An "Early Literacy Apps 101" course on choosing and exploring apps with your pre-reader, with recommended free apps and further resources. Note: all apps within are ad-free, in-app purchases free, and cost-free as of 8/9/17.

1. Apps and
Early Literacy:
Tips for parents and caregivers
on choosing and exploring apps
with pre-readers
with recommended free apps
and further resources
Emily Lloyd, Children’s Librarian

2. These are
the five
best things
you can do
with a child
to get
him or her
ready to read.
The five best
things you
can do with
children
to get them
ready to read

3. “Not all screens are created equal.”
-commonsensemedia.org
• Thoughtfully-selected apps can supplement, not replace,
the nondigital ways we write, read, play, sing and talk together.
• Explore apps with your prereader, as you would explore
a book together.

4. “Not all screens are considered equal.”
-- Common Sense Media
from JAMA Pediatrics, March 2014
Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH

5. • plain, clear, highly legible fonts (especially when letter
or number recognition is part of the action)
• meaningful interactive elements
• intuitive wayfinding—not too complicated for children to
puzzle through with minimal adult help (content can be
challenging; using the app shouldn’t be) and a smooth,
fluid user experience
• clean, uncluttered display—not distractingly busy

6. • apps (free or paid) with ads or in-app purchases that aren’t easily ignored or
keep popping up
• apps in which the primary mission is to gather coins/points/etc to purchase
or unlock more features
• apps with loud, busy, cluttered displays
• apps in which the “interactive elements” are truly bells and whistles, as if
added in after the fact
• apps that are more video than interactive experience
• apps that don’t provide a smooth, fluid user experience (slow or over-quick
to respond to touch; too sensitive; etc)
• apps with extremely artificial-sounding synthetic voices

7. (some examples)
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic app
• screen too busy for pre-K
• main concern is with point/coin/gem accumulation and spending
Example: Age-inappropriateness

8. Examples: Age-inappropriateness

9. Poor font choice in Alphabet Find
(2nd row, lowercase “g”;
3rd row, lowercase “j”)
Examples: poor font choice, confusing messages
Food Shape Game: is this a
circle or an oval?

10. 1. Disable in-app purchases:
2. Explore it yourself, starting with the settings…

11. Many apps are customizable, from content to “success sounds”—look for gear
icons like these in a corner of the app’s home screen:

12. Some great free apps
to explore as you
write, read, play, sing,
and talk together…
Photo: Tim Wilson

14. • In “Play Sound Effects” mode, each
color has its own sound. In “Music”
mode, each has a musical phrase
from a different musical genre.
• When you draw, the sound or phrase
plays until you lift your finger off the
screen.
• Sounds and music can be turned off
during quiet times
Write Together
with Finger Paint with Sounds
( Android; iOS)

15. Reading together is the #1 thing you can do
to get your child ready to read.
Read ebook apps aloud with your child rather
than defaulting to the prerecorded option.

16. Read Together
with OnceAppon (iOS only)
With OnceAppon, you can create,
customize, and name the
protagonist of a story that’s
generated after you choose from a
group of settings, props, and
characters.
The avatar-builder alone is
wonderful, providing more fun and
options than most dress-up apps.
You can create and save more (an
unlimited number?) of avatars and
stories, and return to your “library”
to read them whenever you
choose. The simple plot, told in
rhyme, remains constant, but the
details are yours to decide.

17. Read Together
with Collins Big Cat: It Was a Cold, Dark Night (iOS only)
and I Love Mountains (iOS only)
• Collins Big Cat: read the story---then use the backgrounds and characters to
make up your OWN stories!
• I Love Mountains: This stellar nonfiction ebook app uses interactive elements in
a wonderfully meaningful way: to demonstrate the actions of mountains forming.

18. Through play—whether dressing up, playing
house, or solving a puzzle together—children
learn how the world works and practice
putting thoughts into words.
Exploring interactive apps together can
supplement (but not replace) other forms
of play.

19. Play Together with
Alien Assignment (iOS only)
• A fun photo scavenger hunt-like quest
with a backstory: aliens need help
repairing their ship and other items,
and “learn” how to repair them through
photos you and your child are
prompted to take.
• Example: “Our helmet is cracked!
Take a photo of something you wear
on your head to help us repair it!”
• Note: requires iPad with camera. Also
available for iPhone.

20. Play Together
with Sock Puppets (iOS only)
• Choose from six puppets and
several sets and act out and
record 30-second scenes
• Scenes can be saved for later
playback and shared to
Facebook or YouTube
• Once you record a voice sample,
you can set pitches for the
puppets. When you act out a
scene in your own voice(s), the
app will alter your voice according
to which puppet you’re using
before playback
• Don’t know where to start? Record
your child singing the ABC song while
tapping a different puppet for every
few letters, then play it back

21. Play Together
with TinyTap (Android; iOS)
TinyTap is a phenomenal app
that lets you easily create simple
“find and tap” games with your own
images and voice.
The possibilities for games that
grow with your pre-reader seem
endless: use a photo of your child
and ask her to touch different body
parts; use an image of a simple map
and ask your child to tap on the
river, then the mountain; use a
photo of five apples in a row and
ask your child to tap the apple on
the far left, then the apple on the far
right, then the apple in the middle,
and so on.

