Preschoolers who love Dora the Explorer and Team Umizoomi are sure to enjoy these apps, which teach early literacy and math skills through simple, colorful games.
Dora ABCs Vol 1: Letters & Letter Sounds (4/5 stars, currently priced at $3.99)
The first in the Nickelodeon Literacy Suite, Dora ABCs Vol 1: Letters & Letter Sounds focuses on your child’s emerging literacy skills. In this application, your child will learn the Alphabetic Principle: to recognize letters, write letters and associate letters with sounds. Once children are able to hear and discern sounds (phonemes), they are ready to associate those sounds with letters. That means kids learn their ABC’s with Dora and Boots in this exciting educational game!
• Easy to use tutorials lead by Dora
• Tracing Uppercase and Lowercase Letters of the alphabet
• Hearing and reinforcement of letters sounds
• A tap and drag game to put letters in the correct holes.
• 78 pictures that reinforce letters sounds and initial letters
• A new game, Letter and Picture Match, reinforces initial letter sounds by grouping pictures that start with the same sound.
• A letter select screen that allows you to choose any letter to play
• Curriculum developed and reviewed by preschool education expert
• Player profiles now allow more than one child to play and save their progress
• Parent Reporting which shows you how your child is progressing in the app.
Dora ABCs Vol 2: Rhyming Words (4/5 stars, currently priced at $3.99)
Dora ABCs Vol 2: Rhyming Words, the second in the Nickelodeon Literacy Suite, focuses on your child’s emerging literacy skills. By matching rhyming words and more with Dora and Boots in this educational application, your child will become aware of individual sounds (phonemes) in words and how they are sequenced and changed to make new words. The ability to hear, discriminate, and manipulate phonemes is highly associated with reading readiness in early childhood and considered a critical skill for the development of reading skills.
• 4 Levels of game play with a rich set of matching words and pictures
• Word matching in different ways: rhyme, same initial sound, same ending sound, same inside sound.
• Voiceovers that reinforce the matching word sounds
• Curriculum developed and reviewed by preschool education expert
• Parent Reporting which shows you how your child is progressing in the app.
Dora ABCs Vol 3: Ready to Read! (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $3.99)
The third learning adventure in the Nickelodeon Literacy Suite, Dora ABCs Vol 3: Ready to Read! focuses on your child’s early reading and phonics skills. After reviewing letter sounds in Dora ABCs Vol 1: Letter & Letter Sounds and learning phonemic awareness with Dora ABCs Vol 2: Rhyming Words your child is now ready to read! In Dora ABCs Vol 3: Ready to Read!, your child will begin to see that letters can be organized in a specific sequence to represent words. By changing the beginning, final or middle letters of these words, they can turn one word into another, a game called “word ladders”. The ability to manipulate first, last and inside letters of simple words is an important skill to becoming a proficient reader.
• Easy-to-use tutorials lead by Dora
• 5 Levels of gameplay with a rich set of age appropriate words for beginning readers
• Curriculum developed and reviewed by a preschool education expert
• Word ladders in which kids can change words by manipulating first, last, and inside sounds.
• Three whimsical frog minigames
• Voiceovers reinforce letter sounds and identify the vocabulary words
• Tested by kids
• Player profiles allow more than one child to play and save their progress
• Parent reporting shows your child’s progress
Team Umizoomi Math: Zoom into Numbers (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $4.99)
Each game teaches fundamental math concepts critical for preschoolers: identifying numbers; one-to-one number correspondence; rote counting; reading number symbols; associating symbols with quantity; and basic addition and subtraction. Games are leveled, and designed to increase in difficulty. Appropriate hints are provided to support your child as they practice and build their math skills.
Children will also earn badges and trophies through out the game. These badges and trophies are tracked in Team Umizoomi’s Headquarters and earning enough badges and trophies will grant kids a special key to Umi City!
With Milli, Geo, Bot, and your child’s mighty math powers, they can do anything! Welcome to the team, UmiFriend!
• 5 leveled games focused on fundamental preschool math skills
• Curriculum developed and reviewed by preschool education expert
• A rich, exploratory environment filled with surprises and added layers of math discovery
• Game instructions delivered by the voices of Milli, Geo, and Bot
• Player profiles that allow more than one child to play and save their progress
• Kid-tested appropriate games
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