These arethe five best things you can do with a childto get him or her ready to read.

“Not all screens are created equal.” -commonsensemedia.org

• Thoughtfully-selected apps can supplement, not replace, the nondigital ways we write, read, play, sing and talk together.

• Explore apps with your prereader, as you would explore a book together.

“Not all screens are considered equal.”-- Common Sense Media

from JAMA Pediatrics, March 2014Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH

• plain, clear, highly legible fonts (especially when letter or number recognition is part of the action)

• meaningful interactive elements

• intuitive wayfinding—not too complicated for children to puzzle through with minimal adult help (content can be challenging; using the app shouldn’t be) and a smooth, fluid user experience

• clean, uncluttered display—not distractingly busy

• apps (free or paid) with ads or in-app purchases that aren’t easily ignored or keep popping up

• apps in which the primary mission is to gather coins/points/etc to purchase or unlock more features

• apps with loud, busy, cluttered displays

• apps in which the “interactive elements” are truly bells and whistles, as if added in after the fact

• apps that are more video than interactive experience

• apps that don’t provide a smooth, fluid user experience (slow or over-quick to respond to touch; too sensitive; etc)

• apps with extremely artificial-sounding synthetic voices

(some examples)

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic app

• screen too busy for pre-K• main concern is with point/coin/gem accumulation and spending

Example: Age-inappropriateness

Examples: Age-inappropriateness

Poor font choice in Alphabet Find (2nd row, lowercase “g”; 3rd row, lowercase “j”)

Examples: poor font choice, confusing messages

Food Shape Game: is this a circle or an oval?

1. Disable in-app purchases:

2. Explore it yourself, starting with the settings…

Many apps are customizable, from content to “success sounds”—look for gear icons like these in a corner of the app’s home screen:

Some great free apps to explore as you write, read, play, sing, and talk together…

Photo: Tim Wilson

Even a child who can’t yet form a letter or shape can draw a squiggle!

In this app, squiggles become significant--as clouds, rocket exhaust, nests, and more. Hitting “GO!” after scribbling makes the whole scene come to life.

Squiggles teaches kids that our written marks can signify other things, an important concept in beginning to understand the alphabet and words.

Write Together with Squiggles

• In “Play Sound Effects” mode, each color has its own sound. In “Music” mode, each has a musical phrase

from a different musical genre.

• When you draw, the sound or phrase plays until you lift your finger off the screen.

• Sounds and music can be turned off during quiet times

Write Togetherwith Finger Paint with Sounds

Write Together with Little Writer

Made for just-beginning writers, this well-designed tracing app includes upper and lowercase letters, shapes, and numbers.

Note: If your child can already form letters clearly freehanded (using an app like Finger Paint with Sounds), this app will not challenge him or her.

Reading together is the #1 thing you can do to get your child ready to read.

Read ebook apps aloud with your child rather than defaulting to the prerecorded option.

Read Togetherwith Collins Big Cat: It Was a Cold, Dark Night and Just Me and My Mom

• Collins Big Cat: not just a story, a story maker

• Tap any item in Just Me and My Mom, and see and hear the word for it. Tap signs in the illustrations’ backgrounds (“Hot Dogs” etc) to hear them read aloud, too. Also available for Android.

Read Together with OnceAppon

With OnceAppon, you can create, customize, and name the protagonist of a story that’s generated after you choose from a group of settings, props, and characters.

The avatar-builder alone is wonderful, providing more fun and options than most dress-up apps.

You can create and save more (an unlimited number?) of avatars and stories, and return to your “library” to read them whenever you choose. The simple plot, told in rhyme, remains constant, but the details are yours to decide.

Read Together with I Love Mountains…

• This stellar nonfiction ebook app uses interactive elements in a wonderfully meaningful way: to demonstrate the actions of mountains forming.

…and Lazy Larry Lizard

• This simple storybook app’s interactions are prompted by the text and forward the story.

Read Together withLearn with Homer

Learn with Homer could be described as a “learning system”—the app includes stories, poems, fables, nonfiction, and reading-related games/exercises, all with comprehension questions (asked in a fun way) at the end.

Read Together withHideout: Early Reading

• Build a group of rhyming words with the same endings

• Play a fun and first-rate game designed around that word group

• Read (or hear) reinforcing sentences about what you just did in the game

• After exploring the app’s six included word groups, present a different word ending to your child (for ex., “at”) and talk together about the words you can form with it and what “game” you might make from those words (“pat/bat/hat/mat/cat”?)

