Handwriting App: Letter School

Before I met my daughter I didn't believe that children would just naturally learn to grasp a writing implement properly and on their own. I mean, Mikey and I have spent A LOT of time working to develop a "tripod" grasp and to press the pencil/marker/crayon with the right amount of pressure to make a mark on paper. But here she is, 2.5 years old, grabbing and scribbling with perfect hand "posture." And here we are with Mikey, 4.5 years old, still practicing daily to figure it out.

Every day I offer dotted letters, numbers, or shapes for him to trace during "homework" time. Every day I remind him to "please us tripod grasp" instead of his fisted grab. It is perpetual, important, and sometimes frustrating. Enter technology. When my husband saw one of Mikey's friends drawing on an iPad with a stylus he suggested that we look into something like it for Mikey. I found a short and informative list on Urth Mama and chose "Letter School" as a good place to start. What I discovered was an app that seems to have been designed for Preschool Engineers!

Learning to write each letter follows a "Tap, Trace, Write" pattern. Here is how it works:
- child chooses a letter or number

Tap
- child taps the starting point for each stroke needed to write the letter, after tapping the correct starting point something cool happens - for example, a hook followed by a chain flows along the line of the stroke
- when each tap has been completed and a chain reaches across each line of the letter then the chain moves like a conveyor belt

Trace
- following the same pattern as tapping, the child traces each stroke of the letter
- as the child traces the line something cool happens to highlight their path, for example, grass grows along the stroke line
- when each stroke has been traced and the letter is grown over with grass, a lawn mower comes to mow it!!

Write
- this is the trickiest part of the game. the child has to write freehand. the starting points and tracing lines appear briefly before disappearing.
- the child writes, freehand, the letter, which appears as a chalk line.

There are a variety of mechanically interesting animations that appear over the course of the game. Train tracks and a train, hooks and chains, lawn and lawn mower, marble run and rolling marble, and the list goes on.

Download Letter School for iPad here:

Or Download Letter School for iPhone here:

Your child can use fingers to play this game. If you are like me and want your child to use this as a handwriting lesson then you'll need a stylus. I grabbed these inexpensive ones off Amazon: Sty HD - $1 each.

Top 5 Apps

We're always on the lookout for good apps! Here is a list of our favs.

5. Amazing Alex. My husband found "Amazing Alex" when he was reading Wired. It was listed as a great app for a "future engineer." The premise is that "Alex" has to clean up his room. The reality of playing is that there are balls that drop and have to roll over stars to collect points and end up in a basket, box or other container. To play, your preschool engineer will have to drag and drop shelves to be inclined plans that support the bouncing/rolling balls. For any child who has experimented with slides, this will be easy and fun. There is a "Classroom" where he or she will learn the basic principles of how the game works (pictured on right) and the levels progress at a pace that is fast for a three year old but about right for a three year old and his mama, ahem. Read more on my "Inclined Planes" post.


4. World of Goo.  In World of Goo the player constructs bridges using "goo balls." When the player uses a finger to drag one goo ball out of a pile of goo balls, support beams appear. It is called a "physics puzzle/construction game." It is a wildly entertaining game and I have to warn you that if your preschool engineer asks for help - beware. When I sit down to tackle a particularly tough one I usually get sucked in to figuring out how to build the right bridge. And right when I think I have it figured out Mikey sticks his finger on the screen to look at something and it all goes out the window. LOL.
Here's the link to the Android version: play.google.com. It is also available for the Wii. Read more on my "Building Bridges" post.

3. Bad Piggies. "Bad Piggies" is our current favorite preschool engineering app. Each level of the game is set in a different setting of hills, ramps, holes, and other obstacles. The player must create a vehicle that will transport a Piggie from start to finish. This game has it all. It has an easy interface for a preschooler to drag and drop to build vehicles. It has awesome features that are available and/or required for the vehicle to succesfully complete the obstacle course. Each level offers increasingly more options to propel the vehicle including motors, propellers, balloons, punching gloves, fizzy shaking soda bottles, rockets, fans, and more! Here are links to the game in the iTunes store: Bad Piggies HD - Rovio Entertainment Ltd; and Play.google.com. There are free versions and cheap versions of the game to download.
Read more here.

