Recently released (just in time for Halloween) is this new educational app from Kindermatica that helps children learn to write their numbers.
The app is a great way to help children practice writing numbers to 10 in a fun way. Children write each number three times with guides to help them to find the starting point, and to stay inside the lines or on the path. With each turn, the prompts and supports are decreased. You can move through the numbers in series, or you can select specific numbers to practice.
Features
Languages: The app will run in English, Russian or Swedish.
Reporting: – Teachers and parents can view the results for each child. The app records two kinds of mistakes: when the child starts from the wrong point, and when they are out of line when writing the number. This information will help teachers guide the student to correcting their errors and perfecting their technique.
Individual student profiles: – you can add up to 30 student profiles so that you can track progress individually. Photos or avatars can be added from the device camera or from the camera roll.
Reward game: – Carve a jack-o-lantern by dragging shapes on to the pumpkin. This is a fun exercise in symmetry as each item is placed as a pair with central symmetry.
Individual Settings:
Fonts: Select from 4 fonts, including Zaner-Bloser (commonly used in the US), Sassoon, and fonts for Sweden and Russia.
Modes: you can select an easy or regular mode, and you can opt to repeat numbers.
Game Limit: You can turn the reward game off, or allow it to play for 30 sections, 1 minute, 3 minute or no limit.
Number of exercises before reward game: Choose from 3, 6, 9 or 12 exercises to be completed before the child can play the reward game.
Music, Sound effects and speech are amusing, but can be turned off if you wish through the settings button at the top left of the screen.
Safety: Kindermatica is a member of Know What’s Inside, a group of developers (formally known as Moms with Apps) who take child safety and security seriously, and who make sure parents have all the information they need to make good decisions about the apps they choose for their children. In this app, for instance, there are some external links, but these are all hidden behind a parent lock.
Graphics: the graphics are beautiful and the little spider who guides us through the activities is very cute.
See the app at work in this YouTube trailer:
Verdict
Although this has a great Halloween theme, people like me who don’t do Halloween will still find it handy for children who are just starting to write their numbers. ( I’m an Australian, and yes I know there are some Aussies who have started to do the whole trick or treating thing, but I’m not one). You can use it all year around. Teachers will love being able to tweak the app to suit individual needs, and also being able to see individual progress reports. I think Boo Numbers is a great activity that will compliment the handwriting activities done in early learning classrooms. If you like this app, you might also like to try Yum-Yum Letters, also by Kindermatica, which uses similar activities to help children learn to write letters.
Publisher: Kindermatica
Universal: Requires iOS 6.0 or later
Price: $1.49
Last year I reviewed School Writing by Demografix, an app that I bought to help my children with their handwriting and one that I’ve come to consider my favourite educational app. That is a big call, I know, as I have a lot of favourites, but this app really delivers. The great thing is that, since I’ve bought School Writing, several updates have been released and each one has added even more supportive features. With the recent release of Version 2, I thought it was about time I updated my original review. I could have simply made a list of the new features, but for readers who haven’t read my original review, I thought it might be better to use most of the original review, and to highlight new features throughout.
School Writing is a handwriting app that includes fonts for Australia, New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and now South Africa and home schooling. You might be mistaken for thinking it is only a handwriting App, when it is really a versatile App that can be used across the curriculum and is suitable for all ages. School Writing is for iPad only, but iPhone and iPod Touch users should still keep reading as there Demografix has an iPhone App, School Fonts, that is very similar, lacking only one of the major activities.
Features
3 Handwriting Activities for Numbers, lower case and upper case
Trace over each letter or number with pencils of varying thickness.
Tracings are recorded and can be replayed or sent to the teacher.
Three tracing modes are available for beginner scripts – Outline, a dotted letter or a solid letter. The outline also features a start point and arrows indicating the order and direction of each stroke.
A Learn button shows an animation of the letter or number being drawn for beginner scripts. This feature is not available for the Cursive scripts, however teachers and parents can add their own recordings of letter tracings using the Customise section.
