Virtual Learning Amid School Closures for Corona Virus (COVID-19)

Experienced educators who are familiar with the challenges associated with responding to national emergencies know that school closures can affect children’s academic progress, safety and social lives.  Parents and teachers are now faced with extended school closures due to the threat of the corona virus (COVID-19).

According experts at this time more than 30,000 schools in the U.S. are being closed and this leaves more than 20 million students being asked to shift to online learning activities to keep their academic progress on target. Currently entire states have shutdown schools and some of the nation’s largest school districts have recently announced closures.

Ventura Educational Systems is offering five free apps to help elementary students to keep up their math skills:

Addition Puzzles

Addition Puzzles is an exciting, interactive math game to help kids practice addition skills. Use logic to select the numbers that will solve the puzzle. Puzzles are randomly generated so the app offers an almost infinite number of puzzles at six different levels. Puzzles can be selected that involve just whole numbers from 0 to 20 or integers from -10 to 10.

Math Spin-o-Rama

Use Math Spin-o-Rama to help your students practice and improve math skills.

Math Spin-O-Rama provides practice with two and three place addition with a new twist. The numbers in the problem are in the wrong place and must be rotated to be in the right place to fit the answer.

The app has four levels and includes practice in doing both two-place and three place addition. Math Spin-O-Rama makes learning fun. As students answer correctly they earn gold stars. Once they have earn five gold stars they get a chance to spin the wheel to earn a prize. The prizes are collected in a table.

Make learning fun with Math Spin-O-Rama.

Addition Blockmania

Help Kids Learn Addition Facts and Improve Basic Math Skills!

Use Addition Blockmania to help your students practice and improve math skills.  This game challenges students to think quickly and be accurate. The object is to find a set of blocks in the stacks whose sum is equal to the given number.

The app offers four levels of activity. Larger numbers are used at the higher levels. Animation, sound effects and speech help to make this curriculum-based math activity exciting for young mathematicians. Elementary school teachers and parents with young students will find that kids enjoy practicing math skills when they are given this app to use.

On Target Math Skills

Help Kids Practice Arithmetic Skills and Problem Solving Abilities with On Target Math Skills.

The On Target Math Skills app generates an almost infinite number of puzzles where the challeng is to make a specific number given four other numbers. Students can use any of the four basic arithmetic operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication or division to try to solve the puzzle. In coming up with a solution, students will need to use the problem order of operations.

The app challenges the player to find 10 solutions in order to earn a trophy. The app offers 5 different levels of difficulty. The On Target Math Skills app is designed to be a quick math exercise that teachers can use to provide a quick basic arithmetic and problem solving activity.

Interactive Multiplication Chart

Help Kids Learn Multiplication Facts and Improve Basic Math Skills!

The Interactive Multiplication Chart app uses a grid to help students see the patterns in the addition table.

This app challenges the player to find an intersection on a grid where the product of the two multipliers fits the randomly selected problem description. Complete the activities by finding 10 correct answers. The Interactive Multiplication Chart app is designed to be a quick math exercise that teachers can use to provide practice with basic multiplication facts.

In addition to the free apps listed above Ventura Educational Systems offers a huge library of inexpensive apps focus on math, science and reading development. Our most recent releases are Hundreds Chart Deluxe, Math Connections I and II, and Phonics Connections.

Please visit our website for more information.

Advertisement

Phonics Connections

Get your kids on the right track for reading with Phonics Connections. The app contains motivating word games where the goal is to match vowel sounds to blanks in a word that describes a picture. This app is for beginning readers. Each of the activities feature color pictures illustrating words with short vowels, long vowels, special sounds like ar, or, er, ir and ur. In addition some of the words in the activities use the ou, ow, au, aw, and oo vowel sounds.

The app is designed to help students learn to read with ease and confidence. A connection from the vowel sound to the picture and word can be made using a finger, pointer, or Apple Pencil. Once the correct connection is made the word is pronounced and spelled using synthetic speech.

The app stores a record of the student’s progress as they continually try to improve their score. Speech and sound effects make using the app even more fun. Click the dice icon to get a randomly generated design and starting point for creative exploration. Hours of fun!

To use the app and make a phonics connection students drag with the finger from one of the items on the left to the matching item on the right.  The app also works with Apple Pencil.  After each correct answer an animated gold star appears on the screen. Every time an activity is completed a trophy is displayed.  The scoreboard keeps a record of how many correct answers were given within each topic.

This app can be used on iPads, iPhones and Apple TV.

Phonics Connections is available with a volume discount for educational institutions. This app can be purchased worldwide exclusively through the Apple App Store.  The apps are also available through Apple’s volume purchase program. Schools get a significant discount when purchasing multiple copies of any of these apps. Contact Apple Education for more information about the volume purchase program.  Please visit Ventura Educational Systems’ website for more information about this and other iOS and tvOS apps for education.