As technology becomes increasingly important in our society, parents want to teach their children the skills they need to succeed. Your child will learn about technology at school, but if you’re a homeschooling parent you might be glad of a few extra resources. These four applications have plenty to offer, from coding to typing and STEM-based learning, let’s take a look.
1. Daisy The Dinosaur
Daisy The Dinosaur is a super cool application to help young kids learn coding basics. The application is free, and has a simple drag and drop feature. Daisy is suitable for kids of all ages, as well as for children with autism. The idea is to animate the dinosaur so that she dances on your screen! The app challenges kids to attempt simple tasks, helping them to learn about loops, objects, sequencing, and events, as they solve various challenges.
2. Kid Rex
Kid Rex is a ‘kid-safe search engine’ that’s powered by Google. Performing research on the internet is a great way for children to complete homework assignments and learn new skills.
The site offers the following precautionary guidelines for parents: ‘ We work diligently to remove reported material that is not appropriate for children; however all removal is at our sole discretion. While we do our best to screen for unsuitable material, use of Kidrex is at your own discretion.’ Generally speaking, it’s best not to leave kids unsupervised when they are using the internet.
3. Animal Typing
With the help of this typing app, your kids can master touch typing in a fun way. There are plenty of cute animals to help, including the horse, rabbit, or snail. Each animal represents a different typing speed. Your kids are allocated a faster animal when they learn how to type faster. Once your child moves through the program, they’ll eventually unlock the cheetah! Animal Typing offers plenty of feedback and encouragement, making the whole experience fun. Schools will often enroll children in typing programs to boost their skills. If you’re teaching your children from home, Animal Typing is a fantastic tool.
4. Smart Tales-STEM Learning
Smart Tales is a great app to support children with STEM subjects (these include Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The app uses interactive stories and game-based elements, to approach these topics. A few of the best features of the app include:
- Hundreds of animated pages and stories to choose from.
- Hundreds of educational games, varying in difficulty.
- Games and stories can be accessed offline.
The app is simple to use, but you can always support your child if they have learning difficulties, or need some extra help.
To help your child to improve their tech skills, this is the perfect application to try. When you’re working with your children with these apps at home, it can be useful to keep track of your learning schedule. Keeping track of your children’s learning can help you to monitor their improvements, and set goals. Whether you’re supporting your child with distance learning, or helping to develop their tech skills, these apps have plenty of great features.