Illustrations – Tap on the camera icon to bring up pictures relating to the number (e.g. 6 flutes for the number six) or letter (initial letter sound, such as A is for Apple)
NEW FEATURES
Tracing accuracy – After students trace letters or numbers, they can receive a star or half star for tracing accuracy. If they are not very accurate with the tracing, they will receive a prompt to try again. They can have three attempts before progressing to the next letter or number. There are three levels of difficulty for tracing: Easy, Medium and Hard. You might start beginners on the easy level, but then increase it as their accuracy improved. Tracing accuracy can also be turned off.
Dotted thirds guidelines for Victorian schools
New Fonts – plain and cursive fonts for South Africa, and some fonts commonly used by Home Schoolers, (HWT Beginners, and Getty-Dubay in plain and cursive)
Words
In addition to the 37 lessons in this section, teachers can create and import their own. There are examples of lessons from Prep to Year 7 levels including (but not limited to):
Upper and lowercase letters
Spelling
Sight words (using Dolch sight words)
Phonics
Simple word tracing
Writing names of family and friends
Identifying incorrect spelling
NEW – The Mioow Magic Word lists have been added. My Prep-aged son has been bringing these sight word lists home so we are delighted.
It is really easy to add words or to edit the word list. I was able to create a custom “Lesson” with 10 words, all with audio and photographs, in under a minute. Some ways I could see this section being used include:
Weekly spelling and sight word lists – As it is easy to set up a class set of iPads using DropBox, it would be really easy to change lists weekly.
Personal information for students with special needs – including writing their phone numbers, names addresses and other personal information.
Practice writing names – A class list with the child’s names plus his family and/or friends’ names as well would be a perfect prep activity.
Whiteboard activities
The iPad is used as a whiteboard where students complete activities. (This is the activity not available in School Fonts) There are more than 20 activities that install with the App, covering pre-writing, shapes, math problems, and vocabulary exercises, and even Chinese Characters. It is easy to create your own activity by importing images or drawing freehand on the Whiteboard. This is the section that most lends itself to cross-curricula activities. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the possibilities, particularly with such an extensive list of examples pre-installed with the App, but here are a couple of ideas that I would love to have been able to do with my past students:
Cloze activities – close activities are where students fill in the missing words in a piece of text. Word lists may or may not be provided. The text for these activities can come from just about any subject.
Mathematics Activities – Some of the strategies I discussed in an earlier post, Using Painting and Drawing Apps for more than just pictures, would apply here. Children could count objects and write the number, write sums, group tens, show groups for multiplication or complete patterns. The list is by no means exhaustive.
Following directions – present the child with a picture and the instructions to draw items in particular places, for example Put a cat on the mat, or Put a ball under the table.
Mapping skills – Trace routes or locate specific places on maps. You could trace the fire escape plan for your classroom, show different routes to get from A to B, or simply identify places in your neighbourhood.
LOTE (Language Other Than English) – Writing Chinese or Japanese Characters, matching items to words.
Individual Student Profiles
You can add unlimited student profiles. Records of how many lessons each student has completed are recorded. Student names are used when sending reports to teachers and parents. The video below shows the main features of the App.
Demographix has more detailed videos available on YouTube and their website that show the various features in-depth. See below for the link to the Demografix website.
Customizing
Handwriting Styles – Beginner and Cursive styles are available for all Australian States and Territories, New Zealand, U.K and U.S. (both D’Nealian and Zaner-Bloser)
Guidelines – available as standard or dotted thirds, with an optional mid-line. Guidelines can also be removed.
Sounds – three sounds are available for tracing, plus encouragement sounds. These can b e turned off.
Emails – teachers can have letter and number exercises sent to a nominated email address for review.
Security – The App can be locked to prevent content and profiles being removed or edited. An option exists for students to be able to add profiles while the App is locked, however this is easily turned off.
Import/Export lessons – by email, weblink, or DropBox.
