{GHF Blog Hop} Apps for Working Homeschool Families

The Dragon Box app is a personal favorite in our home.

For this month’s Gifted Homeschoolers Forum blog hop ("Tips, Toys, Tricks, & Tools for Gifted/2E Kids"), I’m sharing some wisdom gleaned weeks ago in the How to Work and Homeschool Facebook discussion group.

Basically I invited group members to share their favorite apps. As a demographic, these parents tend to be very tech savvy and willing to test and use technology freely in their home learning environments. And because many of them are parenting very bright, gifted and/or twice-exceptional (aka "2e") kids, they were the perfect group to poll on this topic for this particular hop.

Here are some of the responses, which I’ve edited slightly:

“I like the Handwriting Without Tears app for the iPad for my preschooler. I do the ‘chalkboard’ exercises with him on the iPad. So it takes very little of my involvement, unlike if I were working with him on an actual chalkboard where I would have to make the letters for him to trace and erase and then make sure he draws correctly. . . We do more educational things with computer programs like Youth Digital Minecraft Mod class, BrainPop, ABCMouse, and Ooka Island.”

“DragonBox . . . [our son] whipped through the first one pretty fast and through the second faster than I thought he would. He still wants to go back and "get all the stars" or whatever the heck the bonus point stuff is. I think it's really good for introducing algebra in a game way.”

“Evernote, but that's for me. For my son, YouTube is good for learning stuff he's curious about. I don't intend to use apps for a while. My son is almost 6.”

“Algebra Touch (and Long Division Touch) - they are amazingly intuitive.”

As for our household, we're heavy-duty iPad users and have been since we purchased our current tablet over 2 years ago.

Some of our favorite apps are mentioned above (specifically DragonBox, the BrainPop apps).  We also like EpicWin for supporting the development of executive skills (our son uses it as his checklist for school work and chores). GoSkyWatch and StarWalk are awesome for exploring the universe and night sky. Mystery Math, Marble Math Jr, and Math Drills have been a lot of fun, too, for grade school math. In the beginning Evernote was just for me--I wrote much of How to Work and Homeschool on it--but as our kiddo has started to write longer projects, I’ve allowed him to try it, too. Lately we've added VocabAhead (the 6th grade version for our word-loving 3rd grader) and Spell Tower to which I'm completely and totally addicted.

What are some of your favorite apps?