Jan Berenstain passed away two days ago.  My son loved Berenstain books when he was young.  After reading the news, I can’t help looking up the Berenstain book apps.  I am glad to see 18 Berenstain book apps in the App Store, all made by Oceanhouse Media.  I tried a couple and was quite impressed.  I wish we had these book apps when my son was young, so we could carry many books on a light-weighted iPAD, and he could read in the car even when… Read more

I created a math problem for my son when we played Tiny Tower together.   Hope you can use it for your child as well. The problem: It takes 25 seconds for the elevator to move from first floor to the 5th floor.  How long will it take it to move from first floor to the 9th floor? The correct answer is – 50 seconds.   Did you get it right?  Make sure you get it right before asking your child.  If… Read more

After playing Flight Tycoon for a while, my son is in the mood to build a city. I found Tiny Tower for him. It is not about building a city, instead it is a simulation game building a tower, creating and managing businesses in the tower. You can have apartments, tea shop, photo studio, comedy club, laundromat, … You make money from apartment rents, and from selling the products. When you make enough money, you can build more floors. One… Read more

Learning about US Presidents is easy with this app from Britannica. The app has features, fun facts, and a nice quiz section.  I particularly like the quiz section, which is hidden under the “menu” at the bottom of the starting screen. Below is the description from iTunes: Britannica Kids: U.S. Presidents takes young learners on a fun and educational meet-and-greet with the 44 U.S. presidents. IDEAL FOR HOMEWORK HELP Bring the Oval Office into your living room with detailed profiles… Read more

A couple of weeks ago, my son found out our metronome was not working. He was having trouble with one of the new music pieces. His teacher suggested practice with a metronome. A friend told me about a free iPhone App called Chatternome. I downloaded to my phone. However, when we used it, we realized it is hard to set the tempo. You select the tempo by sliding an oval-shaped dot along a line – moving up leads to slower… Read more

I came across HowePrincipal’s blog about book apps. As a school principal, his evaluation is professional. I learned from his blog: 1. Book Apps is different from Apps based on books. 2. When kids are learning to read, we don’t want the animations to distract the young readers from the text. Instead, we want to have an app that help them focus on the text and better yet, remember the text. The link to his article is here… Read more

I have been partnering with my son on a game called “Flight tycoon”.  It is a game he found in the App Store, and since it is free, we downloaded for him.  At first, I didn’t pay much attention to the game.  One day, when he showed me what the game was about, I found it very interesting and educational. It is an airport simulation game.  To play the game, you have to build an airport and buy airplanes.  To keep you airport… Read more

Couple days ago, I came across an article saying kids should not play games on iPad, because iPad is two-dimension, while the real world is 3-dimension. iPad games flatten the real world into a plane. I sort of agree with the author. Yet, I remembered a book I read a couple of years ago (I believe it is “I live in the future”, by Nick Bilton). In that book, he cited a finding by a study that among the surgeons… Read more

Cut the Rope is another game that is physics based. To play, you must cut dangling ropes that hold candy to make the candy fall into the mouth of the cute green monster “Om Nom”.  To win the game, you must cut certain ropes in a specific order and at the perfect timing to swing the candy over the monster.  There are three stars in each puzzle that you need to collect by swinging the candy into them. You can… Read more

There are so many free games out there. But be aware — a free app can actually cost you $100 or more! How? by in-app purchases! Free apps with in-app purchases (called freemium) are becoming more and more prevalent in the app stores and are a big source of revenue for app developers. While they’re free to download, they offer incentives within the app to buy things that cost REAL money. Things you can buy: furniture for the house, outfit… Read more

I don’t know much of the video games my son plays. But at least when he mentioned the name, I know what it is about. When the games got on iPad, the situation became worse. All I see is the little icon on the screen, I did not get to watch him play anymore, since it is so portable and so small, he can easily hide in a corner and I would not know where he is. One day, I… Read more

I have a 9-year-old boy.  Since he got the iPad (more accurately, since I got the iPad), it became one of his favorite toys.  He found so many games in the App Store.   A lot of them are free!  Recently I played with him on couple of his games.  They are actually fun, and educational.  I realized this is such a good tool for the kids to learn.  I did some search online on iPAD games for kids.  There are not many sources of info… Read more