Yooukids - Monitor Youtube Playlists for Kids

Yooukids is a nice free iPhone and iPad app allowing you to create playlists of videos to younger children keeping them from surfing Youtube for anything and everything. 


Once the app is installed, the default mode is "kid" mode, where they have access to playlists.

 

In order to put on additional playlists, you set up a 4 digit PIN, login to your own Youtube account for personal playlists, or search for public playlists.  After you find the playlist, you can either sync the entire set or sync individual videos.

 
Yooukids would work great in Primary classrooms with iPods or iPads.  A teacher could sync playlists of a variety of books read online, like Storyline Online, and students could watch or listen on their own without the teacher in fear of kids wandering into Youtube cyber space.

Little Stars Customizable Multi Player Skills Practice App PreK/Primary

Little Stars Toddler Game is a great Pre-K to kindergarten practice app for students.   This free app is ad-free, great layout, for both the iPad and iPod, and easy to use.   Students can work in one or two player mode, listen to the word, and choose the image that matches.  Correct answers get a verbal congratulations and moves their rocket along the path.  

The preloaded topics of the game can be seen below, covering many basic skills.  Teachers can choose which categories the game will draw from in the settings.

The power in this app, as well as most by Alligator Apps, is that the app is customizable.  Teachers can adapt the game to include categories of skills that may not be loaded already or modify the categories already loaded to match their curriculum materials.  By using the camera and microphone built into the iPad, this is very easy.  

Add categories like basic sight words, images from around the classroom or school, teacher and student names, etc. are just a few ideas for customizing the app for a specific classroom or student. In addition by recording the audio, this app could be customized in any language expanding the possibilities!

Alien Assignment from Fred Rogers Center - Great for PreK and Primary!

Apps that allow children to get up, move, and interact with their environment are great for the classroom. With Alien Assignment (Free)  children are sent around on a scavenger hunt to find items to help the alien family repair their spaceship.

App plays like a movie which then asks the students to find something that they ask for.  For example, the spaceship lost it's memory so they asked for a picture of something with words on it.

The app opens the camera inside the app for students to take the picture, then moves on to the next need.  This continues for 4 items.  Once the students have collected the four items they ask a grown up to review what they found.

Teachers or Parents can then look through what the students chose to take photos of and verify if they found the right item.  If they did not, it will have the students go back and continue looking until all four pieces have been found and fixed on the spaceship.

This free app allows students to interact with the storyline, find characteristics, problem solve, and practice their listening skills.  All instructions are given given aloud by one of the little alien characters.  Once one scavenger hunt is complete, it begins a new hunt with different characteristics.  I played the app three times by myself and with my own first grader and we didn't have repeat characteristics., though eventually they would probably repeat.  This app would make a great center activity in the classroom or walk the room activity near the beginning of the year.  

The Fred Rogers Center has other apps geared towards younger students as well.  Many are great for at home or in daycare settings.