5 apps to teach English to your kids — Part 5

While fixing all the articles for my “new” blog (did you see how beautiful it is? I love it!), I noticed that I’ve never finished the series about the best apps to teach English to your kids. Oops, I completely forgot about it! Today, I’ll make up for it.

The last app that I’d like to show you is by Montessorium, whose slogan is, “Learning is a lifestyle”: how could I not like it? On top of that, the website is nice, fresh and clear (good sign) and the app is based on the method developed by Maria Montessori—who probably wouldn’t have used iPhone and iPad, but you know, times change 😉

Here it is!

Alpha Writer by Montessorium:

Age: from 3-4 years old, depending on the activityPrice: €4,49

Although not as intuitive and reactive as the other apps I use, I have to admit I liked it a lot and, most importantly, my students liked it. It uses only phonics of course, because Maria Montessori had it all figured out (how did we get to the aee-bee-see? 😓 ).

It offers two activities and a game.

The first activity (divided into two sections, Phonetics e Phonograms, the more complicated sounds like ai, oa…) consists in writing the word of the image you see, dragging the letters in the boxes in the right order. An activity that many other apps offer.

The section Storyboard, though, offers an activity that I haven’t seen in other apps and I loved: you can write your own mini story using letters and images. For example, kids can write The fox is in the box using the images of a fox and a box and letters to writing the remaining words. Very nice!

The letter cards are red for the consonants and blue for the vowels (according to the Montessori method) and they can be resized using two fingers (like when zooming a photo). Children also develop problem solving skills to decide which words can be written using letters and which using images, and little by little they understand that material words like fox and box (nouns) have images because they can be seen in the real world, while particles like the and in (articles and prepositions) have to be written with letters because they can’t be represented with a drawing.

The last section is my favourite: it’s the classical kid game I Spy With My Little Eye, where the kid has to choose one object out of three that starts with the letter that the voice says (the voice first says the names of the three objects). Fun and useful to learn new vocabulary.

And now that you know my favourite apps, don’t think for second this is over! I’ve got a nice bonus for you that you’ll love: a gorgeous app (probably the most beautiful I’ve seen) to learn how to write every single letter. I’ll tell you about it next week!

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Did you like them? Do you know other good apps to teach English? Which apps do you use with your kids?