New customizing features
Custom encouragement sounds – You can now record your own custom reward/encouragement sounds. Applause at the end of activities is also available and can be turned on or off. Encouragement sounds are set to off as a default.
Bluetooth sharing for whiteboard lessons and word lists.
Palm guard – can be turned on or off. The lower section of the screen is “turned off” while children are writing.
Other Features
External links are available on the main page but can be turned off through settings, as Demografix obviously respects the need for internet security for students.
Share this App – through email, Twitter or Facebook
Help – links to Demografix website
Rate this App – linking to App Store. (I hate apps that constantly beg for ratings so it is nice to see this one able to be turned off.)
About Demografix – contact page within the app with links to other apps, social networking, the Demografix website and newsletter.
New Feature – Customise the Logo on the homescreen. You can now add your own graphic, such as a school banner or photo, to the app homescreen.
Suggestions
Importing and Exporting activities – If you buy this App, I’d seriously consider keeping an eye on the Demografix website for more activities that you will be able to add to your App. I’d also consider submitting activities to the site. Use a Stylus – Tracing with a finger is one way to reinforce letter and number shapes, but I’d strongly recommend using a stylus to help develop good writing skills with a good pencil grip. There are heaps available, but the one I would use for beginner writers is the Gecko Glow stylus with its non-slip rubber exterior and its tripod grip. Watch the Demografix YouTube videos as they cover every aspect of the App in detail. Apart from the general video above, you can also see how to:
Create Word Activities
Create Whiteboard Lessons
Customise Handwriting Lessons
Import and Export Activities via Email
Using DropBox to set up a classroom of iPads
Posture – iPads are transportable, so sometimes they may not be used with classic good-handwriting posture. Do your best to make sure children are seated well when practicing their hand writing. I know it doesn’t sound important, but good lower-body stability is important so that children can use their upper body to concentrate on the writing task and not having to stabilise themselves with their arms too.
Wish list
In my original review I had a few wishes, but they have mostly been addressed. There are two features I wanted that haven’t been added, but they are no longer issues for me.
Resize, zoom and move images when creating and editing lessons. When you add an image to an activity, you still can’t manipulate the image. Now that I’m using an iPad 3, this isn’t so much of an issue for me as I can edit photos on the iPad before I enter them into the app.
More than 12 character text limit in Word activity – I wanted to be able to put words longer than 12 characters into the activity, for example my nephew’s surname would not fit. While you still can’t do this, Demografix has another brilliant iPad app, Literacy, that allows you to do this and more. I love both apps and consider them partner apps.
Verdict
School Writing is an open-ended App that will allow teachers and parents the flexibility to use it with their own content focusing on individual and class needs. As indicated by the number of features added since my original review, the developer is very responsive to user feedback. Please contact Demografix if you’d like to see any features added, or if you have any ideas on how the app could work better for you. I stand by my original comments that School Writing “is one of the best-designed Apps I’ve seen and delivers great value for the price.”
You may have read my reviews of School Writing, School Fonts, and Ghost Type, three apps which I consider must-haves for teachers and parents alike. Today I’m reviewing a fourth app from Demografix, Literacy, that promises to be just as useful. There are two main sections to the app: Lessons – Words and Sentences, and Whiteboard activities.
Lessons – Words and Sentences
This section is similar to the lessons in the other Demografix apps. The big difference with Literacy is that you are not limited to a set number of characters (12 in School Writing and 10 in School Fonts). This makes it possible to enter a child’s full name along with sentences. You are also not limited to the length of the screen either, as text can be scrolled, either screen-by-screen or by free scroll. The first time we tried scrolling the text, it was a little awkward, but my children caught on quickly and now have no problems. There are more than 40 activities and lessons included with the app, and these also serve as an example of what you might do with your own content.