22. Play Together
with Find Them All
(Android; iOS)
• Find animals by scrolling
through a scene and listening
to their sounds, then find them
again in the dark with a flashlight.
• Take pictures of the animals and
shake the iPad to turn the pictures
into jigsaw puzzles—the more
shakes, the more pieces.
• Hear each animal’s name in
English, Spanish, French,
German, and Chinese.

23. Toca Tailor Fairy Tales (iOS only) includes male and female models and requires
pinching, spreading, and turning (not just tapping) maneuvers to lengthen and
shorten sleeves, change the colors of items, etc.
An excellent feature encourages making custom fabric swatches by using the
iPad’s camera to take photos—in the third image above, a photo of piano keys
became the “swatch” for the model’s outfit.
Play Together with Toca Tailor Fairy Tales

25. Sing Together
with Grow a Reader and
Baby Karaoke
• Grow a Reader (Android; iOS):
made by Calgary Public Library.
Geared to parents and caregivers,
with tips on writing, reading, playing,
singing, and talking together.
Includes 25 short videos of different
action songs and rhymes.
• Baby Karaoke (Android; iOS)
presents five songs in video form.
Listen to them sung, then sing them
together without any vocal
accompaniment in “karaoke mode.”

27. Talk Together
with Toca Kitchen Monsters
(iOS; try Toca Kitchen for Android)
• Action: choose a food and a
tool with which to prepare it;
prepare it; feed it to the monster.
• Name or ask your child to name
the foods, tools, and actions
while you play to build vocabulary
(“Should we boil the broccoli in
the pot, or chop and slice it
with the knife?”)
• Keep up a conversation with your
child as you go (“I spy an orange
vegetable in the refrigerator! Can
you find it? What it’s called? Yep,
it’s a carrot! How do we cook carrots
at our house?”). Strive for five
back-&-forth exchanges.

28. Talk Together
with ChatterPix Kids and
Zoomorph (both iOS only)
• What would your favorite stuffed animal,
pet goldfish, or tree in your front yard say
if they could talk? ChatterPix Kids makes
it easy to “animate” any photo by drawing
a mouth and recording a short
monologue. Among other things, try
having your child draw a monster or a
portrait of someone she knows, then take
a photo of the drawing and make it talk.
• When your cat looks at your living room
(or you!), what does she see? Which
animals see the closest to how humans
see, and what do we have in common
with them? Using scientific data,
Zoomorph simulates how ~50 species
likely see the world. Includes LOTS of info
for the extra-curious who’d like to learn
more.

29. Talk Together with Switch Zoo Free
and Collins Big Cat’s In the Garden,
Playing, and Around the World
(iOS only)
• In Switch Zoo Free, while you mix and
match animal parts to make new
creatures, talk together about the
characteristics (use lots of good
adjectives!) of the different animals,
and take conversational cues from
the provided animal facts.
• Play with language—make up a
name for your new creature.
Add invented details (what does
it eat? where does it live?) or
your own story about it in the
provided space.
• Like It Was a Cold, Dark Night, mentioned
earlier, Collins Big Cat’s apps are short
ebooks that invite you to write your own
stories using their backdrops and
props—a great opportunity for
conversation with your child. You can
record your stories, too.

30. More Recommended Free Apps to Explore
• LEGO DUPLO Train: iOS; Android
• LumiKids Park: iOS; Android
• Daisy the Dinosaur (iOS only. Very basic “intro to coding” app)
• Dragimals (iOS only)
• Little Piano Master: iOS; Android
• MoMA Art Lab (iOS only)
Book apps:
• The Animals Sleep: a Bedtime Book of Biomes : iOS; Android
• The Artist Mortimer: iOS; Android
• Oobie’s Space Adventure (iOS only)
Apps for Parents and Caregivers:
• PBS Parents Play & Learn: iOS; Android
• Zero to Three—Let’s Play: iOS
• ACPL Family: iOS
All apps mentioned here are free from ads and in-app purchases, and free as of August 2017.

31. • Common Sense Media’s “Best Apps: Our Recommendations for Families”
• Digital Storytime (reviews, specifically of ebook apps)
• Kindertown: The Educational App Store for Parents
(friendly search interface; apps reviewed by educators)
Also good to know: Apps Gone Free, which daily lists which paid apps are free
for that day and regularly includes children’s apps.