12 Great Social Studies Apps for Elementary Students

May 22, 2017
This is the seventh post is a series of posts covering educational iPad apps to use with elementary students. We are trying to build a repository of good apps elementary students and teachers can easily  access and use in their learning and instruction. To learn more about the previous posts we have published so far check out this section. Today's collection features a number of useful apps to use with young learners when teaching social studies. These apps, which we curated from iTunes App Collections, cover 3 main themes: Geography, History and World Cultures. Check them out and share with us your feedback.

Links to the apps are under the visual.


1- Kids Planet Discovery
‘Kids Planet Discovery sends kids off on virtual adventures around Planet Earth, giving them the chance to learn about cultures, animals, music, dress, geography, and more.’

2- Geo Walk
‘Geo Walk is a world fact book about animals, plants, historical events,famous people and inventions. All articles can be explored in a fun way by traveling across the globe and learning where the building is, or where the natural habitat of an animal is, or where a famous person lived.’

3- Barefoot World Atlas
‘Barefoot World Atlas puts the world at your children’s fingertips! With this incredible app, anyone can fly around the magical, interactive 3D globe and discover the rich wonders of our planet. ’

4- Stack the States
‘As you learn state capitals, shapes, geographic locations, flags and more, you can actually touch, move and drop the animated states anywhere on the screen. Carefully build a stack of states that reaches the checkered line to win each level.’

5- World Book
‘This Day in History for iPad is an interactive multimedia calendar that displays historical events for the current day or any selected day, along with related media such as photos, illustrations, music, and speeches.’

6- History Today
‘History Today is an encyclopedia of news stories for what happened on this day in history throughout the US and world.’

7- Britannica Kids: US Presidents
‘Britannica Kids: U.S. Presidents takes young learners on a fun and educational meet-and-greet with the 44 U.S. presidents.’

8- US Geography With Flat Stanley HD
‘Master state geographic locations, capitals, flags, spelling, and see photos from each state. Learning all 50 states has never been this fun! Perfect for kids ages 4-12.’

9- Stack the Countries
‘Stack the Countries® makes learning about the world fun! Watch the countries actually come to life in this colorful and dynamic game!’

10- BrainPOP Jr. Movie of the Week
‘Bring learning to your fingertips™ with the BrainPOP Jr.® Movie of the Week app for the iPad®, iPhone®, and iPod touch®. Get a different animated movie every week and check out related quizzes and educational activities - free!’

11- Social Studies Friendzy
‘Learn Social Studies with our K - 8th grade Social Studies games app! Test your knowledge on the US Presidents, US states and capitals, US government and history, US citizenship and immigration, and so much more! We feature the top 100 students every day!’

12- Thud! Presidents 
‘To win at THUD!, you'll need more than a head stuffed with facts. Each level is a tricky puzzle where you must carefully balance and stack your answers... or it all comes crashing down!’

12 Useful Apps to Help Elementary Students Improve Their Spelling

May 19, 2017
A few weeks ago we started a section here in EdTech & mLearning dedicated entirely to iPad apps to use with elementary students; check it out to see the resources we have published so far. Today we are adding another useful resource featuring a number of interesting iPad apps to help young learners improve their spelling. These include engaging games and challenging activities to assist elementary students rapidly learn correct spelling and enhance their writing. Have a look at the titles we curated for you from iTunes App Store and share with us your feedback.

Links to the apps are under the visual.

1- Word Wagon
‘Word Wagon is a fun, award-winning app teaching letters, phonics and spelling. Based on Common Core State Standards kids will learn letter names, sounds and spelling of 4 and 6 letter words. AGES: 2-6.’

2- Alpha Writer
‘Utilizing fun and unique illustrations, your child will practice writing and reading, in a series of self-directed and engaging activities. Start with phonetics and then proceed to phonograms!’

3- Spellosaur
‘Spellosaur makes learning their words more fun with a set of games to help progressively learn each spelling - listen and choose the correct word, complete the word by adding the missing letters, plus re-arrange the letters to make the word.’

4- Simplex Spelling Phonics
‘Simplex Spelling is one of the best ways to improve English spelling and reading skills. Using a powerful combination of phonics lessons, spelling/word patterns, syllabication, our unique “reverse phonics” (phonics encoding) approach and contextually relevant spelling rules.’

5- Kids Learning
‘Little Speller is an exciting interactive game that helps your child rapidly learn to read, write, and spell words all with just the touch of their finger. The interface is so easy to use that even a 9 month old baby will delight in moving their first letters around the page. Ideal for ages 0 to 6.’

6- Rocket Speller PLUS
‘Kids join Zip the alien on an out-of-this-world spelling adventure to build a new rocket ship. They'll spell words to help him fly to 3 different planets and collect the rocket pieces he needs. The game ends when they launch their fancy new rocket into space and steer it through a short star-collecting mini-game.’

