A Brand That Makes People Smile
friendlymonkey.com is fun, friendly, and ready for a toy shop, kids’ app, or quirky brand.
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How do you like our app icon? Developed in collaboration with wonderful @wikacyapp ! Carmel-crusader is on the mission to help children and not only children in the Carmel app! All you need to do now is stay tuned for the live release!
Rate the power of this image on 1-10!
👉Share to spread the power IG therapy dogs!
[Image description: Edit showing a golden doodle as a knight]
#dogapproved #appsstore #appsiphone #appsforkids #appdesign #goldendoodle #goldendoodlesofinstagram #knight #crusader #crusaders #publishinghouse (at Upstate N.Y)
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Work on the new stage in progress, Colorland Coloring game with forest scene and first deer animation😅
Colorland: Kids Coloring and Animals Sounds is educational and entertainment easy to use game for kids and toddlers. Farm, Zoo and soon Forest scenes with many animals, sounds and coloring pages.
#colorlandkidscoloring #coloring #appsforkids #appfortoddlers #educationalappsforkids #colorland #cartoonanimals #gamesforkids
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Give yourself a moment of rest and let your child have fun in Colorland 🌈
Colorland Kids Coloring is 100% ads free and safe for your child!
🚨App link in bio
#appsforkids #androidapp #colorland #coloringbook #drawingforkids #coloringbookforkids #animalsounds #cartoonanimals #colorlandkidscoloring
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New update with chalk board👩🏫🐵 Test Colorland: Coloring and Sounds for Kids🌈 Google play link in bio⚓
#colorland #kezenga #appsforkids #gamesforkids #coloring #drawingforkids #chalkboardart #chalkboard #indiegamedev
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I need some kids friendly apps for my preteen and teen girls. They are looking for educational #appsforkids If you know of any math or algebra ones comment below.. nice games are welcome too 😊
Details about the #hairstylesforgirls : simple bun and ponytail styled post #twistout.
#discoveringnatural
(at Houston, Texas)
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Tested: Krakeln
#Developer: Claus Schunk
#Website: https://krakeln.eu/
#Purchase: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/krakeln/id1337094156?mt=8
#Version: 1.1
#Cost: Free to play Demo, $0.99 to unlock all levels (at time of review)
Please note that we received a donation to review this released app.
#Support: Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
#Size: 40.3 MB
#Screenshots:
#Developers Description
The family-friendly child’s play for pre-school age without advertising!
Playful family game for learning letters, words and pictures.
The free multilingual app is designed to allow older children to learn foreign languages or to grow up in a bilingual environment.
The child-friendly application is characterised by the fact that there is no advertising in the application and complicated operation has been dispensed with.
A special feature are the ascending water bubbles with all elements of a level. The bubbles can be brought to bursting, so a lot of fun is pre-programmed.
Playful learning is suitable for primary school or preschool. Full offline capability eliminates the need for an active Internet connection during game play
Accompany Krakel on a journey with many adventures. There are some surprises waiting for you on your way. You will know them when they appear.
You will be able to name them when you see them.
But the most important thing is - you will learn to literally describe them.
Alone or together with your parents you will learn how to use the alphabet in a playful way. If it’s too boring for you, you can prove what other language you’ve got. Soon you’ll be playing in a league with the big players and maybe you’ll learn something from them soon. Be ready, face the challenge and be ahead of others.
#The Review
Krakeln is a fun way to help your child with spelling in a super friendly ‘no-pressure’ environment. 16 great levels covering all aspects of life (Food, Clothes, Farm Animals, Sea Creatures, Music, Jobs, Transport, Household objects, Bugs, Safari, Wildlife, Colours, Vegetables and Fruit) with lots of recognisable visual clues to help the child solve the puzzles. The child gets to take their time, and if they make a mistake, it simply highlights the incorrect letter by flashing ‘red’ and allows the child to try again, thus building up to the answer, and seeing the finished word. At the end of the level, the child is presented with pictures in cute little bubbles for them to pop, before moving on to the next set of word puzzles.
The great thing about this spelling app is that it supports English and 3 other popular foreign languages (French, Spanish and German). The child is able to toggle to the country of choice and select and attempt the same puzzle sets. A heads up, parents will definitely get a chance to test their own language skills, whilst assisting their child to help with the translations. if all else fails, the child can work through the spelling in a trial and error wy, where the child benefits from seeing the completed word alongside the picture, which provides great language learning.