2. Toca Builders. Toca Boca makes a lot of awesome games. It was hard for me to choose only two for the top five app list but after reflecting on the nature of preschool engineering I decided that Toca Builders had to be on the list. It is another construction game, like Amazing Alex, World of Goo and Bad Piggies, which is appropriate for Preschool Engineering. What makes it different? It is 3D building. Each of characters has a specialty. One drops blocks behind him as he runs and if he encounters a block then he smashes it. One, poised on a ball, leaves a trail of colored ground behind him. Another shoots spit wads of paint (for lack of a better description) that splat on a target. Defying the laws of building with real blocks, one builder can suspend a block in thin air. The player can rotate the perspective to see where he or she is and what has been built. It is an incredible game for a preschool engineer and one that will grow with the child. Available on iTunes, Android, and Kindle Fire.

1. Toca Band. This is the best app for a preschool engineer and his or her parents. Each "instrument" is located along the bottom of the screen. The player drags and drops the instrument to a circle. If the instrument is placed on one of the circle pads on the bottom row then it will have a slow tempo. The middle row has faster tempo and the top row is the fastest tempo. So the banjo plays slowly on the bottom, faster in the middle, and fastest on the top. The yellow pad that has a star is actually a lift so your child can investigate the nuances of each instrument in turn. She can pluck the strings of the harp or make the percussionist shake, rattle, and roll. Discovering how each instrument works will intrigue a preschool engineer.

Your child can create ensemble music and it is almost fool-proof. Some ensembles sound better than others and I think that is the interesting thing for a preschool engineer. Even my 1.5 year old has success with it because she can see and hear something interesting by merely touching one of the musicians pictured at the bottom. Still learning how to touch the iPad, she even has some success dragging and dropping the musicians to a place on the band stand!

[Disclosure Statement: This post contains affiliate links. If you click and purchase, I receive a small referral fee at no cost to you. To see how I spend the money see my "Philanthropy" page. ]

A Preschool Engineer's Body

Picture from reasontostand.org.

I just love how young people make sense of the world. It is both egocentric and fanciful. Like in Leo Lionni's book "Fish is Fish" where the fish imagines birds to be fish with wings and cows to be fish with utters, a preschooler has a small world within which to understand how stuff works. One of the most pressing, if not the most pressing, mysteries to figure out for a preschooler is himself or herself...especially their bodies.

In the "Gears Gears Gears" post, I told a story about a sleepless night. I hadn't slept because my "wheels were spinning" - a phenomenon many adults experience when they turn an idea over and over in their head. It usually happens when you want to be sleeping and it almost never results in any productive conclusions. Mikey was two and a half when he overheard me use this lingo and was intrigued.

It made sense to my preschool engineer that there might be wheels or gears in his head. The idea was even supported by his work on the iPad when he played Toca Doctor. In a simple matching puzzle, the child drags and drops four gears to their spots in the patient's head. The "Lite" versions are free. (Not available on Android.)

Toca Doctor for iPhone
Toca Doctor Lite for iPhone
Toca Doctor HD for iPad
Toca Doctor HD Lite for iPad


Of course, like everything, we explain our bodies in terms our children might understand or relate to. Our bones are like blocks (birds' bones are like pipes). We have hoses and funnels inside there, too. What I've really enjoyed is that as he grows older Mikey starts trying to fit his experiences into the framework of his life. For example, he always asks me why we have to sleep. I have to repress my inner voice that screams, "because I need a break!" and answer him thoughtfully. Recently, he has bought the explanation that when he sleeps his body builds his bones and new gears in his head. He accepted it so thoroughly that the other day he woke up from his nap and told me, "Mama, I heard a 'clunk' while I was sleeping. You know what that sound was Mama? It was a new gear in my head! I heard it get built."

Inclined Planes

I don't know if it is the downhill skier in me or my former math-teacher self that makes such a big deal about young children experimenting with inclined planes. It might just be that I am amazed and inspired by all the ways children play with slides. Children climb up and they slide down, they use sand and rocks and water to create avalanches and waterfalls, they test their toys on the slides. Given the opportunity, young children learn all sorts of relationships (math) and phenomenon (physics) unique to slides.