7- Simplex Spelling HD
‘Simplex Spelling improves English spelling and reading skills in a fun and interactive way by combining a unique “reverse phonics” approach with contextually relevant spelling rules that explain why words are spelled in a particular manner. It works like a personal spelling coach with every word.’

8- Build A Word
‘The underlying pedagogical methodology for this application is to teach students letters as well as to teach them how to combine letters into words. A student is offered either/both a visual prompt or/and audio prompt to "write" a word. The word is to be ‘written’ by dragging appropriate letters one at a time in the designated slot in the correct order. Success is rewarded by a short fun game.’

9- Spell + Friends
‘Spell + Friends is the one app for school bees, regional bees, and for anyone aspiring to the highest ranks of the National Spelling Bee.  It contains over 2,000 words in 3 categories with clear and crisp pronunciations, definitions and etymology.’

10- SpellBoard
‘SpellBoard allows you to create any spelling quiz in any language. That's right, you could even use this for your Spanish class! SpellBoard adds fun activities to your custom spelling lists. Including Word Search, Word Scramble, Alphabetize, Word/Sentence Matching, and Missing Letter puzzles.’

11- Word Wizard
‘Word Wizard offers several unique reading and spelling activities for children ages four to 10’

12- Happi & The Pirates
‘Use your spell-power to uncover treasure chest keys. Rely on your deductive skills to unlock troves for the tools you need to search Pirate Island for clues to the final puzzle.’

10 Essential Apps to Help Elementary Students Learn Grammar

May 17, 2017
Learning grammar can be more fun for students if it is taught through the use of interactive games and activities that both entertain and challenge students linguistic skills. Below are some popular iPad apps you can use with your younger learners to improve their grammatical skills. From learning about pronouns and punctuation marks to mastering the use of adjectives and superlative forms, these apps offer a wide variety of educational materials in the form of videos, lessons, guides, games, animated stories and many more so students can not only learn grammar but have fun while doing so. (links of the apps are under the visual)



1- Grammaropolis
‘Grammaropolis uses the parts of speech as animated characters whose personalities are based on the roles they play in the sentence.’

2- Grammar For Kids
‘A perfect app for kids to practice the 8 parts of speech: Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Adverb, Verb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection.’

3- Practice English Grammar
‘Improve your English grammar now with more than 1000 questions, 750+ flashcards and 100+ games. Learning by doing & tracking your progress!’

4- Grammar Hammer 7-10
‘Grammar Hammer lets kids find and fix grammar and spelling mistakes embedded in entertaining, illustrated stories. They are proofreading and editing these stories, while gaining skills they will use for the rest of their lives.’

5- English Grammar Punctuation Marks Game
‘The English Grammar Punctuation Marks Game lets you practice identifying different punctuation marks and how to properly use them.’

6- Grammar Fun Free
‘Grammar Fun allows kids of all ages to learn correct grammar by matching grammatical constructs to the corresponding words in a sentence. A child friendly interface makes this a fun filled activity.’

7- iGE: the interactive Grammar of English from UCL
‘The interactive Grammar of English (iGE) is a comprehensive introductory course in English grammar which takes you from the most basic elements to the most complex constructions.’

8- Practice English Grammar
‘Improve your English grammar now with more than 1000 questions, 750+ flashcards and 100+ games. Learning by doing & tracking your progress!’

9- SentenceBuilder for iPad
‘SentenceBuilder™ is designed to help elementary aged children learn how to build grammatically correct sentences. Explicit attention is paid to the connector words that make up over 80% of the English​ language. Sentence Builder offers a rich and fun environment for improving the grammar of all children.’

10- The Pronoun Party
‘Learn pronouns in four different Levels! For each level, the child can choose one of four games to play; the party, the beach, the bedroom and the park.’

11- Grammar Dragon
‘The grammar dragon has captured all of your friends from the castle. You must rescue a different person on each level by correctly identifying various parts of speech.’

12- Grammar Wonderland
‘Fly, swim, feed, and toss your way to grammar mastery. Who knew grammar practice could be so much fun? Lead your character through many wonderful adventures as you practice using nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more! ’

Some Excellent Digital Storytelling Apps for Elementary Students

May 16, 2017
Creating and sharing digital stories is a great way to engage students in a wide variety of literacy-related activities in class. To this end, we curated for you this collection of some of our favourite apps to engage elementary students in digital storytelling tasks.  The apps are simple and easy to use and provide learners with various materials and tools to help them create and enjoy what they create. As always, share with us your feedback in our Facebook page. For more apps for elementary students, check out this page.

Links to the features apps are under the visual.



1- Story Dice - ideas for writers
‘Story Dice is a creative writing prompt tool to come up with ideas for plot, character, and setting. It can be used for both written and oral storytelling.’

