Summer screen time learning options
As we approach Independence Day, many students are still celebrating freedom from school, but if restlessness and boredom have set in, offer these screen time learning options.
Young kids learning to read can enjoy hundreds of interactive stories and songs with Speakaboos. If the goal is turning children’s screen time into reading time, then try the free app. The read along word highlighting helps build vocabulary. Active participation in reading is fostered with the touch screen interactivity and animations that enhance comprehension. The 2-6 year olds it was designed for will benefit from content that is available offline and added to each week.
Another engaging reading program, Itzazoo, gets kids interested in reading with zoo animal games. Talk bubbles of zoo animals communicate with the reader. Students can draw their own artwork for the animals which get animated and incorporated into the game. Inside the zoo exhibit, friendly animals are ready to play starting with the lion. Students draw objects which are magically incorporated into their game.
Reading helps develop good writers. Storybird uses professional images to inspire storytellers of all ages to get their creative juices flowing. It’s a publishing platform with millions of users around the world. It includes how-to guides that teach about writing powerful page turners and dynamic dialogue. Tips for creating colorful characters and epic endings will enhance your child’s composition skills.
Keyboarding helps foster students’ writing abilities because it speeds up the drafting process by skipping the handwritten portion. A free touch typing program called Typing Club helps learn home row keys which increases typing speed and makes composing easier. Hundreds of games, tests and videos make it a fun learning opportunity for kids seven and up.
Spongebob Squarepants Typing offers home row typing skills in the Bikini Bottom Typing Tournament as well as several games with mazes and races. This fun gaming format helps students become familiar with the keyboard as well as practice capital letters, numbers, and punctuation.
Dreambox Learning Math is an elementary educational math game that adjusts to your child’s math competency as they play. The online games do not require downloading, and it regularly updates to parents’ about student progress via email. As a leader in educational technology solutions this program has won 2 prestigious awards this year.
The Prodigy Math game uses an avatar to solve math problems that adapt to student skill levels. Players earn rewards such as spells to defeat monsters. The games practice the four operations plus fractions, functions, geometry and probability. This adventure style game keeps kids practicing a variety of math concepts because they have to solve problems to progress in the game.
Besides the traditional reading, writing and math options, students should try computer programming. With over half a million open jobs requiring computing skills in our country, more programmers are needed. Computer science drives innovation, but less than 50,000 computer science students graduated last year. Only 40% of schools teach computer programing.
Approximately one fourth of US students have an account on CODE.ORG. This program offers a one hour tutorial with online courses for elementary, high school and university students. Try a new Minecraft game, program droids in Star Wars, create ice with Anna and Elsa from Frozen, or do an Angry Bird maze. Each theme offers a sequence of activities that build the steps to programming.
Codespark is another popular app to teach coding that is geared for kids 4-9. They learn basic programming without words using self-guided puzzles. Interactive learning activities include step-by-step creative projects, game design and puzzles.
Use summer vacation time to help your child become fluent in another language. Babbel is a free app that helps users practice new languages and offers 14 different ones. The speech recognition feature helps with pronunciation and allows interactive dialogues to build speaking confidence.
Summer vacation can be fun and educational if screen time is turned into a learning opportunity. Parents can offer reading, writing, math plus keyboarding and coding opportunities that stimulate their child’s thinking by trying some of theses excellent tech driven educational programs.