#The Test
This app was thoroughly enjoyed ‘lots’ by Poppy, and was a great way to challenge her spelling, which definitely needs improving. She enjoyed playing through all the levels over and over again, each level having a large set of cute illustrations with all the required letters available, yet all jumbled up, ready for her to solve the puzzle.
Poppy found the English words fairly easy, but there was definitely lots of challenging and fairly long words mixed within the sets. One of the best features of the app is that each time you load the puzzle set, you get a different order of the words, which provides a more enjoyable experience.
Now trying the foreign languages was a different story for both of us! I never was a great languages student, and we both had to focus hard to build out the words, and this is an area where the app definitely needs a helpful little feature adding that would highlight clues, like the ‘starting letter of the word’, as this was something that we struggled with German and Spanish.
Poppy found herself playing mainly in English, especially if I wasn’t there to help. Her favourite set of puzzles were what she called ‘under the sea’, which included lots of favourites (Sharks, Mermaids and Whales).
In its current form, the app is great, however, we would love to see the ability to toggle through the languages during play or even to be able to toggle the language of the completed word, allowing the child to complete the word ‘Monkey’ in English, and then have the ability to display the word in French ‘singe’. That said it didn’t take anything away from our experience and Poppy’s enjoyment. I felt that the app was a big hit!
#The Verdict
‘Krakln’, a wonderful word puzzle app for pre-schoolers.
#The Rating
Overall: 5/5
Look & Feel: 5/5 - Delightful pictures and pleasing themes
Enjoyment: 5/5 - The ‘no-pressure’ environment and simple interface really encouraged repeat play with varying levels of difficulty.
Playability: 5/5 - Easy for your child to navigate and plenty of sets and images to choose from.
Value for Money: 5/5 - This app is ‘free’ to play with a great demo, and only 99c to unlock all the levels.
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Choices, choices! Clothes shopping in Heart Street Market on the iPad
#appsforkids #kidsapps #heartstreetmarket #ipad #ios #kidapps
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How to keep the kids entertained on a road trip
Image: Getty Images
If you have had family road trips, you will know how tough it is to keep children entertained on the road. The relentless ‘Are we almost there’” question could test the most fun-loving parents. Kids love to think out of the box, and confining them to a few hours on the road can really test their patience, as well as yours.
Here are 4 methods that can help you make the next road trip a fun experience for every member of the family:
1. Create an art kit
Children usually love to draw and be creative, so anything that involves colour pencils and paper is a huge winner. To create this kit, you just need a DVD cover, cut a piece of paper to fit into the left side of the case. On the right side of the case, you can place all the colouring equipment with a rubber band. You can also create a jewellery making kit, with beads and strings. Don’t forget to make it fun, use coloured paper and get stickers, however, stay away from anything that can make too much of a mess in your car.
Image: stacyvaughnblog.blogspot
2. Hourly gifts and treats
Wrapping up gifts to give by the hour, helps entertain them and gives them something to look forward to by the hour. You can also use it as a time indicator. For instance, if you have five gifts, this helps them estimate the length of the trip without having to explain too often. This can also make a beautiful visual story for your road trips snaps. Nothing too expensive needs to be presented, little toys, action figures, comic books, a chocolate bar or a cheap barbie doll etc.
Image:taradennis.com
3. A car charger and Apps
Tablets loaded with your kids favourite Apps is guaranteed to keep your kids entertained. You can keep it educational with Apps as well as e-books. The great thing is that most apps can now be used offline if data is a huge concern…so don’t forget your car charger.
Image:coolmomtech.com
4. Comfort goes a long way
It’s important to note an infant must be placed in a safe, rear-facing car seat. Having a parent or an older sibling next to the baby is a good idea because sometimes having someone to look at, is enough to help from restlessness. Making sure there are sunscreens for the windows, and lots of liquid to keep them hydrated. Food packed neatly in a cooler box will make sure food isn’t a dull experience, no more sloppy tomato or hot bread. You could even ask them to draw up their own menu, to avoid complaints.
Image: Amazon.com
Don’t forget to make the holidays a special treat for your loved ones, the true adventure is spending time with those we love - no matter how messy your car may get!
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I am playing connect the dots right now. Oh my goodness, there is really an app for everything
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Free Friday! Check out our website to download your Free Apps today! #linkinbio👉💻 #freefriday #freeapps #kidapproved #mommyapproved #didyousayfree #freebies #kidapps #appsforkids
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No time for Hide & Seek, chatting to my buddies!