Free Body Diagram from simple.wikipedia.org

I used to love our trips to the Children's Museum in Missoula, Montana for all the different ramps that were there. They had a classic plastic slide for babies, another one for big kids, and a "tree house" that was just a long series of ramps to toddle up and down. Since crawling babies didn't often choose to actually ride the slide down, the slide set aside for them was often used first as a ramp for rolling balls. As the babies grew into toddlers it seemed that the next use of the slide was to try to climb up. Finally, after doing experiments for months on end and building their core strength, a brave toddler might climb the stairs to the top of the slide and venture down...on their feet. "Ha!" the physical comedy-lover in me chuckled with a smile, which was always followed by "Gotcha."

What is truly amazing to me is that the slide doesn't seem to lose its appeal. As Mikey grows and matures, so too does his slide play. And with some media-support his imagination, tinkering and learning can soar.

Tablet Game

My husband found "Amazing Alex" when he was reading Wired. It was listed as a great app for a "future engineer." The premise is that "Alex" has to clean up his room. The reality of playing is that there are balls that drop and have to roll over stars to collect points and end up in a basket, box or other container. To play, your preschool engineer will have to drag and drop shelves to be inclined plans that support the bouncing/rolling balls. For any child who has experimented with slides, this will be easy and fun. There is a "Classroom" where he or she will learn the basic principles of how the game works (pictured on right) and the levels progress at a pace that is fast for a three year old but about right for a three year old and his mama, ahem.

The mind-boggling fun comes when more and more objects can be introduced to the "obstacle course." There are variations on the size and weight of the balls, balloons float and can be popped with scissors, buttons can be pushed on remotes to start a toy monster truck or helicopter, springs with punching gloves can be set to give a much needed "ka-pow!" Really...your mind will spin.

One of my favorite things about Amazing Alex is that your child can create his or her own level and publish it for others to try! Indeed, in this day and age, creating technology is an important skill for our children to learn.

Here are links to buy the apps or download the free version:
Amazing Alex for iPhone
Amazing Alex Free for iPhone
Amazing Alex HD for iPad
Amazing Alex HD Free for iPad
Play.google.com

Make Your Own
For rainy day fun, try making your own ball course. I used a giant piece of cardboard, duct tape, and random pipe-like or shelf-like materials that I found around the house (for example, plastic cups, paper towel rolls). Choose golf ball or ping pong ball to roll down.

Not into DIY?
OK, so you don't want to make your own? There are all sorts of places to find inclined planes for experimentation. The local park is a great place to start. Take your preschool engineer and a bag of balls. Or find your local Children's Museum. The one in Phoenix has an entire room of ramps and balls...some ramps are fixtures, others are meant to be built.

If you need something for a grandparent to buy for your little engineer, consider the Battat's B. Whacky Ball or Melissa and Doug's Pound and Roll. There are also little car ones like Maxim's. And don't forget the classic - Marble Run! There is something for every age!


Curious George
What preschool engineer post would be complete without a nod to Curious George? But seriously! That monkey does some awesome preschool engineering. In "Hundley's Great Escape" George and Gnocchi and Hundley are stuck in a basement and have to build a series of ramps from the floor to a window at the top of the room. Watch, enjoy, and try to remember what your algebra teacher taught you about rise over run.

An All-in-one Game

Picture from www.fanpop.com

My 3.5 year old really enjoys playing on our iPad. I allow him to "goggle in" when I nurse his sister and I am always excited to see what discoveries he's made. He plays what appear to be conventional "educational games" like "BOB" and "Fish School" along with "play" games like "Toca House" and "Trucks." The most compelling games for him are the ones that give him the chance to build crazy-mechanical inventions that are otherwise impossible to build.

"Bad Piggies" is our current favorite preschool engineering app. Each level of the game is set in a different setting of hills, ramps, holes, and other obstacles. The player must create a vehicle that will transport a Piggie from start to finish.

This game has it all. It has an easy interface for a preschooler to drag and drop to build vehicles. It has awesome features that are available and/or required for the vehicle to succesfully complete the obstacle course. Each level offers increasingly more options to propel the vehicle including motors, propellers, balloons, punching gloves, fizzy shaking soda bottles, rockets, fans, and more!

Here are links to the game in the iTunes store: Bad Piggies HD - Rovio Entertainment Ltd; and Play.google.com. There are free versions and cheap versions of the game to download.