2- Kid in Story Book Maker
‘Create and share customized picture storybooks with photos of your child or others as the main character! Created by award-winning app designers, Kid in Story Book Maker makes it easy and fun to create visual stories to support learning, social modeling, and early literacy for all children.’

3- Tell About This
‘Tell About This is an easy platform to inspire and capture children's thoughts and stories! They will love to explore and respond to any of the 100 interesting photo prompts using their voice. Craft custom prompts and add profiles to personalize the experience! Simple save/share options.’

4- Pictello
‘Everyone loves to tell fun, engaging, and imaginative stories. Go ahead and make a social story or visual schedule for a child with autism or a slide show of holiday pictures for your friends’

5- Little Bird Tales
‘Kids all over the world are using the Little Bird Tales app to create their own stories, podcasts, presentations, journals and to share vacation photos.’

6- ChatterPix Kids
‘Grab your camera! Let’s ChatterPix! Chatterpix Kids can make anything talk -- pets, friends, doodles, and more. Simply take any photo, draw a line to make a mouth, and record your voice.’

7- StoryKit
‘Create an electronic storybook. Make use of the little gaps in life - on the sofa after dinner, in the back seat of the car, or on a train - to do something creative together.’

8- Story Creator
‘With Story Creator you can easily create beautiful story books containing photos, videos, text, and audio all in one gorgeous collection. Story Creator truly brings your best stories to life and easily allows you to retell and share your most memorable moments.’

9- Little Story Maker
‘Little Story Maker offers a magical way to enjoy your personal pictures and stories with your child. The little ones will love to hear stories with pictures of people and places they are familiar with.  Older kids, will love the stories and the ability to easily create stories all on their own. ’

10- Shadow Puppet Edu
‘Easily create videos in the classroom! Students as young as five can make videos to tell stories, explain ideas, or document their learning. 30+ lesson ideas supporting Common Core make it easy to get started!’

11- My Story Book Creator School Edition
‘Storytelling is a fantastic way to promote literacy, comprehension, creative thinking, and self-driven learning. My Story is an amazing way to engage your K-5 students.’

12- Tellagami
‘A Gami can be an exciting tweet or status update. It can be a fun way to tell a story. It can be a thank you message or a vacation postcard. It can be a birthday greeting, party invite or cool way to share photos. The possibilities are endless.’

12 Good iPad Writing Apps for Elementary Students

May 16, 2017
Based on your recommendation, we went ahead and curated for you this collection of some good iPad apps you can use with your elementary students to help them with their writing. From  providing them with smart writing prompts to creating digital  stories using a wide variety of multimedia materials, these apps will absolutely engage young learners in productive writing activities.  We invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback. Links to the apps are under the visual. Enjoy



1- Book Creator for iPad
‘Book Creator is the simple way to make your own beautiful ebooks, right on your iPad.With over 30 million ebooks created so far, Book Creator is ideal for making all kinds of books, including children's picture books, comic books, photo books, journals, textbooks and more.’

2- Tell About This
‘Tell About This is an easy platform to inspire and capture children's thoughts and stories! They will love to explore and respond to any of the 100 interesting photo prompts using their voice. Craft custom prompts and add profiles to personalize the experience! Simple save/share options.’

3- SpakleFish
‘With SparkleFish you can record creative words in your own voice for playback inside surprising, ad-lib stories. If you enjoy Mad Libs, then you’ll really love SparkleFish. It’s fun for all ages, species, individuals, groups, etc.’

4- Pictello
‘Everyone loves to tell fun, engaging, and imaginative stories. Go ahead and make a social story or visual schedule for a child with autism or a slide show of holiday pictures for your friends’

5- Sago Mini Doodlecast
‘Sago Mini Doodlecast is a unique drawing app that records your voice as you draw. Capture every stroke, word and giggle. Perfect for children ages 2-6. Play back your drawings and share them with friends and family.’

6- Jumbled Sentences 3
‘Jumbled Sentences' series is designed for beginners to improve their writing skills. This app offers an easy and interactive way for beginners to learn the word order in a fun way’

7- iTooch 5th Grade
‘With more than 1,590 exercises, iTooch Language Arts Grade 5 is a new and fun way of practicing and learning Language Arts for 5th Graders.’

8- Writing Prompts for Kids
‘Boost students' creative writing skills with writing prompts that will spark their imaginations. This writing prompt generator is quick and easy to use; your students will have an inspiring writing topic in seconds.’

9- Little Story Maker
‘Little Story Maker offers a magical way to enjoy your personal pictures and stories with your child. The little ones will love to hear stories with pictures of people and places they are familiar with. Older kids, will love the stories and the ability to easily create stories all on their own.’

10- SpellBoard
‘SpellBoard provides a fast and intuitive way for you to enter your list of spelling words. All you need to do is enter the word (correctly spelled) and the grade level.’

