Week Two -- February 22nd -- iPad Project

Overview before this week;
This week we will be moving on to counting! I already know that numbers have been introduced to him at his Montessori school, however once he gets past 6 or 7, he tends to just list of names of numbers and not in the correct order. I'm hoping not only to work on correctly counting up, but also working on the concept of one-to-one correspondents.

We will be continuing to work on our iPad use and staying on task for these short periods of time. Jay* is at his grandparents house all week, so this could also have a factor about how this affects his use of  his iPad.
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This week we used:

• Toddlers Counting 123- Free
• 123 Kids Fun GAMES Free (counting)

The first app, was very simple with its design. The same image is scattered throughout the screen and you have to touch to images to count them. As you touch them to count, the program helps read the counting process out loud as well as labels the image the number you counted it as. Once you have counted all the images, a caterpillar comes across the bottom of the screen also with the total numbers word spelled out. This way the child can see the numerical value, as well as the written.


For the second app, I chose 123 Kids Fun GAMES free, which is meant to be the more interactive fun game app of the week. The major differences between the first app and the second is that the second feels more game like with its interactions. There is more a visually stimulating interactive way of counting for the user. The great thing about this app is after seeing that Jay* enjoys it, thus I can reuse it for another week but focus on another skill. When looking for apps for this week, I did notice there were many that had multiple topics within one app. This mean this could be something I look back at later and add to my list of apps.

This week I would rate the first app as 4 stars, and the second as 5 stars.  I liked the first one because of its simplicity. It does exactly what it needs to do, and yet also assisted the child on the learning process even if they are still grasping counting from the beginning. This app was great for Jay* because he know the act of counting and what each numbers name, however tends to mess them up in the correct order. I liked the second one a lot because I could reuse it for other topics other then just counting.