Building Bridges

Building bridges is the quintessential experience for aspiring engineers. In fact, when I taught an "Introduction to Engineering" class at a northwest university, building a bridge with toothpicks and glue was the project around which our reading and writing revolved. And if you search the internet you will see that the activity is popular in every age group from middle school to post-secondary school.

For Mikey, building things for the sake of building them was never interesting. He liked to demolish things that I built. But two things have recently inspired him - Curious George and an iPad game.

Curious George

Curious George gets to do a lot of cool science and engineering. In his adventure titled, "A Bridge Too Farm," George builds a bridge made out of toothpicks, marshmallows, and playing cards. After some trial and error, making observations and revisions, George creates a bridge to save stranded chicks from an island.


After watching Curious George, Mikey was ready to build. I took out some toothpicks and small marshmallows and together we built a bridge. He worked on making dumbbell-looking pieces that I then attached to the ends of triangles.

The fun of using marshmallows is that you get to have a little treat while you work. I couldn't help but to remember my days playing with wooden tinker toys as a child. For those little preschool engineers who can't indulge in a marshmallow, or 25 marshmallows, here is a link to some classic wooden tinker toy-like things called "Fiddlestix."



An iOS App 
Mikey's second inspiration for constructing bridges comes from World of Goo.  It is an awesome iOS game. The "goo balls" act as your marshmallows would. As the player drags and drops goo balls, the "toothpicks" appear. It is a wildly entertaining game and I have to warn you that if your preschool engineer asks for help - beware. When I sit down to tackle a particularly tough one I usually get sucked in to figuring out how to build the right bridge. And right when I think I have it figured out Mikey sticks his finger on the screen to look at something and it all goes out the window. LOL.
Here's the link to the Android version: play.google.com.

Gears Gears Gears

It seems like a logical path - Mikey's interest in wheels grew to include gears. Gears have the fabulous circular motion that first caught his interest but they also have appeal in their utility. Gears, like trucks, are powerful machines.

The Construction Toys
The Gears Gears Gears brand makes some awesome toys. You can build a two-dimensional mass of gears on a tabletop foundation that is pretty easy to snap together. Then you can build some 90-degree turns in to your creation and experiment with how to have gears spinning in all three dimensions. There is a worm gear included in the Monkey Gears and as the gears crank a monkey will ride across the worm!

The Aspiring Preschool Engineer
If your little engineer isn't ready for the "big kid" Gears Gears Gears, then consider a simpler toy like Melissa and Doug's Spinning Wheels (18 months+). The gears are very easy to get on and off, your little guy or gal can enjoy the "magic" of gear motion, and learn his or her primary colors to boot.




The iPad Apps
Have you ever been kept awake at night because your "wheels were spinning?" Mikey heard me talking about this phenomenon one day with my husband and was immediately curious about the wheels in his own head. In fact, we decided that they must be gears to make our minds and bodies work. The first of two iOS apps that I list here confirmed his suspicion that there are gears in our heads, Toca Boca Doctor. A simple matching puzzle, the child drags and drops four gears to their spots in the patient's head. The "Lite" versions are free. (Not available on Android.)

Toca Doctor for iPhone
Toca Doctor Lite for iPhone
Toca Doctor HD for iPad
Toca Doctor HD Lite for iPad

The second iOS app that I include is more complicated because the player has to solve various problems by dragging and dropping different sized gears to connect two or more fixed gears to make them all spin.

From itunes.apple.com:
"Geared is a radically new and innovative puzzle game; a unique addition to its genre. 

The first and only Gear-based game with absolutely no snap-grid. Geared delivers complete and total freedom to the player, bestowing every puzzle with a near infinite array of choices. 

Pit your intellect against 200 uniquely designed levels, original to this game. 

★ Featured in New and Noteworthy. ★ 
★ Featured in What's Hot. 
★ Featured in Awesome iOS 4 Apps. ★"

Geared for iPhone
Geared for iPad

Also available on Android: play.google.com.

A Video
In the Curious George episode called "George Meets the Press," your little preschool engineer can see some awesome gearwork in action at the Rankin's apple orchard. Click on the image below to buy the Amazon Instant Video in High Definition.