1. 21 Good iPad Apps for 3rd - 5th Grade Students Richard Byrne iPadApps4School.com

2. Hey Math! HeyMath! from SingaporeHeyMath! from Singapore is a free iPad app that offers animated math lessons and practice assessments for students. The animations provide instruction for solving word problems. The word problems contain visual aids to help students understand the explanations that they hear and read on the app. At the end of each unit in HeyMath! students can test their comprehension with a practice assessment. HeyMath!HeyMath! is designed for elementary school and middle school students. The lessons cover topics from counting and adding whole numbers to Algebra I level math problems.

3. Math Champ Math Champ is a neat system of two apps working together to deliver math challenges to your students’ iPads. The Math Champ Host app is the app that you use to create classes and select questions to use in the quizzes that your students take on their iPads. With the host app you control when quizzes become active. The host app also lets you see how students are doing on the quizzes.Math Champ Host app The Math Champ Client app is the app that students use to take the quizzes that you are pushing out to them. Students can compete to see who will become the “math champ” in your classroom that day.Math Champ Client app

4. Bill Nye The Science Guy The Bill Nye The Science Guy iPad app is a free iPad app on which students can watch Bill Nye videos, play games, and discover kitchen table science experiments to do at home with their parents. The app is beautifully designed. Students enter the app by “scanning” their thumbprints. After entering the app students select an object on Bill Nye’s desk. Each object launches a new element of the app. My only complaint about the app is that in the video section it looks like you have to buy the videos (it’s an option) even though you can watch them for free.Bill Nye The Science Guy iPad app

5. Color Uncovered Exploratorium’s Color Uncovered iPad appExploratorium’s Color Uncovered iPad app is essentially a seventeen part ebook with some nice interactive activities and videos built into it to support the articles. In Color Uncovered students will why we sometimes see colors that aren’t really there, how light influences the colors we see, and why dogs would have trouble with traffic lights if they drove. One of the interactive features on Color Uncovered that I particularly like is the “Colors Add Up” activity. In “Colors Add Up” students use a clear CD case (I’m sure any other clear piece of plastic will work too) to mix colors projected from their iPads. The app also gives students a couple of short lessons on how and why artificial colors are added to foods like salmon, candy, cheese, and fruit.Color Uncovered Color Uncovered could be a nice app for use in art lessons and science lessons. Or combine the two topics into one lesson in which students learn about the science of light and how colors blend together.

6. Sound Uncovered Sound Uncovered is a free iPad app from Exploratorium. In Sound Uncovered students can explore a series of interactive activities to learn about how sound travels and what makes us perceive sounds the ways that we do. Some of the highlights of the app are Find the Highest Note in which students play a series of notes to determine if there is a highest note (spoiler alert: there isn’t, but your ears will tell you otherwise). How Old Are Your Ears? is an interactive that explains why we lose hearing as we age. The Beat Goes On. And Off, And On… is an interactive in which students play a couple of different notes and learn how those notes are used by musicians to tune instruments. Sound UncoveredSound Uncovered could be a great application not only for music classes, but also for science lessons.

7. Joy Tunes JoyTunes is a company that has built two neat iPad apps to help students learn to play the piano and the recorder. The apps are games that require you to play the correct notes on your recorder or piano. When you play the correct notes you can move forward in the game. The notes that are you play are picked up by the microphone on your iPad. The piano version of the app is available here. The recorder version of the app is available here.here Playing the Joy Tunes games could be a good break from traditional music practice activities. I wouldn’t replace practicing scales and other time-tested methods with playing thJoy Tunes

8. Figure Figure is an iPad app for creating music and sound loops. You don’t have to have any musical talent or inclination to create music with the Figure app. To create music you simply have to drag your finger across an instrument to create a pattern. You can combine patterns across drums, bass, and lead guitar. Each pattern can be adjusted for tempo and key. The volume of each pattern can be adjusted individually then blended with the others. When you’re happy with the music you have made you can export it to SoundCloud or iTunes or send it to a friend via email. FigureFigure could be a good app for students to use to develop soundtracks to use in video projects or to use as bumper music in podcasts. Of course, the app could also be good for students to use to just experiment with tempo and key change.

