28 of the Best Apps for Kids in the First Grade
At last count, there were over 80,000 educational apps available to teachers. There are apps for everything: literacy, STEM, productivity, audiovisual, etc. There are apps which improve accessibility for students with different learning challenges, i.e. text to voice, voice to text, etc.
While many of these may be a dream come true for educators, the dizzying array of choices is also a nightmare. Teachers just don’t have time to filter through thousands of apps to find the one that works best for the needs of their students. To help, we started to create curated lists of the best apps in a variety of education related categories. In this installment, we will present the best apps for kids in the first-grade.
A simple app that focuses on just one skill—spelling. SpellingCity has a variety of colorful and fun games that teach kids common spelling words. With over 35 games, SpellingCity will keep kids entertained and engaged for hours.
Though it doesn’t focus on any Common Core skills, Story Creator is a fun, creative app for elementary students. Kids create their own storybooks using photos from their device or the included illustrations. They can share their stories easily by emailing them from within the app.
It’s not always easy to make math fun, but Sushi Monster achieves this with fun cartoon characters and games. Geared towards middle or older elementary students, Sushi Monster has several levels and allows students to work on addition or multiplication. Students earn stars and trophies for their work.
For younger elementary students in grades K-2, Todo Math is a great way to practice math skills. With hundreds of games, Todo Math has enough activities to keep kids busy for weeks.
The DragonBox toolkit introduces children as young as 5 to math and algebra “without even realizing that they are learning”. It’s based on experimentation and discovery and features a colorful, easy-to-use interface. This app has been dubbed “the Revolutionary Algebra App” by TeachersWithApps and is listed on topbestappsforkids.com.
According to Debbie Gorrell, “Kids will be entranced by the world of Dozenopolis–the experience is so intriguing that it’s downright addictive”. Being taken “on a journey through a universe of numbers”, users will learn core math concepts through puzzles while saving the world of Dozenopolis.
Mitra is another app to help students track their emotions and values. Students record and rate their emotions and values each day, measuring how they feel and what’s important to them. This helps them measure changes in emotions and reflect on their feelings.
Another option for guided meditations. Stop, Breathe & Think allows users to choose how they’re feeling, then provides them with a meditation. It also allows students to track their progress with graphs that show trends in their emotional state.
It’s tough to motivate young learners to read non-fiction. This app makes it accessible and fun, providing a set of entertaining non-fiction stories, followed up with a comprehension check. You can easily use it to generate reports on the student’s progress.
Even if your child is not a fan of the cartoon, the Team Umizoomi Math app is an exciting way to learn math concepts. Plus, you can create different profiles if you have more than one child using the app. Help your child get a head start by purchasing the highest quality educational apps on the market.
Perfect combination of live small-group instruction and online math lessons.
Iconic game that features videos, and games terrific for developing math and problem-solving skills.
A basic game that helps students learn math.
Just 15 minutes a day with Homer has been shown to increase early reading scores by 74%. The app features over 200 vibrant, engaging songs and stories. Over 1000 lessons teach phonics, sight words, early reading, science, history, art, music, and more.
As you’d expect, Jungle Time teaches children how to tell time by using engaging jungles animals. When the learner gets the answer correct, the clock face responds with a roar or a smile. This app is a multi-lingual and highly interactive tool for teaching time in 12-hour and 24-hour formats.Jungle Time has earned recognition from Parenting Magazine, Apple, and the New York Times, and Common Sense Media has given it a 5-star rating. This app is from Jungle Education, a company making iOS apps for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch. It is $2.99.
In Tic Toc Time, a family of beavers teaches time in series of scaffolded lessons. Learners must unlock the lessons in order before completing the series and moving on. The app incorporates day and night in the graphics by showing patterns of sun and shadow to help children learn how to tell time. Best of all, the app offers a secure gaming environment. Children won’t be asked to make purchases or travel to other sites during play. This Android app is available in eleven languages, and you can purchase it for $4.49.
While this app is presented as a game, it is actually a great way for children to look at patterns and sequences, and try to figure them out. The app generates different color combinations, and it is up to the user to decipher the pattern and enter the next color.
Word Wizard for Kids is a fantastic app for young kids. It works like an old Speak-and-Spell toy, but updated for the 21st century. Kids can move letters around to make words and hear them pronounced correctly. There are also spelling activities and quizzes for extra practice.
This app is based on the respected Starfall learn to read website and includes the same type of reading activities based on vowel sounds and phonics. The child can listen or read the short sentences, and then enjoy the interactive animations that depict the sentence’s action.
For parents struggling to get children out the door and to school on time, this is a great timer app. The interactive app features a dog sled racing rather than a traditional timer. Parents can add their morning routines to personalize the app.
This app works to help children visualize the time necessary to complete certain tasks with illustrations and a timer represented by linear blocks of color. It is also fully customizable, so parents can use it for both morning and bedtime routines.
Winner of the 2010 IEAR Language Arts App of the Year, Sentence Builder is an app geared toward elementary students.
American Wordspeller is an app that can solve this problem by helping students to “find a word by the way it sounds!”
This is another app that teaches basic coding skills. Also teachers kids to think logically.
Addictive games and lessons get students motivated to learn to code.
Tynker is a well-designed website that teaches foundational coding.
Fantastic for students with anxiety and stress disorders, this is a meditation app which encourages users to think about how they’re feeling, while also providing short mindfulness and meditation exercises tailored to their mood.
Whether you want to learn a new word a day suitable for 6th graders, a new word a day in Spanish, or a new word a day in general Lafazi offers incredible apps to increase your vocabulary. @VocabAhead
Did we miss any? If so, list them in the comments section below.
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