New Apps to Start the Year

Here are some FREE educational and creative apps to start the New Year off right!

Creative

Lego City: My City offers a variety of mini games that engages both a student's brain and body. Students will be challenged to drive a race car, unload trains in a logical fashion, and even drive a snowmobile through the arctic.

All mini games are short, so this apps works great in rooms where iPads are limited.

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Another Lego title that may find a place on your iPads is Lego Fusion: Town Master. This app is meant to integrate with Lego's Fusion series toys, but can be used as a stand alone app. Think Minecraft simplified with Legos.

Multiple cities can be created after a few tutorial mini-games, so it could be possible for each student to have their own city on one iPad, or better yet, let each student add onto the classroom city!

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Sometimes teachers just need a simple coloring app, well, behold Live Colors for Kids. On the surface the app is simple, but it hides a interesting coloring app twist, students can learn to blend colors! Using the palette, students can learn to mix colors to get a variety of paints.

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English/Language Arts

Word Joust is another app from the creators of Edmodo that tests students vocabulary skills in a variety of ways.

There are actually two apps, Word Joust K-5 and Word Joust 6-8. Both are technically iPhone apps, but they will work on a iPad just fine.

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This app, Story Lines, from the creators of Edmodo turns your iPad into a creative writing tool. This app takes the classic telephone game and amps it up a couple of notches. 

This app is perfect for a classroom full of iPads and even just one. This app could also be used in any discipline with a little creativity. 

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Math

Tiggly Chef: Preschool Math Cooking Game provides young learners with simple and fun explanations of the mathematical process. 

As an added bonus, students create crazy food dishes that contain things like peppers, jellybeans, and eggs!

There are a variety of other Tiggly apps available including a neat number line app.

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There are two types of people in this world, regular folk and those who understand Trig. Trig Math Pro is here for us regular folk. This app takes a classic flash card approach, but provides great feedback when a student answers incorrectly. 

The developer, Mathtoons, also offers several other math apps in the subjects of Algebra Basics & Advanced, Logarithms, Exponents, Equations, Geometry, Number Skills, and Calculus.

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Special Education

Emotionary allows educators to create a diary/journal of their students emotional states. It allows students to input entries through words, pictures, or even sound. The sound feature makes it great for speech teachers also!

This app allows you to track multiple students on one iPad making it a perfect fit for all Special Education and even General classroom teachers.

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"Wow, it is cold enough to freeze your...um...butt off out there!" See what I did there, that is a idiom and there are students out there that have a hard time understanding them. Well Idiom Stories is there to help those learners out.

This app helps students understand the ideas and explanations behind popular idioms in a fun and comical manner.