9. Hideout Hideout is a free iPad app developed by members of the education department at Brigham Young University. The app features six interactive stories based on the sounds and words created with the letter combinations “ap,” “en,” “it,” “op,” “ag,” and “et.” The narrator reads the letters to the student, explains the sound, then challenges the student to create four words with the letter combination. After making four words students move onto an interactive story in which they identify the objects that match the words they just made. HideoutHideout is a nicely designed app that young students can benefit from using. My recommendation would be to use the preferences menu to turn off the background music and flashing backgrounds as they could definitely be distractions to students.

10. GeoBee Challenge The GeoBee Challenge iPad app from National Geographic is an excellent app that students can use to test and develop their knowledge of world geography. The contains more than 1300 questions about physical and political geography. Each round of the game presents the questions in a different manner. In some rounds students see a picture of a landmark and have to tap the country containing that landmark. In other rounds students read a question and tap the answer on the map. And there are rounds that simply present the name of a location that students have to locate on the map.GeoBee Challenge iPad app from National Geographic The GeoBee Challenge app is designed for elementary school and middle school students. Registration is not required in order to use the app and multiple students can use the same installation of the app. GeoBee Challenge costs $1.99.GeoBee Challenge app

11. Geography Drive USA Geography Drive USA is an iPad app that elementary and middle school students will enjoy using. The app challenges students to drive their virtual cars to each state in the United States. The students move from state to state by correctly answering questions about each state that they visit. Students earn money for each correct answer. That money is then used to buy fuel for their cars and customize their cars. Students can also win trophies for accomplishments throughout the game. The game has more than 750 questions about state and national geography. Students will find questions about physical and political geography. There are some history questions mixed in too. In addition to the main game Geography Drive USA contains four mini-games and a visitor center. The visitor center contains information that students can use to answer questions when they get stuck. In the visitor center students can learn things like state capitals, state flags, state postal abbreviations, and the size of each state. The mini-games in Geography Drive USA ask students about state capitals, shapes, spellings, and flags.Geography Drive USA

12. GeoMaster Plus GeoMaster Plus (currently listed at $3.99) is an iPad app for learning and practicing identifying countries, capitals, and landmarks around the world. GeoMaster Plus offers a simple interactive atlas that students can use to familiarize themselves with the countries of the world. Students can search the atlas by country name and capital name. Students can also navigate the atlas by tapping on a country on the map. Tapping a country on the map will bring up a fact sheet about that country. Students can test their knowledge of world geography through a variety of GeoMaster Plus activities. Students can practice identifying countries and capitals in a series of progressively more difficult levels. The identification activities can be sorted by continent. In addition to practicing identifying countries and capitals students can practice identifying landmarks as well as natural geographic features like mountain ranges. For a final challenge students can try to match flags to their respective countries.

13. Play Magnus - Learn Chess Play MagnusPlay Magnus is a freemium iOS app that allows you to learn and play chess against chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. The app contains video lessons that demonstrate both the basics of chess and advanced strategies of the game. After watching a lesson or two you can challenge Magnus to a game of chess. You can challenge Magnus at each age of his development from ages five through twenty-three. I was able to beat Magnus as a five year old. The twelve-years-old Magnus beat me rather quickly.Magnus Carlsen Play MagnusPlay Magnus is listed in the App Store as an iPhone app, but it worked perfectly well on my iPad. Play Magnus offers an in-app purchase to remove ads (the ads appear between screens, not while playing a game) and in-app purchases to access advanced tutorials.

14. Daisy the Dinosaur Daisy the Dinosaur is a free iPad app designed to introduce young students to some programming basics. The app asks students to create commands for Daisy the Dinosaur to carry out. There is a free play mode in which students can make Daisy do whatever they want. But to get started you might want to have students work through the beginner challenges mode. Daisy the Dinosaur could be used with students as young as Kindergarten age. For older students older than eight or nine, try one of the following two apps.