Through play—whether dressing up, playing house, or solving a puzzle together—children learn how the world works and practice putting thoughts into words.

Exploring interactive apps together can supplement (but not replace) other forms of play.

Play Togetherwith Alien Assignment

• A fun photo scavenger hunt-like quest with a backstory: aliens need help repairing their ship and other items, and “learn” how to repair them through photos you and your child are prompted to take.

• Example: “Our helmet is cracked! Take a photo of something you wear on your head to help us repair it!”

• Note: requires iPad with camera. Also available for iPhone.

Play Togetherwith Sock Puppets

• Choose from six puppets and several sets and act out and record 30-second scenes

• Scenes can be saved for later playback and shared to Facebook or YouTube

• Once you record a voice sample, you can set pitches for the puppets. When you act out a scene in your own voice(s), the app will alter your voice according to which puppet you’re using before playback

• Don’t know where to start? Record your child singing the ABC song while tapping a different puppet for every few letters, then play it back

Play Togetherwith TinyTap

TinyTap is a phenomenal appthat lets you easily create simple “find and tap” games with your own images and voice.

The possibilities for games thatgrow with your pre-reader seemendless: use a photo of your child and ask her to touch different body parts; use an image of a simple map and ask your child to tap on the river, then the mountain; use aphoto of five apples in a row and ask your child to tap the apple on the far left, then the apple on the far right, then the apple in the middle, and so on.

Play Togetherwith Find Them All

• Find animals by scrolling through a scene and listening to their sounds, then find them again in the dark with a flashlight.

• Take pictures of the animals and shake the iPad to turn the pictures into jigsaw puzzles—the more shakes, the more pieces.

• Hear each animal’s name in English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese.

Sing Togetherwith Grow a Reader andBaby Karaoke

• Grow a Reader: made by Calgary Public Library. Geared to parents and caregivers, with tips on writing, reading, playing, singing, and talking together. Includes 25 short videos of different action songs and rhymes.

• Baby Karaoke presents five songs in video form. Listen to them sung, then sing them together without any vocal accompaniment in “karaoke mode.” NOTE: find Baby Karaoke under iPhone, not iPad, apps in the app store.

Talk Togetherwith Toca Kitchen Monsters

• Action: choose a food and a tool with which to prepare it; prepare it; feed it to the monster.

• Name or ask your child to name the foods, tools, and actions while you play to build vocabulary (“Should we boil the broccoli in the pot, or chop and slice it with the knife?”)

• Keep up a conversation with your child as you go (“I spy an orange vegetable in the refrigerator! Can you find it? What it’s called? Yep, it’s a carrot! How do we cook carrots at our house?”). Strive for five back-&-forth exchanges.

Toca Tailor Fairy Tales includes male and female models and requires pinching, spreading, and turning (not just tapping) maneuvers to lengthen and shorten sleeves, change the colors of items, etc.

An excellent feature encourages making custom fabric swatches by using the iPad’s camera to take photos—in the third image above, a photo of piano keys became the “swatch” for the model’s outfit.

Talk Together with My A-Z

• This versatile stand-out app allows you to make alphabet flash cards with your own photos. You can make several cards for each letter and record up to 30 seconds of audio for each letter. (Note: requires iPad with camera. Find under iPhone apps.)

• Make A-Z decks with, not for, your prereader. Take photo walks collecting pictures for “our alphabet”. Make a neighborhood alphabet, a vacation alphabet, an alphabet of actions (“What should we do for Z? Let’s take a photo of Daddy zipping his zipper. Time to take our J photo: everybody JUMP!”)

• Best Kids Apps (reviews)

• Common Sense Media’s “Best Apps: Our Recommendations for Families”

• Digital Storytime (reviews, specifically of ebook apps)

• Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media

• The iMums (reviews)

• iPads and Early Literacy: 50 Fantastic Free Apps for Pre-Readers

• Kindertown: The Educational App Store for Parents (friendly search interface) • Preschool Apps at bestappsforkids.com (reviews, includes “Free App Friday” feature)

Also good to know: Apps Gone Free, which daily lists which paid apps are free for that day and regularly includes children’s apps, and App Price Drops, which lists

both price drops and free apps each day.

Questions?

Have fun together.

Emily Lloyd