iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

PBS Kids

Fizzy’s Lunch Lab – A Free iPad App for Learning to Budget

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Screen Shot 2013-03-30 at 7.56.34 PM Fizzy’s Lunch Lab Fresh Pick is a free iPad app from PBS Kids. The app is based on the popular PBS web series Fizzy’s Lunch Lab. The purpose of the app is to challenge students’ math and problem solving skills. The app contains eight challenges for students to try. Students can go through the challenges in any order that they like. The eight challenges for students are Buying Groceries, Grocery Mapping, Neighborhood Mapping, Pantry Hunt, Fizzy’s Invention, Customer Change, Find Freddy, and Food Matcher.

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Of the eight challenges in Fizzy’s Lunch Lab Fresh Pick there are two that I think have the most potential for classroom use. Those two are Buying Groceries and Customer Change. In Buying Groceries students are given a budget and they have to choose foods that match the budget. Customer Change asks students to make correct change.

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Fizzy’s Lunch Lab Fresh Pick does let students save their places in the game. Three students could use the same installation of the app because there are three slots for naming and saving your game.

PBS Parents Play & Learn – An iPad App for Parents and Children to Use Together

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Screen Shot 2013-03-15 at 11.29.08 AM Earlier this month PBS released a new iPad app designed for parents to use with their children. PBS Parents Play & Learn offers thirteen games put into settings that parents and their children are likely to go to together. Some of the settings are a library, a park,  a restaurant, and a grocery store. The games are intended to help children learn to count and spell. Along with each game there is a set of four activities that parents can do with their children in each setting. For example, one of the suggested grocery store activities is to introduce children to the concept of weight and measuring things in the produce section of the grocery store.

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PBS Parents Play & Learn is a free iPad app. If was a pre-K or Kindergarten teacher, I would definitely put this app on my list of recommended apps for parents to use at home with their children. The app is available in English and in Spanish.