Alien Assignment

Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning & Children's Media has created several apps for young children. My favorite is Alien Assignment. It's a free app available in the Apple app store (it's an iPhone app bus can be used on the iPad or iPod as well- iOS 4.3 or later). Children are introduced to the Gloop family of aliens whose ship has crashed landed and who need the child's help to fix it.


Through the camera feature on the device, children are asked to find objects and photograph them as examples of items the aliens could use to replace the broken parts of their ship. Directions are spoken and children must pay close attention so that they know what their photo assignment is. The open-ended assignments can lead to some
creative and out-of-the-box thinking when children are looking around the room. For example, the assignment to find something with buttons led to kindergartners locating buttons on classroom snowmen, a teacher's sweater, and the keyboard of the computer. Children can then be asked to justify their choices when reviewing their photos with an adult.

This one, simple, free app encourages active listening, following directions, creativity, critical thinking,
reasoning, problem solving, and camera use. It is recommended for ages 4 and up and would be an excellent choice for grades K-2. Extension activities could include partners assigning each other items to find and photograph or having children write their explanations for their photo choices.

Getting Started with iPads in Kindergarten

For the first time bringing out iPads in kindergarten, we decided to make it a "Teacher Table" center that groups of four would rotate through. This worked well since work centers are already a part of the classroom routine. With only 10-15 minutes per group, we were able to cover some basics and allow the students to focus on working with one app.

Students first washed and dried their hands (it was kindergarten after snack time). When they first sat down, I had the stack of iPads in front of me and introduced the home button. Although many students had already used iPads, this common language of calling it the "home button" is important to clarify. Then I gave each student an iPad and once they'd swiped it on, had them practice with the volume button. We set all of the iPads to mute and talked about why this was important if we didn't have headphones and were all using our own iPads.

For the first app, we used the free Geoboard. Since actual geoboards were one of the other stations, it was the perfect time to talk about how they were similar and also discuss the differences. This free app never runs out of rubber bands, they never break, they can stretch an infinite amount and the shapes can be colored in.

That's it. We didn't use any bells or whistles, there were few directions and no one was named the winner, but it didn't matter. The students were creating patterns, shapes and designs of their own and challenging their friends to do the same.