Now for some education apps for enriching your homeschool Language Arts subjects:
Webster’s 1828 Dictionary (A-M and N-Z) — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch ($1.98) NOTE: This app is purchased in 2 parts — each $0.99. The most popular dictionary for the Christian market, Webster’s 1828 Dictionary was produced when American society was based on Biblical and patriotic values. Noah Webster, the Father of American Christian education, wrote the first American dictionary and established a system of rules to govern spelling, grammar, and reading. This master linguist understood the power of words, their definitions, and the need for precise word usage in communication to maintain independence. Webster used the Bible as the foundation for his definitions thus making the 1828 Dictionary a work that contains more Biblical definitions than any other reference work.
This app is an essential tool for students of all ages and Webster’s 1828 (both the hard copy book and app) is the only dictionary we use in our homeschool.
**SAT Vocabulary, Practice and Quiz — Kindle Fire ($1.49) Practice mode and multi-level quiz mode, 8000 words, challenging and fun.
There are four drill modes:
– The word is presented and the student selects from four random definitions.
– The definition is presented and the student selects from four random words.
– The definition is presented and the student spells the word… This is the most difficult mode.
– Random – picks from the previous three modes randomly.
The 5000 words are shuffled and word/definition pairs are selected randomly from the shuffled list.
Vocab Junkie — iPad/iPhone/iPod touch ($1.99) Improve your vocabulary FASTER than with any other vocab app. Applying the latest in cognitive science techniques, Brainscape helps you efficiently learn over 1,300 dynamic flashcards covering both vocabulary words and their roots.
Rather than creating frivolous games or distracting quizzes to try to make learning “fun,” Brainscape provides a scientifically optimized algorithm to repeat flashcards in just the right pattern for your brain’s maximum absorption, based on YOUR confidence. Brainscape makes sure that your study time is used as efficiently as possible, because – let’s face it – you are busy!
iPlanToWrite Essays — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch ($4.99) This app provides a structured methodology of writing essays. The app focuses on a 5 – paragraph essay. Weekly writing assignments can be captured in the database and associated to a calendar. Writing assignments can be pushed into iCal and also emailed. Reports can be generated, emailed, and blogged to be shared. At a later date grades can be tracked with each writing assignment.
Rainbow Sentences — iPad ($7.99) Rainbow Sentences is designed to help students improve their ability to construct gramatically correct sentences by using color coded visual cues. The who, what, where, and why parts of sentences are color coded to help students recognize and understand how combinations of these parts create basic sentence structure. Students will learn how to recognize the parts of sentences such as nouns, verbs, and prepositions, improve their understanding of how combinations of these parts create basic sentence structure. Students have the opportunity to record their sentences in their own voice to improve their receptive and expressive language skills.
Read my review of Rainbow Sentences.
Mobile Education Store has several other apps worth checking out. Take a peek at Preposition Builder, Sentence Builder, and Story Builder, especially if you have students with special learning needs. This company specializes in special needs apps.
Spelling City — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch (Free) VocabularySpellingCity is a fun way to learn spelling and vocabulary words by playing engaging learning games using any word list. The most popular activities are a spelling test, HangMouse, and the vocabulary games. The most popular lists are Sound Alike Words, Compound Words, the Hunger Games, and SAT Vocabulary. Students can access any of the hundreds of thousands of word lists available on VocabularySpellingCity including lists created by their parents or teachers. The app includes seven learning games and activities.
**Spelling Wiz — Kindle Fire Spelling apps for all grade levels with practice mode and quiz mode, thousands of carefully selected words, and most frequently appeared words for spelling competitions in each grade level.
Elementary ($1.29)
Grades 5-8 ($1.29)
High School ($1.49)
Writing Prompts — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch ($1.99) and Kindle Fire ($1.99) We love this app from Writing.Com. Writing Prompts, the app with an endless supply of creative inspiration! Prompt generators use news headlines, scene elements, words, sketches, colors, genres and writing types, unleashing endless random bits of fantasy to fuel your muse. Plus, they’ve included their database of 600 creative writing prompts so you’ve got them right at your finger tips, online or off!
Scribble Press — iPad (Free) Scribble Press for iPad is a book creation platform that allows kids to imagine, create and share their own stories with great drawing and writing tools. Download your books instantly to your iBooks library! Scribble Press for iPad makes it easy to create an ebook – either write your own or use one of over 50 story templates. How about “My Babysitter is a Zombie” or “The Dog Ate my Homework”? From serious to seriously fun, you can make a book about any topic and instantly publish to the gallery or share with friends anywhere in the world.
Build a Story — iPad ($3.99) BUILD A STORY lets kids create and write, keep, read and share their own personalized storybooks! With dozens of Storybook Themes and pre-drawn Pages to get you started — plus *hundreds* of fun, colorful characters to select and arrange in infinite combination — your kids’ & students’ imaginations are about to be unleashed like never before. Best of all, you get to write and save all the text and dialogue you want in your Stories. You can also Save multiple pages at once, for an entire Storybook to be read, shared and printed. … It really is the best way to make your own storybook and bring your child’s dreams to life!
Mad Libs — Goofy Cool, and On the Road — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch ($3.99) (Free version) and Kindle Fire (Free) Mad Libs is now available in a fun, new interactive AND digital platform! You’ve flipped through Mad Libs on car trips, and filled in the blanks at sleepovers, but now you can play Mad Libs over and over again anywhere you go!
Textropolis — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch (Free) Travel word-wide and build up your Textropolis by finding the words hidden in each city. Play through 30 different cities in this free-play word discovery game. Stumble across a new word? Textropolis includes definitions for every word in the game. Watch each city grow as you discover its words and add to your total Textropolis population! Shake your phone or iPod to get a helpful hint when you are stuck, and you can even send postcards from your best cities to a friend via email to show off your vocabulary!
iTalk Recorder — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch (Free) iTalk Recorder is a full-featured recording app with a streamlined and intuitive user interface. Press the big red button to record; press it again to stop. You can append to existing recordings, choose from three levels of recording quality (11.025, 22.05, or 44.10 kHz sample rates), and manage your recordings, all with just a fingertip.
I hope you find at least some of these apps useful for your own homeschool. Since most of them are free for the downloading, you won’t lose anything by giving them a try.