15. Hopscotch Hopscotch is a free iPad app that introduces students to programming logic. In Hopscotch students put command boxes into order to make cartoon avatars move and draw lines. Students can program one or all of the cartoon avatars to move and follow commands based on touch or on the movement of their iPads. HopscotchHopscotch was developed by the same people who developed Daisy the Dinosaur. Daisy the Dinosaur teaches kids under nine some basic programming logic. Using Hopscotch is a logical next step after completing the challenges in Daisy the Dinosaur.Daisy the Dinosaur

16. Winning Words Winning Words is a series of free iPad apps that feature matching / “memory” style vocabulary games. There are six apps in the series. Each app is played in the same manner of flipping a card and trying to find a match for it. The six apps are synonym match, antonym match, homophone match, compound match, double letter match, and singular/plural match. Each app supports up to four players and has three levels of difficulty. I tried Winning Words Synonym Match to get a sense of how the apps worked in practice. The app did not require me to register or enter any information, I simply opened it and started playing. The app is appropriate for elementary school and middle school students.Winning Words Synonym Match

17. World’s Worst Pet World’s Worst Pet is a free iPad app that contains a series of fun vocabulary games. In the app players have to help bring home Snargg, the world’s worst pet, who has run away. To get Snargg back players have to fill his food dish by learning new vocabulary words. Each of the six levels in the game contain ten dishes (each dish represents a new set of words) that can be filled. Four games are available for each dish. The games are fill-in-the-blank, synonym identification, antonym identification, and definition identification. World’s Worst PetWorld’s Worst Pet is designed for students in grades four through eight. The app contains a total of 1,000 vocabulary words. I played the game for a while this morning and found myself enjoying it. In my time playing the game I could see that students could definitely get hooked on this vocabulary game.

18. Math Duel Math Duel is an iPad app that could be a hit in a classroom that doesn’t have enough iPads for every student. Math Duel provides a split screen so that two students can compete in races to correctly answer mathematics problem as quickly as they can. Each player is presented an addition, multiplication, subtraction, or division problem to answer in the app. Both players are shown the same type of problem at the same time. Playing Math Duel could be a fun way for students to practice their math skills with a friend. The app is currently listed for $1.99.

19. Scholastic Reading Timer Scholastic Reading Timer is a free iPad app for parents and children for tracking time spent reading. The app offers the option for children to log the time they spend reading every day. Alternatively, parents can log the time for their children. The app supports logging the times of multiple students. Beyond the reading time logs, Scholastic Reading Timer contains lists of suggested readings for children according to their ages. The Scholastic Reading Timer iPad app isn’t the most robust app that you’ll try this week, but it is good for what it is designed to do. If you’re in need of a simple way for your students and their parents to record the amount of time spent reading, this app could be for you.Scholastic Reading Timer iPad app

20. Too Noisy Too Noisy is an iPad app (free and pro versions available) designed to help students learn to recognize the appropriate volume for conversations. The app measures the volume of the noise in a room and displays a meter indicating whether or not the the room is too noisy. Too Noisy has four situation settings that you can use in your classroom; silent, quiet, group, and class. You can adjust the sensitivity of the meter for each situation. The pro version of Too Noisy ($2.99) offers additional background themes for the meter display, star awards that you can give to the class for maintaining an appropriate volume, and audible alarms to alert your students when they’re being too noisy. The pro version also removes the advertisements that pop-up when you change screens in the app.pro version of Too Noisy

21. Professor Garfield Fact or Opinion Professor Garfield Fact or Opinion is a free iPad app designed to help students learn to recognize the difference between facts and opinions. The app features a comic book story in which students will read examples of facts and opinions accompanied by explanations of what makes them facts or opinions. After reading the comic students play a series of games in which they practice recognizing the fact that is mixed-in with opinion statements. Determining fact from opinion is the first step that I review with students before they embark on a research project. The sooner students learn to recognize the difference between fact and opinion, the better. Professor Garfield Fact or Opinion could be a great app to help elementary school and middle school students learn to differentiate facts from opinions.Professor Garfield Fact or Opinion

22. Foldify Zoo Foldify Zoo is an iPad app that students can use to design 3D animal cut-outs. Just like in the original Foldify in Foldify Zoo after designing their figures students can print their designs with directions for folding their designs into 3D paper objects. Foldify provides basic templates for objects like cars, houses, and people. Students complete the templates by coloring them in, adding their own pictures to the templates, and adding fun digital stamps to the templates. I first learned about Foldify from a student who used it to create a bunch of characters and buildings that he then used in a video that he made. In his video he and other students provided the voices for each character. The same could be done with Foldify Zoo.FoldifyFoldify Zoo

23. Please visit iPadApps4School.com for more reviews of iPad apps for all grades.