with this app that teaches hand eye coordination as well as matching skills. They drag and drop puzzle pieces that snap into place on top of a silhouette revealing a colorful image of an object . Includes categories such as numbers, letters, animals, fruits and vegetables. Available on itunes. So if you have not explored the many apps that developers have created for babies and toddlers, here are a few to get you started. But with the growing number of apps that keep coming out in this area, whatever it is you are looking for to entertain and or teach your child - it's most likely out there or soon to be. Enjoy!