As both a parent and an early childhood educator, I love School Zone Publishing so I was thrilled to hear they’d released some great new iPad apps shortly before my own iPad arrived. School Zone is has provided 30 years of superior educational content that is designed for ease-of-use and makes learning fun for children while teaching essential skills. My classroom and home are full of my “old favourite” workbooks, games and flashcards from School Zone, and I’m so excited to be able to use these great resources while integrating technology at the same time.

My children, my grade one students and I have been using some of School Zone’s newer iPad apps over the past two months and, with a backlog of 25+ reviews this is the first one I’m sharing with you – because they are AWESOME. They appeal easily to kids because they’re colourful, provide instant gratification and encouragement and they’re learning with current technology. The other reason I share these with you at this particular time is because it drives teachers nuts when kids come back to school in the fall and they’re where they were the previous February because they’ve done nothing to stimulate their brains all summer. It doesn’t take much, really…read daily bedtime stories (you’re doing that, right?), build reading time into every day, use math skills in your daily life (cook together, subtract popsicles eaten from the box…), write letters to Grandma, and play some great games like these once in a while.

The ones we tried range from $99 cents to $9.99. Prior to trying these, I never would have paid more than a few dollars for an app for my kids but these are worth every penny. I’ve listed & linked the ones we tried below, and I’d recommend you check out these and the many other School Zone apps that are available because you’re sure to find something that your child will not only love to play but that will target their specific learning needs and make school a little bit easier come September.

Multiplication & Division Flash Action ($5)

Spelling 1-2 ($10) was my favourite of all the apps I tried for the 7-8 year olds – it allows them to enter their own spelling lists each week to play with and is pure awesome.

Alphabet & Numbers 1-100 Flash Action ($5) Basic early literacy & numeracy skills with School Zone flair.

Phonics Made Easy Flash Action ($5) Just as it says – nothing beats phonics for early reading instruction.

Colors, Shapes & More Flash Action ($5) Easy peasy colourful app to teach and reinforce basic concepts for toddlers and preschoolers.

Time, Money & Fractions On-Track ($10) Perfect for those accelerated learners in K-1…a great challenge! Also great supporting curriculum for any grade two child.

Memory Match Game ($1) This is a fave for a certain three year old I know!

Parents in the know are all aware that iPhones are a lifesaver when it comes to preventing meltdowns in public. Hand the kid a phone with a great app and you’re golden for another 15 minutes of shopping!

The My Living Stories digital storybook apps combine beautiful artwork, narration and interactive features in an easy to use platform that is perfect for preschoolers to read along all on their own, without any help. My Living Stories are a great solution for entertaining on-the-go or as an aid for teaching children to read at home. The apps allow for your child to read along with English or French narration or read the stories themselves. Interactive sounds and animation bring stories to life. Another great feature is the ability to record your own voice to go along with the story (this feature requires an iPhone or iPod Touch with microphone capabilities). My Living Story classic stories include Princess & the Pea, King Midas, The Tortoise & the Hare, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears – fairy tales you’d want your children to know anyway.

Story apps are some of my faves, because I don’t feel like I’m contributing to my kids’ future video game addictions but rather to their literacy & tech-savvy…ness. Unfortunately because our server was in the (flooded) basement and that’s where my iTunes folder is, I haven’t been able to play with My Living Stories yet, but they’re there waiting for me whenever my *^$!ing basement is done!

Win it! Canadians only: Enter to win a $25 iTunes card! Just leave a comment on this post before Friday August 6 at midnight mst telling me which My Living Stories story you would like the most.

For extra entries:

1. Tweet about the contest @opinionated with the hashtag #MyLivingStories and leave an extra comment when you do so.
2. Blog about the contest and leave an extra comment when you do so.

…and all of the usual extra entries apply too!

Contest is unfortunately, only open to Canadians. You may enter this contest on multiple blogs, but are only eligible to win one iTunes gift card as part of the My Living Stories contest.

Disclosure – I am participating in the My Living Stories program by Mom Central on behalf of Decode Entertainment. I received 3 free apps and a gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.

[This is a guest post from Travis Peterson of the fab No Starch Press. I haven't read the book so I couldn't honestly review it, but knew you'd want in on it anyway!]

You finally did it—you bought the gizmo that everyone’s talking about. Maybe you’ve already figured out how to play music or make phone calls, but then what?

How does the voicemail work? And that keyboard? What about all of those cool apps—which ones do you need, and how do you get them? You need a book like My New iPhone to make everything easy.

San Francisco’s No Starch Press has posted a big chunk of its My New iPhone book on Scribd for free, plus is selling it cheap-like-borscht as a PDF.

No Starch has a new version of Wang’s iPhone book coming out with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer. In the meantime, the publisher is making about 50% of the current version of the book available for free. As a special deal, they are offering this PDF for free when you preorder a copy of My New iPhone through the No Starch Site—you’ll get the free PDF emailed to you right away and get the book—covering all of the latest and greatest 3.0 features—when it comes out this summer. You can preorder the book and get your free PDF here. Or you can view a chunk of the book on Scribd here.

Win it! No Starch is giving away a No Starch Press prize package to one randomly selected commenter that includes copies of the books My new iPhone and My New Mac, a No Starch Press t-shirt, shot glass, and mug, as well as stickers! The prize package will be mailed when My New iPhone is published this summer. Leave your comment before noon mst on June 4, 2009.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

We have only owned our iPod Touch for 2 months, but are amazed by the quantity and quality of apps available. What has really impressed us is how great a device it is for children. The size and the touch interface are perfect for kids and easy for them to master.

Letters A to Z from True Learning is a flash card alphabet game for kids that runs on the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Each ‘card’ shows a large letter and a cute drawing.

The controls are simple:

* Intuitively scroll to the next letter with a flick of the finger.
* Tap the large letter to hear the name of the letter.
* Tap the object to play a fun animation and hear the phonetic sound as part of a word.

Our family had the perfect age ranges for testing this app. After showing the game to all 3 kids here’s what we found.
Ethan, 6, was at the older end of the target audience for this app. We liked practicing the letters with him, but it didn’t hold his interest. He knows there are other games on ‘daddy’s iPod’ and wanted to move on. We liked using it as flash cards to work on letters he’s had difficulty with.
Ben, 4, will go through the whole alphabet and likes seeing the animations.
Jamie, 2, loves this app. She will sit in my lap and loves going through the alphabet over and over again.

What I love about Letters A to Z is that it makes reviewing the alphabet with your children so easy and fun. We have the alphabet letters on the fridge, but if the kids aren’t using them as hockey pucks, the dogs are launching them across the room with their tails. We tried flashcards, but haven’t had the full deck since we opened them.

With Letters A to Z we not only have a complete flash deck available anywhere we go, but it is more engaging for our kids than traditional flash cards and letter games. Ethan and Ben understood the controls immediately, while Jamie needed some coaching. Once we had helped her through the first few cards she had a blast using the touch screen. At first she eagerly zipped from card to card, but now she is going through more slowly, playing the animations, and learning to identify the letters.

Overall, we couldn’t be happier with this app. With 3 kids in various levels of school, we had been working on letters on and off all year, but our efforts had stagnated. The addition of this game to our teaching tools gave us the boost we needed to keep teaching our kids and improving their letter comprehension and early reading skills.

Letters A to Z is available for 99 cents from the iTunes App Store. - by John

Win it! We’re giving away the Letters A to Z app AND an awesome jam-packed-with-educational-fun True Learning CD to one lucky winner. To enter, leave a comment on this post before noon mst on Friday, April 24, 2009.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED