In the High Tech Kids segment series we will share our favorite apps and child-friendly technology. Today, we review the JumpStart® Blast-Off Early Reading app for iOS, Android and Amazon Kindle devices.

[pinwheel_dark_organge position=’left’ title=’Dark Orange Pinwheel’]We focus a lot on early reading in our house. Our children do not really have a choice since their mom is a literacy specialist. We have Bob Books, we have early reading books, and we have alphabets and all kinds of other things around our house to help our children learn to read. I am always on the hunt for new early reading apps for the kids to work on their skills. We know the hard work is paying off because our Kindergartner recently got her second quarter report card and she is flying high with her reading scores. She surprises us every day as she gets better and better. She is even starting to read the words all around us, the guide on the TV, billboards, street signs. I guess our days of spelling things out as parents are officially over. But hey, we get to look forward to the next step, right? Let’s review the JumpStart® Early Reading App

When the folks at JumpStart® contacted us again (we reviewed their Madagascar App here) to look at two apps for kids in Math and Early Reading we jumped at the chance.

Upon first starting this app, you are asked to log in. This is to be able to “save” the data from your child’s activity. That being said you can play as a guest. Once you get to the menu screen you do need to help your child the first few times playing, as the menu is a list of options. You choose which skill you want the child to work on, what curriculum level (each level would be equivalent to a grade level, 1 is late Kindergarten and early first grade and so on) and then you have to choose if you want easy, medium or hard game play. When all those options are chosen, you can also choose if you want to play left handed or right and it shows you how to deal with the joystick or tilt.

Once in the game, you begin to navigate your spaceship, make sure your volume is on here as the narrator tells you what letters/words, etc. you are looking for. Working the spaceship through the game is pretty exciting for a five year-old. Our daughter was really into it and the sound effects started pretty quickly for her. She cracks me up how looking at how into the apps she got.

The app did require a lot of parental help for us because she is only five years-old. That being said, I can easily see her being able to quickly pick it up and an older child would do very well with the app. Similar to video games, you have to really use both hands to manage the controls, which is another reason it can be tough at first for younger children and may require parental participation.

We will continue to use this app in the future to practice her early reading skills and improve her confidence with those skills. Overall, I am mostly happy with this app, but would love to see the introduction menu be a little more kid-friendly perhaps, with pictures and less options on one screen.

From the developers:

Help your child learn key early reading skills! Perfect for your 6-8 year old!
Explore a mysterious cavern packed with reading skills and fun with your child in JumpStart® Blast Off: Early Reading! Armed with their brains, jetpack and blaster, your child will blast through correct answers and zap away the incorrect ones as they race for top score. Beware of the pesky punk punks that are out to stop your child.

With 19 lessons designed to teach key early reading skills, this educational game will help children master the skills to excel in school.

Equip your child with a strong reading foundation. Your child will develop key educational skills such as word recognition and sounds, early grammar classification, and more. Through listening and interacting with words, elementary school learners will enjoy a comprehensive reading and learning experience found only through JumpStart® Blast-off: Early Reading!

Game Features:

• 19 lessons focusing on beginning phonics and early reading so your young learner can get ahead!
• Key educational skills your child will learn:
  • Word recognition and sounds
  • Early phonics with key emphasis on word pronunciation
  • Grammar classification and usage
• Many progressive levels of game play for your young learner to master!
• Amazing 3D graphics and catchy music that your child will love!
• Choose Tilt or Joystick controls so your child can pick up and play immediately!

JumpStart®, a key children’s educational publisher, has created learning games such as JumpStart® Blast-off: Math, Madagascar Math Ops, Math Blaster, JumpStart® Pet Rescue and more!

Where: iTunes App Store Google Play, and Amazon.

What: JumpStart® Blast-Off Early Reading

Need to know: This app is designed for children as young as Kindergarten. However, it may require some parental guidance in getting to the game play.

Extra Extra: Check out JumpStart Moms for parenting tips and ideas to printable worksheets and fun activities for kids.

Website/Contact Information: www.jumpstart.com.

But wait… There’s more.

In celebration of the Blast-Off Series of apps, we at Windy Pinwheel, in conjuction with JumpStart®, are giving away a download code for both Blast-Off Math and Blast-Off Early Reading apps for your children to enjoy. Just enter the giveaway below and be sure to come back every day before 8:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time Friday, March 7, 2013 to enter.

This giveaway contest is open to residents of the United States and Canada only. You must be 18 years-old to enter or have your parent’s permission. Void where prohibited.

Sponsor this article for $1.00

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By sponsoring this article, your sponsorship will display for a period of 180 days (6 months). If, for any reason, and it is up to the discretion of the authors of Windy Pinwheel, we feel content linked to or the name provided does not coincide with the objectives of this site for our audience we will issue a refund and pull the sponsorship of the article. This action does not limit you from sponsoring an article on our site again. However, by sponsoring again, we will issue the same review criteria as the prior sponsorship and if it fails, we will follow the same process as before and issue a refund and pull down the sponsorship. We truly appreciate the support of our audience and hope you can help offset our costs of operating this site by sponsoring our site articles.

For all reviews, please exercise discretion. If the sponsor of the article is in conflict of the topic of the article, we will pull down the sponsorship to remove any conflict of interest with the article at-hand. For instance, there is an article about a hamburger restaurant and a competing hamburger restaurant sponsors the article; we will pull the sponsorship and issue a refund.

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In the High Tech Kids series we will share our favorite apps and kid friendly technology.

Our Kindergartener recently got her second quarter report card and along with her report card came a “Math Award” we were so incredibly proud of our little girl, she is testing beyond where she is expected to be in math. When the folks at JumpStart® contacted us again (we reviewed their Madagascar App here) to look at two apps for kids in Math and Early Reading we jumped at the chance, because as an educator myself, who spends most of my work hours on the Common Core State Standards implementation and a parent of a young child who is currently learning these early skills, we love any chance to help her improve her them and to share great apps with our friends who have young children as well.

Upon first starting this app, you are asked to log in. The reason for logging in is to “save” the data from your child’s activity in the app. That being said, you can play as a guest as well. Once you get to the menu screen you do need to help your child the first few times playing, as the menu has a list of options. You choose which skill you want the child to work on, what curriculum level (each level would be equivalent to a grade level, 1 is late Kindergarten and early first grade and so on), then you have to choose if you want easy, medium or hard game play. When all those options are chosen, you can also choose if you want to play left handed and it shows you how to deal with the joystick or tilt.

Once in the game, you begin to navigate your spaceship, make sure your volume is on here as the narrator tells you what numbers/shapes, etc. you are looking for.

Working the spaceship through the game is pretty exciting for a five year-old. Our daughter was really into it and the sound effects started pretty quickly for her. She was cracking me up just watching how into the app she got.

The app did require a lot of parental guidance for us because she is only five years-old. That being said, I can easily see her being able to quickly pick it up and an older child would do very well with this app. Similar to video games, you have to really use both hands to manage the controls, which is another reason it can be tough, at first, for younger children and may require parental participation.

We will continue to use this app to practice her mathematics skills and improve her confidence with those skills. Overall, I am mostly happy with this app, but would love to see the introduction menu to be a little more child-friendly perhaps, with pictures and less options on one screen.

From the creators:

Help your child learn key elementary math skills! Perfect for your 6-8 year old!

Explore a mysterious cavern packed with math skills and fun for your child in JumpStart® Blast-Off: Math! ! Armed with their brains, jetpack and blaster, you child must find the correct answers to help them race for the top score! Beware of the pesky punk punks that are out to stop your child.

With 28 lessons designed to teach key elementary math skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, this game is the perfect way to help your child master and in a fun, cool way.

Equip your child with a strong math foundation JumpStart® Blast-Off: Math. Your child will develop key educational skills such as math operations, shape and number recognition. Elementary school learners will enjoy a comprehensive math learning experience found only through JumpStart® Blast-Off: Math

Game Features:

• 28 lessons of fun math skills for your young learner to get ahead in elementary school!
• Key educational skills your child will learn:
  • Math operations: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division
  • Shape and number recognition
• Many progressive of math game play for your young learner to master!
• Amazing 3D graphics and catchy music that your child will love!
• Choose child-friendly tilt or joystick controls so your child can pick up and play immediately!

JumpStart®, a key children’s educational publisher, has created learning games such as JumpStart® Blast-off: Early Reading, Madagascar Math Ops, Math Blaster, JumpStart® Pet Rescue and more!

Where: iTunes App Store Google Play, and Amazon.

What: JumpStart® Blast-Off Math

Need to know: This app is designed for children as young as Kindergarten. However, it may require some parental help in getting to the game play.

Extra Extra: Check out JumpStart Moms for parenting tips and ideas to printable worksheets and fun activities for kids.

Website/Contact Information: www.jumpstart.com.

But wait… There’s more.

In celebration of the Blast-Off Series of apps, we at Windy Pinwheel, in conjuction with JumpStart®, are giving away a download code for both Blast-Off Math and Blast-Off Early Reading apps for your family to enjoy. Simply enter the giveaway below and be sure to come back every day before 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time Friday, March 7, 2013 to enter.

This giveaway contest is open to residents of the United States and Canada only. You must be 18 years-old to enter or have your parent’s permission. Void where prohibited.

Sponsor this article for $1.00

Enter sponsor title and e-mail.

Enter website URL. Sponsor title will be hyperlinked with this URL.

By sponsoring this article, your sponsorship will display for a period of 180 days (6 months). If, for any reason, and it is up to the discretion of the authors of Windy Pinwheel, we feel content linked to or the name provided does not coincide with the objectives of this site for our audience we will issue a refund and pull the sponsorship of the article. This action does not limit you from sponsoring an article on our site again. However, by sponsoring again, we will issue the same review criteria as the prior sponsorship and if it fails, we will follow the same process as before and issue a refund and pull down the sponsorship. We truly appreciate the support of our audience and hope you can help offset our costs of operating this site by sponsoring our site articles.

For all reviews, please exercise discretion. If the sponsor of the article is in conflict of the topic of the article, we will pull down the sponsorship to remove any conflict of interest with the article at-hand. For instance, there is an article about a hamburger restaurant and a competing hamburger restaurant sponsors the article; we will pull the sponsorship and issue a refund.

By clicking the button below, I agree with the Terms & Conditions.

“Free kids Workshops at The Home Depot on the first Saturday of each month offer fun and useful projects like building toolboxes, fire trucks and mail organizers, birdhouses, Mother’s Day gifts, or any number of other cool projects.” – The Home Depot Website

“The free kids Workshops at The Home Depot are great for 5- to 12-year-olds, and they teach children do-it-yourself skills and tool safety and at the same time they help to instill a sense of accomplishment.” – The Home Depot Website Free kids Workshops at The Home Depot are a great opportunity to help your child explore the use of tools like hammers and nails as well as paint their creation using their own imagination and style.

On this particular Saturday, we built a desk calendar, the kind that are made of wood that you would manyally turn the numbered block to the correct number to match the date. The kids, all month, have been turning the numbers each day to keep track of the date themselves. They really enjoy knowing what day of the month it is.

Now, my daughter is 5 years-old and my son is 3 years-old and the free kids Workshops at The Home Depot are designed for kids between the ages of 5-12 years-old. However, with my help, my son had a wonderful time. I did all the hammering and he did all of the painting. He really likes red, so he painted his desk calendar pieces to his heart’s content. However, he missed a few spots, so I helped him fill them in. My daughter chose pink and purple. Together, their craft/workshop creations turned out better than we could have hoped.

Note: The Home Depot staff provide snacks and drinks to the little ones who attend and quantities are limited in both the craft itself and the snacks/drinks, so it is best to arrive near the start time if you hope to participate in that month’s workshop or you can sign up online. Please be sure to take a look at this blog post to learn more.

Overall, our kids have never had a bad experience at one of these free kids Workshops at The Home Depot and you are sure to have a amazing experience when you attend.

We also want to mention that Lowe’s Home Improvement store also hosts a similar event that is free for kids to attend, but they are intermittent in their choice of dates. We will follow up with a post about their free kids workshops in the future, so don’t forget to check back later for a post about the Lowe’s workshops.

» Check out these Kids Workshop videos on YouTube «

Where: The Home Depot.

What: Free kids Workshops at The Home Depot.

When: The first Saturday of the month.Need to know: Kids Workshops are designed for 5-12 year-old children with adult supervision. The Home Depot can be dangerous for unsupervised kids, so please look out for them at all times while you are in the store with them.

Extra Extra: These Kids Workshops at The Home Depot are free to the public and you can often come without preregistering. You can get free snacks and drinks while attending free kids Workshops at The Home Depot and supplies like aprons for your kids to wear, kid-sized hammers, etc. are available throughout the project, so if there is paint, the aprons can protect your kids’ clothes; mostly. However, unlike the Lowe’s workshops, The Home Depot does not supply safety goggles, so if you have some at home, please bring them with you or purchase some inside the store.

Also, check The Home Depot blog for more ideas on arts and crafts to do with your kids.

Website/Contact Information: HomeDepot.com/workshops.

Sponsor this article for $1.00

Enter sponsor title and e-mail.

Enter website URL. Sponsor title will be hyperlinked with this URL.

By sponsoring this article, your sponsorship will display for a period of 180 days (6 months). If, for any reason, and it is up to the discretion of the authors of Windy Pinwheel, we feel content linked to or the name provided does not coincide with the objectives of this site for our audience we will issue a refund and pull the sponsorship of the article. This action does not limit you from sponsoring an article on our site again. However, by sponsoring again, we will issue the same review criteria as the prior sponsorship and if it fails, we will follow the same process as before and issue a refund and pull down the sponsorship. We truly appreciate the support of our audience and hope you can help offset our costs of operating this site by sponsoring our site articles.

For all reviews, please exercise discretion. If the sponsor of the article is in conflict of the topic of the article, we will pull down the sponsorship to remove any conflict of interest with the article at-hand. For instance, there is an article about a hamburger restaurant and a competing hamburger restaurant sponsors the article; we will pull the sponsorship and issue a refund.

By clicking the button below, I agree with the Terms & Conditions.

In the High Tech Kids series we will share our favorite apps and kid friendly technology. Today we review Moose Math by Duck Duck Moose

“Mommy, I am leaning math!” – A., 5 years-old

In our first High Tech Kids review we looked at several of the Duck Duck Moose (DDM) Apps, check it out here, we also followed up when we reviewed DDM’s “More Trucks”

In early August, DDM came out with a new Kindergarten mathematics app. This could not have been better timing since our daughter was about to embark on her own Kindergarten journey in less than two weeks. I was actually overwhelmingly excited because I have it in my mind that I need to really ensure that, as a girl, she knows mathematics can be fun and she can be successful in mathematics. As an educator, I know all too well that by the time you move on beyond grade school, girls tend to shy away from upper division mathematics courses. We spend a lot of time on grade level mathematics skills together. We downloaded Moose Math shortly after it came out. Then, unprompted, we got an email from our friends at Duck Duck Moose asking us to review their new app. We, of course, agreed because we love their products and had not had a chance to play with it yet since the start of school had kept us fairly busy.

While playing with the app, we mainly focused our five year old Kindergartner on the app. I do think our nearly three year-old would be able to play the app with a lot of assistance. This app is better suited for the five year-old.

“Teachers take note: App number 17 from Duck Duck Moose is designed specifically to cover early elementary (Kindergarten and First Grade) math by way of some solid counting, sorting and classifying games. Each game lets children playfully master skills that will provide an excellent foundation for later math learning, and the games are paired with an individualized record keeping system, that stores progress and profiles for each child. Math educators will appreciate the fact that this app is 100% flashcard free, yet still manages a good deal of leveled practice.” – Children’s Technology Review The app takes you to a world completely new to DDM apps. The land of the “Dust Funnies” is a place that is entirely made up of found items. As you go further along in the levels of each area you get to “build” onto your store fronts making your city bigger. What child doesn’t like building things and exploring?

There are five areas of activities to practice and enhance your little one’s mathematics skills.

• Moose Juice: Makes smoothies while practicing counting, addition and subtraction;
• Paint Pet: Match the pets by counting the number of dots;
• Pet Bingo: Solve addition, subtraction and counting problems to get BINGO;
• Lost & Found: Learn and sort through shapes and colors; and
• Dot to Dot: Help the Dust Funny find his way home by joining the dots

We spent a lot of time with the Moose Juice area. The increasing difficulty and various mixtures were really fun and engaging for our daughter. She also very much loved the Pet Bingo area and felt very empowered by being able to do addition and subtraction.

The Paint Pet area was not her favorite as the early stages seemed a little boring. When given a variety of colors to “paint,” she wanted to paint more than just dots. Lost & Found and Dot to Dot were the last two areas we explored.

The Lost & Found area kept her guessing because each problem was different, one screen would ask her to identify three circles and the next asked her to identify the longest pencil. I really appreciated this area from DDM because it kept her wondering what was next and she never tired of it. The Dot to Dot area is actually something we have been practicing outside of this app. Making sure she can recognize the order of numbers is incredibly important. She liked it because she got to “make” something. A win-win in my book!

Overall, at first this was not my favorite app from DDM until we really got into it. Then we started to have a lot of fun and couldn’t put it down. I think our initial hesitation was the new “Dust Funnies” group and the app looking very different from all the previous DDM apps. In the long run, I highly recommend this app for children in Pre-K through 1^st grade. It is very clear that DDM consulted with an educator who has an expertise in early childhood education as well as employed the mathematics practices and skills described in the Common Core State Standards.

Where: The App Store and on Google Play.

What: Moose Math by Duck Duck Moose

Need to know: Moose Math is rated for 3-9 year olds, but a three year old would need quite a lot of help and a nine year old might be beyond this skill set.

Extra Extra: Duck Duck Moose has a great mailing list and consistently sends out information about new apps, coloring book pages, notifications when of apps go on sale, etc. all the time.

Moose Math features:

• 5 activities that teach counting, addition, subtraction, sorting, geometry and more; all of the activities are aligned with the Common Core State Standards
• An adaptive “helper” character; YaYa the bird, acts like a child’s personal tutor offering helpful hints and encouragement
• A Report Card section allowing parents and teachers to follow progress; the Report Card can track an unlimited number of users per device, making Moose Math a great app for teachers to use with their class
• A new Learning Portal with free downloadable worksheets for additional skill-building – great for teachers looking for fun, engaging offline activities

Website/Contact Information: www.DuckDuckMoose.com. Be sure to sign up and get on their email list to ensure you are in the know about app sales, etc.

Here are two Moose Math videos, a trailer/overview of Moose Math and one featuring the new set of characters in the app — the Dust Funnies!

Bonus Giveaway

As an added bonus to this review, we at Windy Pinwheel, in conjunction with Duck Duck Moose are holding a giveaway. We want you to share in the fun and excitement that this app has to offer. That’s why, when Duck Duck Moose reached out to us we suggested a giveaway for our Windy Pinwheel community.

Here’s what we’re giving away:

• Grand Prize: 1 set of Moose Math temporary tattoos and 1 Duck Duck Moose app download* of your choice.
• One Runner-up Prize: 1 set of Moose Math temporary tattoos.

*Please note that the majority of Duck Duck Moose apps are available only on the iPhone/iPad. You should have access to an iTunes account if you are selected as the winner. Also, this giveaway is available only to United States residents, 18 years or older or with a parent’s permission and void where prohibited. Winner must supply email address associated with your iTunes account to receive the app download code. Winners must supply physical mailing addresses to receive the set of Moose Math temporary tattoos by Duck Duck Moose

Giveaway deadline is 11:59PM Pacific Daylight Time on September 20, 2013. Enter today and come back every day for a chance at daily entries.

Madagascar Preschool Surf N’ Slide and learn at the same time.

The latest in our High Tech Kids segment series comes to us from JumpStart and Dreamworks Animation. Today, we review the Madagascar Preschool Surf n’ Slide iOS and Android app.

A representative from JumpStart games approached us, here at Windy Pinwheel, recently and asked that we take a look at another fun and exciting game called, Madagascar: Preschool Surf n’ Slide available on iOS, Android, Kindle and Nook devices. Of course, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to share an app with our children that would help them to learn and grow, so we happily said yes to check out the app the only way anyone should, through the eyes of a child.

