Every day’s a school day
THESE APPS WILL BOOST LEARNING, WHETHER YOUR CHILDREN ARE GOING BACK INTO THE CLASSROOM OR NOT
SOME of us have had to become teachers under lockdown – if that’s you, you won’t need me to tell you how hard that can be. Schools may be reopening for some children sooner rather than later, but you might still be glad of a helping hand when it comes to learning.
You can make every day a school day with these apps if you have a smartphone or tablet to hand.
They might not help with the standard curriculum, but with extra time on our hands they might just offer a productive way for your children to while away the hours...
1 KHAN ACADEMY KIDS (IOS, Android, Amazon) ■ THEY SAY: Children can learn reading, language, writing, maths, social-emotional development, problem-solving skills, and motor development.
Open-ended activities and games like drawing, storytelling, and colouring encourage creativity and self-expression. A cast of adorable animal characters will guide children through lessons, and our adaptive learning path will customise their experience to help them master different skills.
■ WE SAY: Khan Academy is a remarkable resource for both children and adults, offering a massive collection of courses in subjects far and wide.
The kids’ version of the service is a stunning achievement in itself – and it’s absolutely free.
New content is being added all the time, so getting your kids into the effective learning style of the app is a good idea at any time, not just during lockdown. An added bonus is the app is available for Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets – and there is a special durable kids version of that. It’s the perfect learning combination.
■ COST: Free
2 DUOLINGO KIDS (IOS) ■ THEY SAY: Duolingo Kids is a fun and effective new way for kids to learn languages! From the makers of Duolingo, the most popular language-learning platform worldwide, comes a new app for early readers and writers to learn Spanish, French and English.
Kids will have a blast unlocking new levels, earning crowns, and playing with our friendly animated characters – all while learning a new language! Our lessons teach sentences and expressions that kids can apply in their everyday lives so they can get a head start developing their bilingual abilities.
■ WE SAY: Kids will learn better if they’re playing a game, and no one does gamified learning quite as well as Duolingo. Its app for kids offers a streamlined number of languages – French, Spanish and English are the only options.
But the unlocking of new levels by completing games and challenges will have them picking up the basics in no time.
■ COST: Free 3 THE HUMAN BODY BY TINYBOP (IOS, Android, Amazon)
■ THEY SAY: Learn anatomy and biology in an interactive model of the human body — the heart beats, guts gurgle, lungs breathe, the skin feels, and eyes see. The Human Body has been downloaded more than eight million times and has reached the #1 spot on the App Store’s education charts in 144 countries.
Discover detailed, interactive models of the heart, brain, eye, stomach, mouth, and much more.
Feed the body, make it run and breathe, assemble and pull apart a skeleton, see how the eye sees, watch sound vibrations travel through the ear canal, and more.
■ WE SAY: The Human Body is a great app to reveal the inner workings of people to children. And it has the added side-effect of making them more aware of why they should take care of their bodies.
There are very detailed interactive systems explained in the app – skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, immune, and integumentary (skin) systems.
While it’s not a game as such – there are no levels to unlock or complete – you are rewarded for your curiosity.
The app is just one of a whole range of beautifully made apps from Tinybop that are well worth investigating in full – from the Earth to space, from the weather to plants, there is a lot of learning to be done.
■ COST: £3.99
4 MIMO (IOS, Android, Amazon)
■ THEY SAY: Learning to code can be easy and fun. Build apps and websites, or even become a developer.
With a game-like, science-backed learning experience, Mimo is the world’s most effective way to pick up coding. Mimo creates your personalised learning path of bite-size exercises that fit into your daily routine and keep you motivated.
You can code, too: join more than six million coders and get programming! Master the most popular programming languages in the world – HTML, CSS, and Javascript, Python, Java, Swift, C++, SQL, PHP, and lots more!
■ WE SAY: Mimo isn’t aimed directly at children – it’s an app that allows all ages to tackle the challenge of coding, but is best for older children as some of the languages taught can get complicated quickly, and some of the concepts are tricky to grasp.
However, even the younger children can tackle the simpler languages and make websites and games. It’s a great resource, and one that will build skills that will be useful whatever path your children take later in life.
■ COST: £7.99/month; 59.99/year (one month free trial available).
5 DROPLETS: DROPS FOR KIDS (IOS, Android, Amazon)
■ THEY SAY: Droplets is an interactive learning platform for children developed by the team behind Drops. Let Droplets help your children take their first steps in learning new languages!
All the words in the app are accompanied by colourful and easy-to-remember illustrations.
Pronunciation is also given priority. Every word is voiced by a professional actor who is also a native speaker of the language.
■ WE SAY: Droplets is another language-learning app, but offers a much broader range of languages than Duolingo – 37 to be precise.
It’s a simplified version of the Drops app for adults, and is aimed at children of ages seven to 16.
There are more than 100 topics covered, from food to family and back again, and the visual learning system is a proven way to master the basics.
■ COST: £9.99/ month; £67.99/year; £139.99/lifetime.