Poppy playing @mobokids Hide & Seek ~ Rated 10/10 by #fourlittletesters
#kidsapps #appsforkids #mobokids #ipad #apple
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Have you Checked out Build A Word- Easy Spelling with Phonics App? It Teaches children letters as well as how to combine letters into word! Link in Bio! #learningapps #appsforkids #kidapps #freeapp #educationalapps #phonicsfun #downloadnow #jumpstart #buildingfoundations #smartappsforkids
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Playing with fairies at Castell Coch! We had some technical difficulties but finally managed to find the flying fairies on the digital trail around the castle. Mixed feelings about this- on one hand it engaged a thrown together community of excited kids, “have you found the fairy in here yet?” And got young and older kids ( we mostly saw girls doing it) walking around a historic building, but on the other it missed a great opportunity to hunt the real treasure of the beautiful illustrations on the walls, frogs, foxes. Kids using both the audio tour and app trail would have a good exploratory experience but the fairy alone missed the opportunity of learning about history, and getting kids really looking at, for example, piecing together the life of Lord Bute through his bedroom. #appsforkids #castellcoch #cardiff #littleartberlin #littleartonholiday #fairytrail #familieurlaub #familyholiday #castleswithkids #castle #digitalkids #kidsapp #exploringwales #zeitfurfamilie #hauptstadtmitkind
(at Castell Coch)
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Geek Dad races into the season with the new NASCAR Acceleration Nation App #ad
Geek Dad races into the season with the new NASCAR Acceleration Nation App #adThis is a sponsored post about the new NASCAR Acceleration Nation app and website. Dadtography was compensated for publishing this post. The opinions in this post are 100% authentic.
Mine is a family with a long history of a love for motorsports. My dad, my uncle and even my late grandmother followed NASCAR with an…
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Google Forms Question by Question Grading
ISTE 2017
The ISTE conference never disappoints. It is a great opportunity to be oriented with great pedagogy, new technologies, and awesome people to build up your personal learning network. As far as GSuite for Education news goes, one of the awesome additions is the ability to do question by question grading in Google Forms. Forms have certainly transitioned much in the last year or so with an entirely new makeover, the edition of quizzes, automatic grading, and now the ability to grade question by question. It is a small update, but it is mighty in the sense that it fills a void that people have desired since the built-in quizzes debuted.
Question by Question Grading
In the previous version of Google Forms quizzes, multiple choice and short answer questions could be graded automatically. The short answer has some issues of being unreliable. If a student spells a response incorrectly or add/misses capitalization, the answer is automatically counted as incorrect. This would cause the teacher to have to go into each individual response, scroll the specific question, and reevaluate the response. This is especially time-consuming. Now the teacher has the ability to look at that specific question and analyze every student’s response. The teacher can then quickly adjust grades by simply selecting the green check-mark to accept a response; all other responses can be left as is. This is also handy if partial credit is necessary. If a question is worth two points and a student is on the right track, the teacher can simply add a single point to that response.
The most important scenario as to why question by question grading is important in Google Forms quizzes is in the case of an extended response. To get a more accurate measure of a student’s learning, multi-faceted and reflective questions are necessary. These types of questions obviously require more time. The best way to assess these types of question is to focus on one question at a time instead of looking at the student’s entire quiz. It saves time for the teacher to have a specific focus while analyzing responses. The question by question feature allows the teacher to accomplish just that.
Most people are hands-on and would rather jump right in and start trying this feature. You can find it in the exact same place as where the quizzes already exist. You’ll see the option in the same place teachers could view student individual responses…
If you prefer to see it in action first, I made a practice quiz and a quick demonstration of how the viewing of questions can be an asset to you.
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Be Internet Awesome with Google
Digital Citizenship
Great resources for teaching students to be Internet savvy are here! It is a necessity to be smart about security and digital footprint conscious. We are molding the future of Internet users each and every day. It doesn’t matter if you are in a 1:1 technology environment, have carts of devices you wheel into your classroom, or if you take your students to the computer lab once a week, training students to be wise online is a part of what we do.
Google just launched a new site with more opportunities for students and teachers alike. If you visit beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com, users can access a wide range of resources.
Interland
Interland is an online game for elementary students to navigate through some of the tough questions we face with the troubles of the Internet. As students navigate through Interland, they explore the concepts of being kind online, secure passwords, information protection, and being Internet savvy. Each world focuses on a different area of being Internet awesome. The worlds are as follows:
Kind Kingdom
Students should be aware that what they say online can affect others. Online bullies should be reported or blocked to create a safe environment for others. This world consists of the user spreading positive messages to others and taking action when bullies are present.
