Educational cartoons about life in Rome

If you have been living on Mars for the last few years and not heard/seen/read Horrible Histories then I suggest you check the books here or DVDs here.  The rest of you will by now be wondering what next on the history front in terms of something that appeals to youngsters, keeps their attention and educates them.

A small but useful answer is the two animations below.  Ray Laurence, the Professor of Roman history and archaeology at the University of Kent has produced two short cartoons that have been seen by over half a million people.

A day in the life of a seven-year old Roman girl

A day in the life of a teenage Roman boy

Primo - a fantastic learning toy from @primo_io

Primo brings hi-tech educational excitement back into the real, physical world.  We are excited to be one of the 651 Kickstarter backers that have enabled Primo to occur and look forward to getting our kit and giving a full review in the late summer.



Primo offers "A tangible programming interface designed to teach programming logic to children aged 4-7 without the need for literacy".  Watch the video for more details.







Click here for the Primo site

"Primo makes programming tangible, helping kids write their first programs and algorithms” - Wired

Words by @magmamedia surprising hit as letter practice for 4 year old

The Words app is aimed a bored adults, word search fiends or people keen to test their vocabulary. It is not aimed at 4 or 7 year olds. It seems however that searching a grid for words and then creating connectors to mark them up and then seeing your progress through levels can create hours of distraction.  And from our point of view, educational distraction as it is all about letter recognition (the words the typically too sophisticated for kids to get value from the definitions dictionary). 

Try it out. It can be fun to play together. Especially if you go against the clock. 

CatSpanish - a cute way to learn? From @CatAcademyCEO

From Cat Academy come CatSpanish which claims to help team you Spanish by linking phrases and words to humorous images of cats.  "Think Rosetta Stone, to the power of LolCats" they say!

We've tried the free version which does demonstrate a good mix of learning style with high quality delivery, and of course the cats!  All too rapid though it is asking for £4.99 for the full course with no clear suggestion of what you get for you money.

(And while of course just a few years ago people would have grabbed at an on-line language course costing less than a fiver, we have become so used to free and cheap apps that everything over a couple of pounds seems to make us sweat)

Once we finished working through some other apps we're mid-way through we'll buy the full course of this and give you a more detailed view.  In the meantime the free version is a fun download for any kid over 6.

Click here:

Fantastic free language app @duolingo

We will be reviewing Duolingo over a number of posts as this app/website has real depth which we are only really getting into.

It offers free education in French, English, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and has impressed us so far from three points of view.
1. A varied set of activities to keep the interest levels up and drive different types of thinking and remembering - this includes pictures, words, typing translations, typing what you here and recording for speaking
2. The gamification aspect, using points and in particular daily targets, to keep you going
3. The ability to follow other users and "compete" against them - this is great within families and between friends and I believe will become increasingly standard when developers see how much this helps keep people using their apps.

I suggest anyone who has children at any level in language learning download straight away.  Some of the exercises require writing - so probably the earliest age is five, or maybe an advanced four year old, while for it to be used without your being to closely around it is probably nearer 7 or 8.

Click here for UK iOS versions

iPhone iPad

And if they must have games....

There are occasions when your child will complain that you are making them "do work" rather than play games.  Ideally you offer them another of the educational apps we have identified on this site and that satisfies them, but if the pressure continues you may feel offering them something that really looks and feels like a game is the way to go.

Now while Candy Crush might help them with problem solving and Temple Run 2 might help them with co-ordination we believe there are some games that will definitely engage their brains in beneficial ways.

Father and guest contributor Marc Gillham suggests some options:

I find the following apps, although marketed as games, have a sound educational core presented in an entertaining manner (maybe side effects is a better term) and are not, for once, based on death and destruction.

Star Wars: Tiny Death Star. Provides a sound grounding in the theories of supply and demand plus some basic economics. Really this should be essential training for many people in business. 

(Suitable for all ages - My four year old likes it because it’s helping him with his counting to 20 and with number recognition (characters appear and want to go particular numbered levels). My wife likes it also, because it runs in real time and you can dip in and out of it as much or as little as you wish while the game continues to run) 

UK links: Android - iPhone - iPad

The Hunger Games Adventures. This is all about resource management and building effective and efficient infrastructures. Kids learn the values of trade off and balance, juggling cost versus efficiency, and interrelations in potentially complex systems, especially the law of unintended consequences. A must for any budding business leaders. (For 7+)

UK links: Android - iPhone - iPad

Minecraft: Pocket Edition. Simply because no list of skill building software would be complete without this one. I'm sure I don’t need to tell that as well as the obvious it teaches co-operation, exploration, a questioning approach and that all important resource management. This article is a good read about how Minecraft is changing the way children think, much more so than any explicitly educational software. (For 9+)

UK links: Android - iPhone - iPad

Mathletics - a great maths reinforcement tool @MathleticsUK

Many parents and children first come across Mathletics when it is introduced at school - typically in UK year 3 or 4.  We see it as a great reinforcement tool that younger children can also benefit from.  The emphasis is on reinforcement as it does not "teach" in the same way as other apps or sites such as Mathseeds, and therefore is more likely to need parental support when your child tackles something new.

It is website based, though with ipad access available, and requires an annual subscription (currently £39 for one child and £69 for two in the UK).  It is structured to reflect the specific curriculum of 20 different countries from infants up to the top end of senior school.

With our focus on the young age brackets we see not only useful exercises (albeit not perfect such as the Reception year "which is larger" exercise sometimes having only very minor differences) but good gamification based around the need to get at least 1000 points a week to get a series of bronze, silver and gold certificates.  While effective at getting the child to aim for 1000 points (between 30 minutes and two hours a week depending on the exercises they do) the lack of "things to buy" such as offered by Readingeggs means that once the certificate of the week has been achieved it may be hard to encourage the child back until the next Monday.

Updates to parents weekly by email are a helpful summary (and chaser if you have not got your child to use it enough that week).  And once your child starts using it at school an extra dimension is added.

Our main concern is whether there is enough content to keep a smart, engaged youngster going for a year.  it is possible to move to the next year's curriculum but in most cases that would be a stretch too far.

We would recommend the £39 investment as part of a portfolio of exercises for your child, but emphasising that once moving beyond basics the lack of "teaching" approach means this is a tool where you are likely to spend a reasonable amount of time supporting your child as they work through it.

See other Live Mathletics post for one of the more unique and compelling aspects of the product.