Best iPad App For Teaching Phonics to Kids

Phonics instruction helps children learn to read by recognizing the sounds of the spoken language. Children are first taught to recognize the sound each letter makes, pick out the beginning sounds and ending sounds of words, and finally combine different sounds to make words.

Interactive tools not only motivate your child to learn but they also make learning more interesting. Your child may not be willing to sit down with a paper and pencil but he may just love to play educational games on iPad or iPhone. I wonder sometimes if Apple already knew how their products would benefit these young people the most.

Since my son would never sit with me and play with flash cards *peacefully* like some other kids do, I have been fishing for the best phonics app and here's my catch:

Abc Pocket Phonics

Pocket Phonics is a simple app that teaches children how to write, recognize, and spell out common and most frequently used words. This app will surely give your child a head start in learning and will help him develop early literacy and reading skills. 

The design and interface of PocketPhonics is rather simple. There are no bells and whistles and no colourful interactions like in other children's apps. Despite that, it is still my favorite app so far and I am clearly impressed.

This is how this phonics app teaches your child to develop phonics recognition and reading skills. 

• The app demonstrates how to write each letter, saying the letter sound at the same time. Your child is asked to trace a set of letters with his fingers. This tracing quiz is good for developing penmanship skills. The small cartoon figures that cheer up after successful completion of this level will motivate your child to trace. 

• Your child is asked to recognize the letter from the sound that is played in the recording and pick it out from a set of 5-6 letters. This quiz helps your child learn phonics and letter recognition.

• The recorded voice then shows how to spell out common words with the letters your child picked.  

A unique thing about this app is that it doesn't introduce letters in alphabetical order. Instead, it teaches in sets of letters that are more useful and more frequently used. This will help your child in starting reading sooner.

Verdict

This is a must have app for every preschooler eager to read and write. The price is only $2.99 and it is totally worth it!

Get it now!

Bad Sleeping Habits – Sleepy voice at 10 am???

I know it’s common around here in Karachi for people to keep sleeping past noon but still I always hate it when I call someone at 10 am and I am greeted with a sleepy voice!!! And when this happens at noon, I really want to go kill that person.

Should I change myself and be considerate towards those people who have such sleeping habits or should they change themselves? I know it’s them who need a wake up call and really need to improve these bad habits. But if you got to live in Karachi and get along well with people, then it’s the other way around. This means, I really need to control myself when I feel the urgency of calling someone in the morning. I should perhaps assume there is a time difference between me and all those people out there who sleep until late.

I know that in Karachi our mornings start very late. I know that you keep sleeping late in the morning. But for the love of God, can’t you just pretend you weren’t sleeping when someone calls you?? At least show some embarrassment at sleeping so late!!! Whenever I am greeted with a sleepy voice, I really want to hit that person in the head but instead, I always end up apologizing. Because, I have to live in Karachi.

Once, I called my best friend at 1 pm hoping for a nice and lively chat, only to find her screaming at the other end of the line. She was actually angry at me to call her at such an early hour. Huh?? Get a life! Its 1 pm and my day is half finished!

Maybe even foreigners are aware of our bad sleeping habits. A few days back, I got a call from a US university about a scholarship application I sent to them *accidentally*. They called me at 1 am at night when I was fast asleep. I don’t know what I said to him because I was half sleeping but I only remember the last part when he said “Good day”. Huh? In one way, he was right because in Karachi, people are actually very very awake at 1 am, except me.

The last thing I can do is hope that one day all my dear friends and family will understand the importance of “early to rise, early to bed”.

But in the meanwhile, keep expecting my calls at such early hours. Because I can’t delay MY work because of this…If I need to call you, I will do it, although I will never expect to have a nice friendly chat with anyone at such hours. My apologies to everyone in advance J