This year has flown by quickly and with us on the cusp of the holiday season, it’s just going to go faster and faster, and it starts with Back To School season. Some of you (or your kids) already have gone back to school and some of you have a few days left. My kid doesn’t start until September. He has started refreshing himself on subjects so he doesn’t have that deer-in-headlights look I used to get the first couple of weeks of school while my brain found the files I needed for school. These days, there are apps to help with that and they are far better than the “learning games” I had as a kid or even than what my older kids had.
The apps I found I found in the Play Store on my Android. I, unfortunately, or fortunately depending on who you are talking to, don’t have an iPhone, so I didn’t test these apps on one. They were easy to find. I just searched education apps and got a big list. They are all free to download but some have paid features, some are completely free, and others you have to pay to use it period. I prefer the free or free with paid features. I picked a few I do like and a couple I didn’t to share with you. Let me show you what I found.
Khan Academy: Khan Academy is for K-12 and beyond. It has lessons specific to grades K-8th but then it goes to types of math like algebra up to calculus. You will find addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication of course, but there is time telling, place values, measurements, decimals, fractions, conversion of measurements, percents, and integers. That is just math. You will also find US History both for regular school and college, US Government, civics, AP/College art history, story building, grammar, music, a little bit of computer courses, and even a section called life skills with stuff like financial literacy and college admissions.
I haven’t been in school in some years and I am going to use this. There are lessons that I can use in my life today, at the very least to refresh my skills. My son was telling me it’s mainly for math but there is so much more. It is incredibly hard to teach me math and I seem to have a mental block to keep in my head what I am taught. I suck at math. So badly that in school they stopped trying to teach me math and just passed me so they wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore. They ended up doing that for me in college too. Needless to say, I am grossly under-educated in math and I would be willing to try Khan Academy to learn math and brush up on some of the other subjects offered. My kids have/do use Khan Academy for their own school and for my son it has helped him at least pass math.
Khan Academy Kids: This Khan Academy is for ages 2-8, so basically up through 2nd grade. Allows you to help your preschool kiddos get a jump on their learning and if they have older siblings, they can do “homework” just like their brothers or sisters. I tried the app and chose the age of two and went in. At least for age two, it is a cross between Sesame Street, interactive games, and cartoons/YouTube videos. I can see it being great for toddlers. It will read them books from the app’s library, has videos like Baby Shark, a place to draw, letter practicing, reading learning/practice, early counting, and a section for logic to help with memory and focus. I had to restart my phone though, to get out of the app.
Duolingo and Babbel: Not all students are looking for math or history help. High school students need a second language. For those who are taking a second language, whether in high school or college, there is Duolingo and Babbel. I was using Duolingo to help me in my German class in college. Duolingo helped me improve my reading of German and word recognition. I still failed the class, but that was due in large part to my hearing impairment, not at all a reflection on Duolingo. They have expanded so much since I last looked. You can find of course the usual suspects: Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. But you can also find Irish, Norwegian, Hawaiian, Zulu, and more. So much more. You can even find Klingon, High Valyrian, Latin, and Navajo. I am blown away. It does have a paid service if you want to get more features. Babbel has fewer languages and no fun ones. It is a paid service, period. It is similar to, but different than Duolingo. I enjoyed the one lesson I was able to take for free. It was more conversational than Duolingo. In the first lesson, I worked my way through a short, simple conversation and retained some of it a while later. Overall, I like Duolingo better.
Apps I didn’t like:
ABC Kids Tracing & Phonics: It looked like it would be cute for my niece who has started school for the first time this year. Unfortunately, I got a call pretty quickly after I got into the app. Far enough that I should have had the option to get out the app. I ended up having to restart the phone. so needless to say, I missed the call and I didn’t go back into the app to test it any further. As a first impression, Lucas and his friends are cute. I just don’t like apps that I can’t easily get out of.
Reading.com: This one is a must-pay to use. I can’t review it because I won’t pay for it and I don’t see that working for a large part of the population. I am not saying it is bad, just that there are many people who can’t use it because they can’t afford that expense. Why not have a free part and a paid part at least? It wouldn’t even let me look around the app to decide if I wanted to use it.
Just An Idea:
Word games: Word games such as Zen Word, Word Garden, Word Connect, Wordscapes, and Word Trip are great for spelling and learning new words. It will help with vocabulary too if you look up new words you come across when you start just throwing letters in to try to find the word they are looking for. I have played those games on and off for a while and got one of my kids hooked on it and it helped them learn some words and they were proud of themselves for impressing their teacher. They have words of five letters or less, but even I, who has been writing for more than a decade, have been an editor, and used to have to copy the dictionary as a consequence of my bad behavior, have found words I didn’t know. I had to go look them up. It does teach you how to problem solve too.
Have you or your kids tried any of these? What are your thoughts? Are they helpful? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, have fun storming the castle!
