What we love…
the bright interactive illustrations and clear speech in both the learning and play modes of the app. The variety of activities provide good value for the money and allow children to learn several sets of skills
What we’d love to see…
a reward system for rewarding children for completing tasks. The ability to have a “hint” if a child gets stuck and answers the question wrong more than three times.
Summary
This app is a great value for teaching your child new words, especially toddlers and preschoolers who are naturally curious about their environment. There are many follow on activities that you can do to help them grasp the concept of animals and translate it to real life.
Our Rating
Farm Academy by Virtual Speech Center is a universal iOS app featuring a virtual farm full of animals and designed to help your toddler though preschool aged child work on receptive and expressive language skills as well as counting, size and recognition. The app features two modes, “learn” which the concepts are presented and observed and a “play” mode where children pick out an animal that is named by the farmer like “show me the hen”. The app was designed by a certified speech and language pathologist. Activities include: find and identify animals in the barnyard, choose small versus large, counting, and feeding the animals.
The app features bright interactive illustrations for children which are simple enough for even the youngest child to grasp without being visually overwhelming which is important as the focus is on learning in the app rather than all of the interactions. The voice of the farmer is clear which is especially important for children learning new words. My son’s favorite game after the counting was feeding the animals their proper diet although I did wish we could have it repeat the object like “feed the potato to the cow” if we didn’t catch it the first time. We also liked seeing the accuracy report at the end of each section, although it would be nice if there was a way to save this and do tracking over time. The app was motivational for my son and provided him with the opportunity to practice his vocabulary and naming of the animals. This is a great app to carry over what you are learning in speech therapy to working with your child on words.
We would like to see a circle or something placed around the animal if the answer is wrong multiple times instead of just saying, “try again” as children can get frustrated with multiple attempts. In the “learn mode” it would also be nice if the animal names like “cat” or “hen” were also displayed below the animal to provide a visual cue to provide early literacy skills and letter recognition. My son wished he could have earned a “sticker” after completing a set of activities with high accuracy which may be something to include in the future. During the count mode, when you need to count the animals, it would be helpful if you touched on each animal and it said, 1, 2, 3 to go with the visual cues. It would also be nice if it said, “count all the hens or dogs” rather than count all the animals when providing instructions.
This app is a great value for teaching your child new words, especially toddlers and preschoolers who are naturally curious about their environment. There are many follow on activities that you can do to help them grasp the concept of animals and translate it to real life.
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Farm Academyby Virtual Speech Center Inc.Category: Education, Medical Requirements: Compatible with iPad 3G, iPad WiFi, iPhone 3GS, iPadFourthGen, iPod Touch (3. Gen.), iPadThirdGen4G, iPadFourthGen4G, iPadMini, iPadThirdGen, iPod Touch (4. Gen.), iPhone5, iPad 2 3G, iPadMini4G, iPad 2 WiFI, iPhone 4, iPhone4S, iPodTouchFifthGen Size: 33.55 MB |
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Screenshots
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Screenshots for iPad
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Giveaway
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Alison
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Alison, Amanda, Grace and Mary are four mothers from different parts of the world dedicated to educating parents about the best digital stories, educational apps, fun games and technology products available for their children. We also offer the latest news in apps for kids, interesting articles, developer interviews, free apps and regular giveaways!
we make learning fun. Trying to make learning into craft activities is one of my daughters favourites :)
My daughter seems to learn from watching another person doing whatever is being taught. With lots of repetition!
Through play!
When possible, I enjoy active/experiential learning.
Plenty of hands-on activities and using all (or at least several) of the five senses!
We make a lot of games to help make learning fun. We also do alot of hands on and visual techniques.
With play, imitation, and repetition!
I teach my special needs daughter new skills either through her therapy, play at home, or imitation :)
Play, repetition, imitation and physically helping the children helps them to learn.
My daughter learns through imitation and her apps. So far she is excelling in everything
Teach by example
Exposure opportunities with support for trial and error
Through play!
Kids are always learning. Best way is to simply show them.
hands-on play-based learning, when they are ready to learn it!
would love to win
I love to teach my children by leading by example.
we make learning fun.