11- Shake-a-Phrase
‘Shake-a-Phrase is a fun language app for creative writing prompts, vocabulary, and parts of speech practice. Perfect for learning and laughing in the classroom or on-the-go, it features over 2,000 words and definitions in 5 engaging themes for ages 8+.’

12- Little Writer
‘Little Writer is a tracing app that's done just right. Little Writer is super fun and so easy to use that your kids will think letter tracing is a game vs. a boring chore.’

12 Good Coding Apps for Elementary Students

May 15, 2017
In response to a request from one of our readers, here is a collection of some of the best iPad apps you can use with your elementary students to introduce and teach them coding and programming. This selection is based on our previous reviews as well as on the popularity of these apps among teachers and educators. You can also check this infographic featuring 12 excellent books designed specifically to help kids in their code learning journey. Links of the apps are under the visual. Enjoy



1- Kodable
‘Award-winning coding curriculum for kids! Kodable is designed to teach computer science to elementary students grades K-5 (Ages 4-11).’

2- Hopscotch
‘Learn to code by making things you enjoy playing. Our award-winning block-based language was built from the ground up to be used on your touchscreen iOS device. With Hopscotch, you get a blank canvas for your imagination, a community filled with inspiration, and an audience to begin using your products the moment you publish them’

3- Daisy the Dinosaur
‘Learn the basics of coding with Daisy the Dinosaur…This free, fun app has an easy drag & drop interface that kids of all ages can use to animate Daisy and make her dance on their screen. Kids will intuitively grasp the basics of objects, sequencing, loops and events by solving this app's challenges.’

4- Lightbot Junior 
‘Lightbot Junior is specifically designed for ages 4-8, and is an easier version of the popular Lightbot: featuring a gentler learning curve and not-as-complex puzzles. You can play as Boybot or Girlbot as you solve puzzles that use game mechanics that are based on Computer Science ideas…’

5- ScratchJr
‘With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) learn important new skills as they program their own interactive stories and games.’

6- codeSpark Academy
‘codeSpark Academy teaches the basics of computer programming through a variety of interactive learning activities including puzzles, games, step-by-step creative projects, game design and offline printables – all of which can be monitored by parents.’

7- Move The Turtle
‘Move The Turtle is an educational application for iPhone and iPad that teaches children the basics of creating computer programs, using intuitive graphic commands.’

8- Cato's Hike: A Programming and Logic Odyssey
‘Cato is a little boy who just like every little boy likes to go out and play. One fine day Cato was playing outside when a portal to another world opened up in front of him; a portal to another world…Stuck that is until he finally discovered the rules in this universe: by writing a program for himself he would be able to overcome all obstacles and learn something new along the way!’

9- Boogie Bot
‘Boogie Bot is a fun and interactive learning app which will introduce kids to computer programming using Blockly - Google's visual programming language’

10- SpriteBox : Code Hour
‘SpriteBox is a unique puzzle-platformer; a mix of exploration and learning to code…During your adventure, you'll learn to sequence commands, change parameters, debug faulty logic, and use simple to complex loops to solve problems.’

11- Robot School. Programming For Kids
‘Robot School. Programming For Kids is a programming game suitable for children aged 7 and above. Try out free version of Robot School and get hooked into programming! ’

12- Tynker
‘Tynker is the easiest way for kids to learn programming. Play fun puzzles to learn the basics and then create your own amazing games using over 100 step-by-step coding tutorials. Great for Hour of Code! Additional puzzle sets available as in-app purchases.’

Some Very Good iPad Science Apps for Elementary Teachers

April 21, 2017
Looking for some good iPad science apps to use with your elementary students, the chart below has you covered. These are apps featured in iTunes App Store under the category of 'Elementary School'. The apps are arranged into three main sections: apps for general science, apps on living things, and apps on space and nature. We invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback.

Categories	Apps
General Science	Bobo Explores Light BrainPOP Jr. Movie of the Week BrainPOP Featured Movie Sound Uncovered Pettson's Inventions Deluxe The Magic of Reality Monster Physics Fun Science Lab
Living Things	Scholastic First Discovery: Dinosaurs This is my Body - Anatomy for Kids Whack A Bone Cells by KIDS DISCOVER Meet the Insects: Forest Edition Ultimate Dinopedia: Complete Dinosaur Britannica Kids: Dinosaurs D. Bones National Geographic Kids Butterfly HD Britannica Kids: Rainforests Plants HD FROG MINUTES Penguin's Family - Smithsonian Oceanic Dr. Frankenstein's Body Lab Meet the Insects: Village Edition The human body explained by Tom - Discovery Parts of Plants - A Montessori Approach To Botany HD
Space and Nature	You Are Stardust Extreme Weather KIDS DISCOVER SPACE Junior Astronaut Antarctica by KIDS DISCOVER Britannica Kids: Solar System Water Cycle HD Recycle HD