My Favorite Apps

I love our iPad. 

We are so lucky here in Alberta because we have funding to use for school.  Last year we used some of our funding to buy an iPad and we have been using it ever since.

Just in case you have one you love and want to find a new app or two, I thought I would make a list.  Or you are getting one for Christmas...or iTunes money...

English

Verses Poetry

We love this one.  You get a whole selection of words and you make poems with them.  You can change them up, make them easy, or add words.  Great for practice.  (and no one grades you on your creativity)

Word Abacus

We love how you have to make words on a cool abacus.  I must admit that this is one of dh favorites.  He plays it more than anyone else in our house. 

You get a whole abacus full of letters and you must make words by using the letters adjacent, linking all of them.  Excellent game.

Bananagrams

Classic game, only on the iPad.  My oldest plays this often.  He loves Scrabble and Pick Two, so this is right up his word game alley.

You get a pile of tiles to make crosswords type puzzles with, adding letters as you run out.  When your pile is empty you are a winner!

Textropolis and Fishtropolis

I must admit that when this popped up as a free app, I was rather snobbish and I didn't download it for a couple weeks.  It was a persistent little app and so I finally figured if it sucked I would trash it.

It doesn't suck.

These are our families favorite apps right now.  My youngest is even able to play a bit.  He can pick out a few words and move on to another.  You must make as many words as you can out of the base word.  There are some words that I have never heard, but luckily they define them after you get them!  Great vocab builder for kids.

Word Bingo

This is one I downloaded for my youngest.  There are pre-K words and up.  He is getting really good at reading his sight words so this is a hit.  There are a couple different games that as you complete them you get a "bingo bug".  Later you can go play with your bingo bugs.  They can be shot at words or just tickled to give you little giggles and fun sounds.

Chicktionary

I admit it.  We really are suckers for word games.

This is much like scrabble in that you have a few letters you have to make as many words as you can out of them.  There are a couple ways to play (speed or just find them all) and we enjoy both.  There are a bunch you get for free then if you want more the next packs are pretty reasonable prices.  (I think $1.99)

Math

Drill-San

I love this one for my boys.  You can set the level, the number of questions and what they are doing (multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) then they do them.  After you can see how they did.  It tells you how long it took, how many they got wrong or right, and what percentage that is.

Math Bingo

Another one we enjoy is math bingo.  Just like the word bingo above, this one has a few different games to play.  After you do them you earn bingo bugs to play additional games with.

I think my favorite part of this one is that it looks like a game, but it is really a drill!  :)  Even my youngest can play this one.

Rocket Math
We enjoy the drills that look like games.  :)

This one uses incentives like rocket money.  You have to answer questions to earn money then  you can make a rocket.  Some of them are pretty fun (like a phone booth, a school bus and others).  Then you can see how far your rocket will go by answering more questions. 

History/World Awareness

50 Places of a Lifetime (National Geographic)

This one has some AMAZING photography.  We use it often.  We enjoy using it for the information it contains (there are photos, videos, and written articles). 

Flags of the World and National Geographic GeoBee

Both of these apps are wonderful for the information they contain.  They both have quizzes that are like games so that you are learning and having fun at the same time. 

The flags one has lots of info on each country and flag.

The GeoBee works you up level by level and gets harder and harder as you go.  I enjoy the challenge if presents.  It is slanted to US though,  (so those of us that don't actually live there know ahead of time) with many questions about states and history.

Misc Apps For The Younger Set

How to Draw

This is a fun little drawing program.  It takes you step by step through the process of drawing simple things like a dog, cat and dinosaur.

My youngest likes it best because it is geared towards really young kids who are just starting out.  It is even narrated by young children.

Moody Monster

Apparently this is a program on TV?  Not having TV makes us ignorant to that, so if your littles like moody monster, this will be a hit. 

There are different games in here that you match, make up different things and answer questions.  It is a great pre-K or K game.

Super Why

Also a program I guess...who knew?!

This one has 4 fun games on it.  Rhyming, fixing a story, spelling and hunting letters.  Great game for the younger kids.  This is the app that helped my youngest finally understand rhyming.  For the longest time he would think that the words that STARTED the same rhymed.  Now he understands.

Misc Apps That we Love

BrainPop

Super fun (and educational) app.  There is a featured movie you can watch everyday.  It is always informational and fun.  After watching you can answer questions.  (or not)

There are a few movies each day you can see.  I think it is about a weeks worth. 

