Apps We Love & a Freebie

We're back to tell you about a few iPad apps that we just love, and we have a little freebie as well.
 We hope you're all off to a great start to your school year!  We're heading on week four and finally settled into a routine in our classrooms!  
Since taking an iPad class over the summer, we've discovered several new apps that we just love.  We thought you might be interested in them as well :) Before we share about some apps, we wanted to share a website that we recently discovered.   Technology in Education is a website that continually posts about educational apps with an emphasis on special education.  If you follow them on Facebook, you'll get daily updates on marked down, or even free educational apps!  We've learned about so many through this site.  

Here are a few apps we've recently added to our iPads:

This app contains ones, tens, and hundreds manipulatives, along with a virtual pen and eraser. There are three color options for the manipulatives, and two color options for the pen.
This could be used as a whole group, small group or individual lesson depending on how many iPads you have. You could show specific numbers using the manipulatives and have your students tell you the numbers. You could also say or write a number and have a student show you that specific number using the manipulatives.  Demonstrating how to add double digit numbers with regrouping can also be done when using this app. 


Similar to Number Pieces basic but contains more options making this app suitable for upper grades

We just love how you can create and organize your own flashcards.  
Plus, you can search for flashcard sets that have already been created, which saves A LOT of time.
This app provides you with access to hundreds of types of flashcards for a variety of subjects. You can also make your own. The cards can be read to you, and you can choose between several different languages. The decks that you choose to download can be saved in your "decks" section.
In younger grades this app would be great to use while reviewing Dolch sight words and addition and subtraction facts. As an independent activity, you could have a student listen to the sight words for extra practice. In upper grades this app could be used to review vocabulary words and their definition. You can utilize both sides of the flash cards when creating your own.


This is a virtual geoboard that contains 25 pegs or you can switch it to show 150 pegs. 
 There are 8 different rubber band colors. Shapes can be filled in as well.
You could have students create specific shapes. You could also compare shapes. For example, if you created a square and a rectangle, you could discuss how the square's sides each have the same amount of pegs, while the rectangle has two sides that have more pegs than the other sides. For older students you could compare fractions or create irregular shapes and count the square units. 

And here's our freebie!  
This is a set of classroom/subject labels that we've created to put up around our classrooms.  Just click the picture below if you'd like a copy!

Have a wonderful week!