Check out these 10 FREE Kindergarten iPad apps for literacy and math. I love incorporating technology into my whole group lessons and center time. One way I let students work with technology is by having an iPad center. I only have 1 iPad with 3 kids at a center, so they have to learn how to share. Many of these apps are for Androids as well. Here are some tips of how to organize them on an iPad.
Ipad App Organization
To help younger students navigate to the correct games, I divide the games into 2 folders: reading & math. This way your students know which folder to open up, depending on what center time it is. I don’t add the apps to the folder until we learned that skill.
We play the game a few times whole group projected on my Apple TV. This helps students know how to find the app, skip over the ads, and navigate the app. Most of these free Kindergarten iPad apps have a paid version if you don’t want to mess with the ads or you want extra levels.
FREE Kindergarten iPad Apps for Reading
At the beginning of Kindergarten, learning the alphabet and forming letters is crucial! This app Phonics Island helps students learn how to trace letters correctly and it gives them “green light” and “red light” hints of where to start and stop. If they don’t trace it exactly, it makes them start over. After they trace the letter, it makes the letter sound, and says the name of the animal that starts with that sound.
My students actually really enjoyed this Beginning Phonics app. It simply has them match the picture to the correct beginning sound. The app tells them the name of the picture as well, in case they can’t figure it out. I like that this app uses real life images. Students enjoy watching the fun animation go across the screen when they get one right.
How cute is this penguin? This Spelling with Cimo Sound Out app helps students build words. It has the letters mixed up at the bottom of the screen. Students have to move each letter in the correct order, so the penguin can walk across the ice. The app has 6 levels of play with more difficult sounds such as bossy r, long vowels, irregular vowels, etc. We stick to level 1 until we are ready to move up.
When we are working on sentence building, I use the app Sentence Maker. This app can be customized so that you can provide picture, word, and sentence clues. As your students get better at sentences, you can hide those gray boxes so they have to build the sentence all by themselves. You can also set how many words you want in a sentence.
Futaba is by far one of my students favorite free Kindergarten apps. WARNING: it has annoying music in the background 🙂 Just teach them how to turn the volume down. Students simply look at the picture in the middle, then try to be the first person to find the word. This is great fluency practice!
FREE Kindergarten iPad Apps for Math
Here are a few of my favorite FREE Kindergarten iPad apps to use during math. Just like learning letters is so important, learning numbers is another beginning of the year skill that we work on A LOT! This Number Quiz app is very similar to the letter app where students work on tracing the numbers. This app also has students work on 1-1 correspondence and find the correct numbers.
This Animal Math app works on counting to 10, sequencing, patterns, and addition to 5. As students go through the games, the skills become harder.
For beginning addition and subtraction, I like the app Addition and Subtraction For Kids. It provides a visual as well as the number sentence to help students add and subtract. Only level 1 is unlocked on this FREE app.
Another fun app is Teaching Number Lines. It works on a variety of math skills such as number lines, addition, subtraction, skip counting, and sequencing. The students enjoy making the frog hop along the number line. When I use this whole group, my students use a teddy bear and number line at their seat. One kid gets to do it on the iPad that is projected onto my Apple TV.
This app, Number Pieces Basic, can be used when learning about base 10 blocks and place value. Students drag over the base 10 blocks and then use the marker/pen tool to write down the number. I like how the blocks are different colors to distinguish between hundreds, tens, and ones. They can then “trash” it and do another number. I let students work together in pairs to give each other numbers. They love trying to come up with a HARD number their friend may not know. ; )
There are many apps out there that are engaging and educational for little learners, but I hope you found a few that might be useful to you. What are your favorite FREE kindergarten iPad apps?
If you want more educational games for your entire school year, check out my Digital Task Cards that can be played on any device that has Powerpoint! I currently have sets for grades preK-2nd. Try a few for FREE below.[convertkit form=1151080]
