Peg+Cat Big Gig

Peg + Cat Big Gig is an education app designed for ages 3-5. The children can make music with Peg and Cat and build your child’s math skills. Includes two musical games. Based on the PBS television show Peg + Cat. It costs $1.99 on ITunes but was featured for free from PBS kids free app packet. Peg + Cat uses musical instruments to create music and simple math skills counting up and down by ones and twos, adding one, and repeating patterns. I plan on using this program to go over simple math concepts and introduce music and instruments to students. I used this as an introduction to math concepts and musical techniques can be used for all student.

 Here is how it works:

Children learn math skills by learning and creating songs. The characters from the Peg + Cat show are featured. The student can play 12 different songs including the theme song. The free play section is where the students can create their own songs and music. The students can sing along to the songs they make. Using different math techniques adding one or repeating a pattern are used in making the music.

http://pbskids.org/apps/peg--cat-big-gig.html

Brain Pop

Brain Pop creates animated, educational movies for the classroom. Teachers can purchase one of multiple subscription types or just use the “free stuff.” Like anything, you get more options as a subscriber, but even the free videos are great. The best part about this app is that you can download a different version depending on what age group you teach: Brain Pop Jr. (K-3), Brain Pop, Brain Pop Español, and Brain Pop ESL are all available. As a future K-8 teacher, I know these videos will be great transition activities or “brain breaks.”

Here’s how it works:

A variety of subjects are available: arts and music, science, social studies, engineering and technology, English, math, and health. Each subject is then divided into more specific categories; for example, if I were to click on “science” I would then be able to choose from topics such as earth systems, matter and chemistry, energy, ecology and behavior, etc. After each video there are activities: some of the free ones include order of events, short essay questions, graphic organizers, and a vocabulary list with space for definitions. These activities could be used while the student watched the video, a “ticket out the door,” etc. There is also a Q&A tab that could be used as a prompt for classroom discussions or submitted to the teacher as a formative assessment. Subscribers gain access to quizzes. By using the Mixer tool, instructors can adjust the quiz difficulty to students' ability levels and use the results as a formative or summative assessment.

Brain Pop can be downloaded as an app on all major platforms or through www.brainpop.com.