Reality River
There are a lot of schemes and tricks online to get your to give up personal information and/or buy unwanted services. Being aware that these advertisements and schemes exist will help students to think twice before clicking on them. This world has a series of scenarios where these schemes exist and make the best choice.
Mindful Mountain
Being conscious of what you share with whom you share is important. Not all information is necessary for the whole world to see. This world runs the user through a series of scenarios and causes him/her to question what information should be shared and with whom.
Tower of Treasure
Password security is important. Users should change their passwords often to keep data secure. They should also utilize a series of upper and lower case letters along with numbers and symbols. The users collect letters, numbers, and symbols to build a secure password.
Resources for Teachers
Curriculum
Along with Interland for students, there are also great resources for teachers. Interland shouldn’t be used in isolation. The information in the game will not be very meaningful unless there is deeper content taught in conjunction with the game. There is an online curriculum (that can be downloaded) that has a series of lessons and activities to go through with your students. The students should be discussing online safety and their digital footprint to make it meaningful.
Teacher Training Course
Google is also offering a Digital Citizenship and Safety Course for teachers. To complete the course, the teacher must read through content, watch a few short videos, and answer questions pertaining to online safety. It would be good for all teachers to go through this content. I found it to be beneficial as reminders of things I should be doing to make sure my information is kept secure.
MSDSC Teachers
If you are a teacher in my school district, please complete the course. If you do so and receive your certificate of completion, forward it to me via email and I will send you a certificate for two Professional Growth Points.
What’s in the Video
The video below gives an overview of where to find all the contents listed in this blog post. I go through how to access Interland, the online safety curriculum, and the teacher training course. So check it out and be Internet awesome!
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The weird and wacky world of The Creature Garden is out now!! Create your own creature, test their traits, then release them into a world you can peraonalise 💓🐆🐂🐫🐇💩🌿🌴☀️☄. I’ve been working on this app @tinybop for some time now and am so excited to finally see it born. Massive thanks to Raul, Diva, Leah, Jessie, @jeanellemak and all the Tinybop team who worked on this. What an amazing team and company to work for. If you have kids or are a big kid yourself then please download this check out this app. #iosapps #appsforkids #appillustrations #appstore #creaturegarden
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Storytelling Slides
A Great Podcast
I’m always on the lookout for a great podcast. If I’m traveling to and from work or if I have a long drive to a conference or workshop, a podcast is a great way to make the most of my time. Just over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the Bam Radio Network and the great options they have available in short, 10-minute podcast sessions. I didn’t list the session there, but Matt Miller (Ditch that Textbook) had a great series by the title: Hook ‘em! He has since moved on to a much longer platform and has teamed up with Kasey Bell (Shake Up Learning). This one is the Google Teacher Tribe. If you have 45 minutes to give it a listen, I’d highly recommend it. My favorite times are while I’m driving or going for a run. It is a simple way for me to make the most of my time.
Last week, I was attending the IGNITE conference Lafayette, IN. Since this was a 2.5-hour drive, I was able to listen to quite a few podcasts and catch up on the Google Teacher Tribe. The session that sparked my thinking was one specifically on digital storytelling. Kasey and Matt spoke quite a bit on various tools, but the one that stood out to me most was using Google Slides. My mind immediately went to Slides because of a couple of more recent posts I did featuring the newer video options contained in Google Slides. Google Slides would make for a great platform for digital stories by using the trimming and autoplay in the video options.
Workflow
In order for students to successfully create a digital story, they really need to be accustomed to using Google Slides and Screencastify. It is helpful if students know how to manipulate shapes, images, and utilize animations fluently so that the story can be enhanced. With Screencastify, I find it to be most helpful if students know how to fluently use the keyboard shortcut (alt+shift+R) to start and stop recording. Have students practice using these skills with other projects before expecting them to build a full-blown digital story. You and your students will be more pleased with the results if they know the tools well.
In my video below, I demonstrate how to quickly record, insert video, and trim appropriately to meet the story needs. By turning on autoplay, the audio of the file will start immediately when the Slides are in presentation mode. Here is the breakdown of the steps:
My Story
The story I created is in the video tutorial, but in case you want to view the published version, I’ll include the link here. I chose to not embed it because it would automatically start playing the audio when you all visit this post. That brings flashbacks of those terrible midi songs that would start playing on all of the Angelfire or Geocities websites from the 90’s. Anyone else remember those days?