All my boys love to watch it.  The youngest still doesn't answer the questions but it is amazing what he retains from the information he hears.

Weird but True

Who doesn't love the books?! 

My boys love this app because of the information (which is funny) and the animations (which are really funny). 

My youngest especially loves the animation that says "That's Weird".

Triazzle

Ok, I added this one because it is my favorite one.  Have you ever put together the three sided puzzles?  This is it only as an app.

I love to figure them out, and it is nice to have the little animations to tell me when I have it right!

Where's my Water?

Love Swampy.

He is a little guy that all he wants is to get clean.  He doesn't want any poison in his bath though because he is unlike others, he likes clean water.

These are fun and rather addictive puzzles. 

You need to get all three ducks, avoid poison, bombs and other obstacles.  Our whole family enjoys this little app.  (and the animations are awesome!)

Spikey

This is another one we just play for fun.  Spikey sticks into everything.  He wants to free all the butterflies but he keeps getting stuck.  You have to shoot him to smash all the jars to free the trapped butterflies.

Little Things

I love the I Spy books.  Well, we all do in my family.

This is a game like the I Spy's.  You have a big photo that you have to find little photos in.  It gets harder are you figure them out. 

This is great fun for all my kids.  (and me when they are in bed!)

Fruit Ninja

Who doesn't like chopping up fruit and wishes to be a ninja?!  That's all I have to say.

World of Goo

I actually held off buying this app for a year. 

I am not a big fan of some of the other big grossing apps, and this has been on the top charts for a long time, but I finally caved and bought it.

It is a great little app.

You have to help the goo balls reach the collection tubes.  You have to be really careful though because if you build a shaky tower, it falls.  You build bridges and towers and various other methods of transportation for your little goo balls.

My youngest is in love with this game. 

Pixlr O Matic

Love this one.

You upload your photos (or if you are in the lucky few who got an iPad2, just take a photo with your built in camera) and apply different things to them.

You can make them black and white, sepia, old fashioned, change the colors, add different extras to them...and more.

Great fun similar to photoshop. 

My two oldest really get a kick out of changing their pictures with it.

Well, that's it for now.  I hope that you might find something that you can enjoy from our list.  We sure have fun with ours.  How about you?  What are your favorite apps?

Cheers

Hello...

I have found out that virus' are not pretty.

I have had them on my computer before, but these past few days have been interesting.

I had to have my computer doctored.  We had some lovely new virus' that we picked up somewhere (they apparently attach them to web pages now...who knew?!) that the Dr's had only seen once before they are so new! 

I have my lovely little computer back now though, good as new!  YAY!

So, I thought I would show you something that has been keeping me busy the past few days.

Cooking Scrabble!

Played like scrabble only different!  :)

There are some lovely little cards now to add to the ease (or hardness) of the game.

Check some of them out:

You get to use a card per turn.  Yes, I know my board above is missing a letter tile.  Dh stole one of my tiles just before this turn.  One of the cards lets you do that...I actually won this one!  I NEVER win against dh.  This Scrabble game evens the playing field because I can cook!  (I know lots about cooking terms too)  Dh may be able to see the words in the tiles, but I can see the cooking terms. 

This one gives you bonus points as well if you use cooking words.  So on top of the score you would normally get, you get extra points for using cooking terms...see:

I think I am getting carried away with Scrabble and word games (I own many), but I love these types of games so much. 

This makes Scrabble a bit more fun for the kiddies too.  Some of the cards are pretty creative with the way you can skip other's turns, steal tiles and points, team plays, etc.  We had a rousing game with the two oldest boys this afternoon.

My parents are coming over tonight to try it out with us too.  They are big Scrabble players, tournament of Scrabble anyone?!

Cheers

Games

I like to organize.

There I said it.

I am sometimes a little obsessive with it.  I often get teased in my family for it.  Dh will not do things like unpack (or if he does, he asks permission) because he knows I like to organize.

I know, weird hobbies, but that is mine.  (ha ha)

The other day I was browsing pintrest and came upon an idea that would let me organize some more...YAY said me!

This lady had taken all her games and condensed them into one box. 

We have alot of games.  I use many games in school, and we like to play games as a family.  We have games to play alone, games with just a few players, and games for many.

What a great idea it would be to get them all in one box thought I.

