Many parents read to kids before they go to bed. But what about math? How about a math problem every day before bed? Today we’d like to introduce a website and an app – Bedtime Math. As stated on their website, Bedtime Math is to help kids love math the way they love playtime or dessert. Have kids dread of math? Try Bedtime Math. They may start loving math. What is Bedtime Math? It is a website that gives a… Read more

Plum’s Photo Hunt app and the Plum Landing website take learning life and nature science to a whole new level.  The Photo Hunt app focuses on the immediate world around you and the Plum Landing website focuses on a few different ecosystems of earth and takes the life sciences global. The Photo Hunt app is perfect for the yard or the park. The Photo Missions ask kids to find anything from trash, clouds, birds, rocks, and the list goes on.  There are… Read more

How often do you let your kids see a movie or TV show? What movies and shows do you like to watch together? There are many educational movies for kids. We particularly like to watch documentaries. Kids can learn so much from them. One great source of documentary movies and TV shows is Netflix. You can find many great movies for kids of all ages. At the bottom of this post, I listed some of the titles I like. What is good about… Read more

How often do you do brain exercise? I wish I have done more brain training. Just like our body muscles, our brains need regular exercise to stay sharp. With the fact that we are using our brains every day, which are the best exercises, do we still need additional brain training?  The answer is Yes. Just like our body, the daily functions for brains may not be comprehensive enough to ensure a balanced development. You might have done something creative… Read more

Today I have another math practice website for kids – 10 Monkeys. It also operates well on iPad and iPhone. It covers math from preschool to elementary school on number recognition, counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are also practices on money and word problems. Geometry problems will be added in the near future. Once kids get on the 10 Monkeys website, they first choose the number range they want to practice on: under 10, under 20, under 100, or under… Read more

I don’t know why we have not reviewed The Wheels on The Bus yet. But with the summer season, especially many travels going on, this is a great collection of on-the-go kids learning activities in one app. We all know young children have short attention span. When you feel that you are just warming up on one activity, your toddler’s attention shifts to something different. For young kids, you need an array of activity ideas that are easy to move… Read more

We recently discovered a new game app that is fun and addictive. It is designed by Alexey Pajitnov, author of the world famous Tetris game.  Kids will learn spacial reasoning, logic thinking, and problem solving, while playing the fun game. The game play is to line up same colored marble in one line – row, column or diagonal. You need at least 3 marbles in the line to make those marbles disappear from the board. Your goal is to take… Read more

Are you looking for engaging online games for kids? Games are not all bad. Good games will help kids focus and train their problem solving skills. Poptropica is one of the good games I don’t mind my child playing. Kids will improve their literacy and problem solving skills while playing the open ended games. Poptropica is originally an online game, and now it is available as an app on App Store. Both online game and app are free. Poptropica is… Read more

Brainfeed is an app with collections of educational videos for kids. All the videos in the app are educational, entertaining, and age appropriate. The app is free with about 100 videos free. I like the app for its filtered content, so I know those videos are high quality and kids friendly. There are 11 categories in the app: Science, This is your world, Tech and Design, English, Arts and Music, The Human Body, Social Studies, Math, and Make your Future… Read more

Do you help kids on math at home? Today I have a free app that is a great math teaching/learning tool. Number Line is a simple app, yet you can use it for so many different math problems: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, skip counting, number patterns, and more. It helps kids visualize number sequences and model strategies to help kids understand the math concepts intuitively. A Free Math Learning Tool Visualizing Math Concepts The basic idea of the app is… Read more

Are you kids learning multiplication? Mine has just past the stage, but I wish I had this app when he was learning multiplication. Teachley Mt.Multiplis is a great game app teaching properties of operations as strategies to multiplication. We all know the 3 properties of multiplication: commutative, associative, and distributive. I found through my son’s learning process that it is easy for them to know the property, but hard to know how to apply the properties, especially the distributive property… Read more

I have heard many parents talking about helping kids learn Chinese. Chinese is a very different language. It is pictograph based, not alphabet based. Because the difference between Chinese and English, it could be hard for English speakers to grasp Chinese. However, pictographs are in fact very fun to learn, as all characters are originated from meaningful pictures. Learning Chinese Characters from the original pictures could be a really fun activity. Today we have an app teaching kids Chinese characters via… Read more

Is photo storage an issue for you? I have been looking for free picture storage apps and online photo storage options for a while. Many suggested Amazon photo storage, but it is only free when you are Amazon Prime member. Is there any other free options? I just find a perfect solution. Shutterfly has free apps for iPhone and iPad and other devices that provide unlimited storage space off your camera. Update: Don’t use Shutterfly. I just lost all my… Read more

Do you let your preschoolers watch kids’ shows, like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and Super Why? I think it is all about being balanced. Kids need a little bit everything, including educational TV shows. Today I have an app letting you download those popular kids shows and watch them offline on the go even when you have no access to Wi-Fi: PlayKids. In addition to watching popular TV shows, PlayKids also has games, like matching games, memory games; books; and lullabies… Read more