Once you have paired your selections you get to surf down several scenes; from a half pipe of a storm drain/sewer (as a city landscape would appropriately have as a part of the scenery) to an antarctic frozen half pipe (perfect for the Madagasgar penguins). Along the sides/half pipes, various characters are there to cheer you on along the way. My favorite is the lemur. That character cracks me up. The goal of the half pipe is to collect as many stars as possible to earn stickers. Once you have collected several stars, you come to a character holding balloons who presents a challenge in the form of a quick quiz.

The quiz is verbal and asks the kid to identify a part of a pattern, like a zoo animal amongst farm animals or the other way around or maybe a letter that is in lower case, a colored shape or even a number. This is where the learning side of the app comes into play. My daughter just whizzed right through these questions as she likes to think she’s a smart cookie, but where she really enjoyed the app were the stickers.

After each round of quiz questions in the Madagascar Preschool Surf n’ Slide app the player gets to select from one of three options of the stickers they want to keep for their collection. Then the app flips over to the sticker side. The kid can then place stickers on one of four different backgrounds and just released, a new update to this game allows players to take their own pictures and use them as backgrounds in their sticker book. How cool is that? “This feature really takes learning to the next level – customization and ownership is such a growing trend with children, and JumpStart wanted to bring that to every preschooler’s learning experience with this new update to Madagascar Preschool Surf N’ Slide,” says Stephanie Song, Public Relations for JumpStart.

Overall, the Madagascar Preschool Surf n’ Slide app is very useful in educating children while letting them have fun in shredding it up in the half pipe. The replay potential is high on the Madagascar Preschool Surf n’ Slide app because children love stickers and the quiz keeps my children engaged. I would recommend this for preschool-aged kids up to about age 6 or 7 years-old. Beyond that, boredom could set in quickly for anyone older who can quickly pass the quiz and the repetitive nature of the half pipe area.

Currently at $2.99 in the iTunes App Store, this is a sweet deal to keep your preschool-aged kids entertained while they learn and grow.

Where: The iTunes App Store, Google Play, Kindle and Nook marketplaces.

What: Madagascar Preschool Surf n’ Slide.

Need to know: This app is focused on preschool-aged children.

Extra Extra: Check out the “Parent” customization tab in the lower left-hand corner from the launch screen to select what types of “lesson” quizzes your child will interact with and register to get up-to-date news about JumpStart right inside the Madagascar Preschool Surf n’ Slide app.

Website/Contact Information: www.jumpstart.com

Check out there blog at www.jumpstart.com/Blog.aspx

Here’s a game play of the Madagascar Preschool Surf n’ Slide app courtesy of Stela Appes:

As an added bonus to this review, we, at Windy Pinwheel, in conjuction with JumpStart would like to give away a download code for a copy of the app for your family. Simply enter the giveaway below and be sure to come back every day before 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time Friday, September 13, 2013 to enter.

Sponsor this article for $1.00

Enter sponsor title and e-mail.

Enter website URL. Sponsor title will be hyperlinked with this URL.

By sponsoring this article, your sponsorship will display for a period of 180 days (6 months). If, for any reason, and it is up to the discretion of the authors of Windy Pinwheel, we feel content linked to or the name provided does not coincide with the objectives of this site for our audience we will issue a refund and pull the sponsorship of the article. This action does not limit you from sponsoring an article on our site again. However, by sponsoring again, we will issue the same review criteria as the prior sponsorship and if it fails, we will follow the same process as before and issue a refund and pull down the sponsorship. We truly appreciate the support of our audience and hope you can help offset our costs of operating this site by sponsoring our site articles.

For all reviews, please exercise discretion. If the sponsor of the article is in conflict of the topic of the article, we will pull down the sponsorship to remove any conflict of interest with the article at-hand. For instance, there is an article about a hamburger restaurant and a competing hamburger restaurant sponsors the article; we will pull the sponsorship and issue a refund.

By clicking the button below, I agree with the Terms & Conditions.