This is one of my boxes:

I managed to fit over 22 games in there.  (I think it is 24)

I wanted to put dividers in there, but I couldn't fit as many if I did, so I went with baggies and elastic bands.

I also had some that had bigger board games though that wouldn't fit in there so I had to get a longer container.  So, over 60 games in two containers!  Yahoo!

I thought it would be fun to tell you some of our favorite games.

Scrabble Scoop (great for my youngest)
Upwords
Pick Two
Super Scrabble (way more tiles and bigger board for longer game play)
Rook (classic "Mormon" game)
Clue (both the card game and the board version)
Settlers of Catan
Sequence
Monopoly Deal
Sorry (the card version is our fav, but we like the board one too)

I know we have many more games that we love but those are the ones we keep coming back to.

How about you?  What is your favorite organizational tool?  How about your favorite game?  I would love to hear about them.  We are always looking for more ideas.

Cheers

SCORE!

I don't know why it rotated...but it wasn't like this on my camera...

I have been looking for a game for the wii that is more active.  I love the ones that you have to stand for, or the ones you have to move with, that is why we bought it.

I would love to have some sort of dancing one, but dh has veto'ed that.  :)

So I travelled to all the places that sell wii games.  Do you know how hard it is to find these type things?  Apparently they are changing the wii so ours is now OLD and OUTDATED!  Holy.  It is hard to keep up with the rapidly changing tech!  But, I digress...

I found this one at Superstore.  My friend has it for her kids and my boys love it.  You have to run and jump and climb, generally move a lot!  It is a great game with fun adventures and lots of moving. 

It was on sale from $49 for $34.99.  Good deal.  I had a $4 gas coupon.  I also had points from our PC Master Card. (we love being able to get those points and the $$$ we get from it!)  So grand total, I spent $2.62 on this game!  SCORE!

My boys are super excited to go play.  I am excited they have to be standing to do so!

Cheers

UPDATE to add:

This game is really cool...

You run,

Jump...

Can play up to 4 people at a time.  (although we figured out that the players 3 and 4 are at the back...make sure the littles are #1 or 2)

I have even played a few.  (crocodile stomp and a twister like game)

Super game.  We are loving it!

Giveaway Time

Son #3 loves Pajama Sam.  Have you ever heard of him? 

There is this little boy (Sam) who has these adventures as Pajama Sam, his alter ego that is a super hero.  He goes on adventures in various places.  In one that we have, he has to find stuff in his messy room, all of a sudden his room is an amazing land to discover his stuff.  In this one, he has to find food hidden all over his house.  His house takes on a totally foreign land feel.  Totally fun for kids.

The adventures take a while to complete, in fact my son is still working on them, but there are little games and things to do throughout the whole thing.  It is very age appropriate.  I am thinking an older 4 and up...my older boys even enjoy playing it.

I was on Ebay a few weeks ago and bought him a pack of three disks...BUT I accidentally bought one we already had.

I want to share.

Do you want it?

To get it, all you have to do is comment.  Make sure that if your email is not attached to your profile that you add an email at the bottom of your comment. 

If you want an additional entry, you can blog about your favorite game for your kids (but come back and tell me in the comments) or send a friend over (also tell me in the comments if they are being sent by you).

The giveaway is open until March 1st at 8am.  Mr. Random.org will pick a number and I will post it here.  Good luck.

Cheers

THE aMAZEing LABYRINTH

I had to write it that way, because...well, that is what it is called!  :)

Have you ever seen this game?

About a hundred years ago (give or take ninety years or so) we got this game.  Maybe from discovery toys?  I have seen it other places though. (like here at amazon)  It took a few years before it was a big hit in our house though.

Now, it is well loved!  It says that 8 and older can play but my 5yo beat our pants off last night!  Here I will show you how to play...

Your little man stands on his color.  This is your home.  Where you start, and where you finish.

You distribute all of the cards that look like this.  These are your objective, BUT, you can only see one at a time.  So I find out where I need to go by checking out my card. 

Here is the trick...there is an extra tile.  You place it on one of the yellow arrows and push the other tiles out.  This changes the maze.  You want it to change so that you can travel the white paths to your cards.  The first person that gets all their cards and travels back to their home wins.  Messing up another player IS allowed!

We use this in our free time for school (it teaches logic and thinking skills without them even knowing!), or as a fun family game to play together.

What is one of your families favorite games?  We have a whole stack of them, so if your family is anything like mine....it is many...but pick one.  Why is it your favorite?

Cheers