Bedtime Math Now Has an App

Bedtime Math now has a free app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. You can download it to your devise at the iTunes Store. You can read my review here. Add this to your list of ideas to prevent summer brain drain!

Weird But True!

You haven’t lived until you have been followed around by a kid carrying a Weird But True book asking repeatedly, “did you know …?” The books are based on the National Geographic Kids feature of the same name. Did you know that an ostrich can run as fast a race horse? Or that a 300 year old hurricane on Jupiter is still going strong? Or that cold water weighs more than hot water? Did you know that Antarctica is a desert? Or that you breathe in 2,000 gallons of air each day? If you don’t, prepare to be enlightened!

There are five books in this series and an Ultimate Weird But True with a thousand outrageous facts. The Sonoma County Library has a few copies of the Ultimate Weird But True. The iTunes store has a free app called Weird But True for the  iPad, iPod touch and iPhone. If you want to see more than the dozen free facts, you will have to pay $.99 each for the first three packs  or $1.99 for the mega pack.

Yulupa School will be having a Scholastic Book Fair March 4 thru 8. There are usually Weird But True books available at the book fair.

Bedtime Math

The main focus of this blog is reading but this was such a great idea, I had to pass it along. Yesterday, on NPR’s Morning Edition, Laura Overdeck was interviewed about her nightly math problem ritual with her children. You can listen to the interview here. Overdeck wanted her children to be math literate so she started giving her children a math problem at night along with their nightly bedtime story. Her friends started asking her for math problems for their kids and her website Bedtime Math was born.

Every day there is a story, today’s is about anteaters and their prey, with math problems for wee ones, little kids and big kids. The problems for the wee ones are simple adding, subtracting or counting ones. The little kids and big kids problems are more complex and take greater skills at each level. There are also bonus questions each day. You can sign up to have each day’s story and problems e-mailed to you. Try it out with your family!

Kid Approved Apps

Horn Books has posted a list of recommended apps for preschoolers through the intermediate grades. My grandson, Noah, who spent a week with us during his spring break checked out two of the apps. The first  Mo Willem’s Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App. True to his ideas in his  Zena Sutherland Lecture  this app needs a kid to run it. You can learn to draw the Pigeon with Mo and save your drawing with can be used as the Pigeon character in the story you create with the Bus Driver from Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. Noah gives this app a thumbs up.

 

Al Yankovic’s book When I Grow Up has been made into an app

Weird Al will read you the book, you can follow along while he reads the book or you can read it yourself. It is Thursday and time for show and tell. Today in Mrs. Krupp’s class the subject is ‘what do I want to be when I grow up’. Our narrator has a laundry list of things he would like to do. Some of the more interesting future occupations have their own games such as Tarantula Shaver and Gorilla Masseuse. Noah gave this one two thumbs up because he loved the tarantula shaver game and it is funny.

This next app was not on the Horn list, but it is one my husband found. It is  called Bats! Furry Fliers of the Night by Mary Kay Carson.

Bats! is an interactive 3-D app to help kids explore the natural world of the only flying mammals. Noah, true to his name loves animals. He loved this app because it was a real book about real animals and fun too.