A few months ago I reviewed School Writing by Demografix, an excellent handwriting App with beginner and cursive handwriting styles for all Australian States and Territories, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. The main downside of this App is that it is only available for iPad. In the post, I mentioned that Demografix had a similar App for iPhone, School Fonts- Learn to Write. Demografix have kindly given me a copy of the App to review, so now I can give you a run-down of the App, and the similarities and differences between it and the School Writing App.
Features
Many of theSchool Writing Features also appear in School Fonts:
3 Handwriting Activities for Upper Case, Lower Case and Numbers
Words – Lessons include Dolche sight words, phonic elements, pre-writing patterns and more. You can your own custom activities, such as spelling lists or personal information (names, phone numbers etc). Words are limited to 10 characters.
Handwriting Styles for Australian States and Territiories, New Zealand, the USA and the UK
Beginner and Cursive options for each handwriting style
Guide lines – options of standard thirds, and a midline.
Student Profiles – You can create profiles for individual students.
Audio visual reports for each student can be emailed to a nominated email address. The video allows teachers or parents to review the child’s progress far more accurately than a simple mark that an exercise has been completed.
Internet links can be blocked: – Internet links for social networking, feedback on the iTunes store, and the Demografix website are all available by default, but can be turned off to prevent children accessing the Internet.
Positive Feedback – The original version featured no feedback, relying on parents and teachers to do this. Positive feedback has since been added so that children receive encouraging messages as they complete exercises, but this can be turned off. I’ve noticed that in some iTunes reviews, people complain that children are rewarded even when they do poor work, but this is the reason why Demografix encourages parents and teachers to provide the feedback: you can provide the best supportive feedback, and encouragement from you is far more effective than a disembodied voice saying “Good Job.” Cheers for Demografix for adding the feedback in response to user requests, but I’m with them when it comes to adult interactions and supervision.
Lockable – parents and teachers can lock the app so that children cannot turn on the Internet links or edit exercises.
Import/Export custom activities.
The YouTube video below shows the App in action:
Other comments
You find that the main differences to School Writing, apart from it being available for iPhone, are the absence of the White board activity, words and words being limited to 10 characters.
Tracing over letters with fingers will help children to learn the different patterns, letters and numbers, but I would suggest trying a stylus to practice pencil-grip too.
Demografix have a section on their website where you can download the default lessons plus lessons submitted by other teachers and parents. I strongly encourage sharing activities you create with this App, as it saves “reinventing the wheel”. I hope to upload some activities there soon.
Verdict
This is the must-have iPhone App for every teacher and parent. Instead of being tut-tutted for letting your children play arcade games while you are out and about, you’ll be sue to earn a “good parent” sticker if your child is using this one.
Disclaimer – thank you to Paul Collins from Demografix for providing me with the App to review. All comments are my my own honest opinions.
Giveaway!!!!!
Paul Collins from Demografix has given me some codes for both the USA and Australian iTunes stores to give away to my readers. Check that you are entering the raffle for your country only. THIS GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED.
School Writing by Demografix is an App I’ve meant to review for some time. It has handwriting fonts for Australia, New Zealand, the USA and the UK. You might be mistaken for thinking it is only a handwriting App, when it is really a versatile App that can be used across the curriculum and is suitable for all ages. This App is for iPad only, but iPhone and iPod Touch users should still keep reading as there Demografix has an iPhone App, School Fonts, that is very similar, lacking only one of the major activities. Continue reading →
Recently released (just in time for Halloween) is this new educational app from Kindermatica that helps children learn to write their numbers.
Last year I reviewed School Writing by Demografix, an app that I bought to help my children with their handwriting and one that I’ve come to consider my favourite educational app. That is a big call, I know, as I have a lot of favourites, but this app really delivers. The great thing is that, since I’ve bought School Writing, several updates have been released and each one has added even more supportive features. With the recent release of Version 2, I thought it was about time I updated my original review. I could have simply made a list of the new features, but for readers who haven’t read my original review, I thought it might be better to use most of the original review, and to highlight new features throughout.
You may have read my reviews of 
A few months ago I reviewed 
On Sarah's iPad 