Review of Ipad Apps: any age

Showing posts with label any age. Show all posts

Monday, July 14, 2014

Bag It

Bag It: Fun Challenge / Puzzle app where you are the bagger who needs to place all the items in the bag without breaking it. To add challenge, you will also want to make sure you don't break the eggs or crush the bread.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Top App of the Season: Pottery

Let's Create Pottery: While most of the students have played pottery prior to being in this class, as soon as the word is said, there are cheers in the room. Kids and adults of all ages enjoy creating their own pottery design for it to be sold at an auction. Students particularly like to compete on the amount of money they receive from each design or the originality of their pot. The paid version is rather expensive at $4.99 but the lite version has many features, patterns, and colors to keep the game interesting. After being a favorite for the past several years, I finally spent the money to unlock all features.

Popular Music Apps

Soundrop: Create Mesmerizing Musical Patterns by drawing lines. While this app is very simple, it is addicting and one that students come back to often.

Falling Stars: A step up from Soundrop, this app allows you to draw different lines to create different beats and sounds. Another great feature of this app is the ability to save your musical design. Even though this app has more features, students tend to prefer soundrop. I am guessing it is because of the hypnotic movement of the balls in soundrop. Both are great!

Smule Magic Piano: Students can earn new songs by successfully following the beat of the song. While the app is much like guitar hero, Magic Piano can be played by even those with little to no musical background. The only objective is to match the beats. Smule also has a Sing, Rap, and Guitar app that are similar but I have not had as much luck with those as I have had with Magic Piano.

App Fav: Spy Mouse

Spy Mouse: Since introducing this app 3 years ago, students have always found this to be fun and challenging. In fact, it is one of the first apps played during Free Choice and top download by students on their own devices. The concept of being a mouse who needs to stay away from the cat is very appealing to any age. Each level adds new challenges for the mouse, making it difficult to find the cheese without running into the cat.

Smash Hit

Smash Hit: This has indeed been a hit for many of my students this year. The objective of the game is to throw use balls with a flick of your finger in a 3D world to smash objects. From those who have spent many hours playing the app, I hear you can run out of marbles and there are different ways to score points. This has been a popular game this season but I don't think I would consider it to require much thought. While there is some strategy, I find the app to be mostly a fun game in your spare time.

Two Dots

Two Dots: Much like the favorite app "Bejeweled," in this game you need to connect dots of the same color.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Power of 2!

This app is AMAZING. Technically, it is classified as a 'MATH' app, but it works on logic and matching skills too. In the app, players match up tiles of like numbers which then combine and become the sum of the numbers. i.e. 1 + 1 becomes 2. The goal is to create the highest number tile possible. (My record is currently a 512 tile). Players are given points and 'coins'. Coins can be used to purchase shuffles.