The Chronic Consumer

One thing I absolutely love about the iPad is its capacity for colorful, interactive children’s books. I want my son to derive some real enjoyment from reading, but that just isn’t happening with traditional books. If it takes interactive stories like the Jack and the Beanstalk app for the iPhone/iPad to get him to spend a half hour with a book, then so be it.

This classic story was created in its interactive form by Ayars Animation, Inc. and sells for $3.99, which I think is an absolute bargain for the product you get. Jack’s story of the magic beans is told across more than 30 screens, and can be read by a narrator or not (as you choose). When selecting the on-board narration, the current words and phrases are highlighted to help your child learn to read along — a terrific feature for beginning readers.

The best part of the book is that each page is fully interactive. That means the child can tap different parts of the illustration (or even tilt the iPad) to make various things happen. For instance, the child can “drag” the sun across the horizon to make day turn into night; tap different farm animals (pig, cow, chickens) to hear them make their animal noises; or even play mini games that pop up. The best page is a black & white one that can be “painted” as the child moves his finger along the image. So much fun for kids!

Overall, I think Jack and the Beanstalk for iPhone/iPad is one of the best interactive books currently available. It is well worth the $3.99 price tag, and will keep your child engaged for a long time. I highly recommend this app!

Spectrum Spelling Grade 2 essentially begins where the Grade 1 book leaves off. The Grade 2 workbook gives children even more practice with difficult vowel sounds and other phonetic combinations, while also improving composition skills through various writing exercises.

What I particularly like about Grade 2 is the section called “Words Across the Curriculum”, which introduces kids to words from different school subjects. For instance, there are math words such as “cube”, “length”, and “circle”, social studies words such as “town”, “found”, and “crown”, and science words such as “shore”, “sea”, and “shadow”. Learning words from different curriculum areas is an important skill, so I’m glad that it’s emphasized here.

My son is slowly working his way through this book after finishing the first grade book rather quickly. Based on the results so far, I’m definitely going to buy Grade 3 in the series as well!

I’ve talked about my son’s problems with reading, writing, and spelling a few times on this blog, so it should come as no surprise to you that I’ve bought and tested a variety of products that aim to help kids with these skills. One of my recent purchases was this app called Word Magic, which works with both the iPhone and iPad.

Word Magic is a game that helps kids with spelling and word recognition by showing them a picture, and then having them try to guess the correct way to spell the word. So for example, if the word is “wand” as in the picture over there, a voice will say “wand”, and your child must choose the missing letter. There are three options to choose from, so you can play with the first letter missing, the last letter missing, or a random letter missing.

There are various reinforcements (such as stickers and other rewards) given for correct answers, which is fun for kids and helps keep them going.

I think this is a pretty good app for $.99, but don’t think the description in the App Store is accurate. The description says that it is ideal for ages 3-6, but I think it is far too easy for all but a very remedial 6-year-old. The app would be A LOT better if there were a level that left ALL the letters out, thereby allowing the kid to try to spell the whole word.

I don’t feel so bad about this purchase because it was only $.99, but I would recommend it for preschool and kindergarten kids only. If your first-grader can’t solve these puzzles, then you’ll need to provide a lot more help than just this game!

Wow, I just came across a website that sells THE coolest kids toys I’ve ever seen! They’ve got a mini battery-operated Ferrari, like the one in the picture, plus a wide assortment of other power wheels, such as SUVs, motorcycles, quads, go-karts, dune buggies, and more. Looking through the Kids Wheels site makes me wish I could relive my childhood because back when I was young, the most exotic ride available was a Big Wheel. How is that fair?!

I’ve been working with my son on his reading and spelling this summer, and one of the books we’ve been using is Spectrum Reading Grade 2. This is terrific workbook that I highly recommend for several reasons. First, the units are presented in a way that actually helps with reading comprehension, not just reading alone.

There is a story on one page, and then Vocabulary Skills exercises and Reading Skills exercises on the facing page. The Vocabulary Skills exercises can range from writing synonyms for words that appear in the story to changing words from singular to plural, sentence completion, and more. The Reading Skills exercises ask specific questions about the story that require the student to either recall details from the written text, or think beyond the text to speculate about what might happen.

The stories are interesting and varied, making it easy for me to entice my son to work on the next one. He has been doing great with this workbook so far!

My only criticism of the book is that some of the stories seem a bit advanced for second graders. I’ve had to help my son far more than anticipated — though I guess to be fair I should say I can’t tell 100 percent if that’s because of the book or because he’s a bit behind his peers anyway.

At any rate, you can hardly go wrong with a book that cost around $10. I really like this Spectrum series!

There aren’t that many iPad apps that I would actually pay for, but I’d heard that they have a few terrific interactive children’s books available, including The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. I checked out the app, saw that it was only $3.99 and that it had excellent reviews, and decided to purchase it for my son. I was not disappointed!

This book plays beautifully on the full iPad screen. There are three different settings (Read to Me, Read It Myself, and Auto Play) to take you through the entire book. In Read to Me mode, the narrator reads for you, highlighting each group of words as they’re being spoken to make it easier to follow along. You swipe across the screen to “turn” the page when necessary. Read It Myself mode should be self-explanatory. In Auto Play mode, the narration and page turns are fully automated.

In addition to the three reading modes, each page is interactive, which means you can touch various parts of the picture and have the narrator say what the object is (e.g. “ball”, “fish”, “Thing 1″, etc.).

This kind of interactive book is a wonderful way to help kids learn to read. My son, who was unable to read this book on his own before, can already read half of it by himself after spending just a couple days practicing with the app. Moreover, the colors come through beautifully on the iPad, and make this app definitely worth the $3.99. Highly recommended!

My son has a bit of trouble with spelling and reading, so I’ve been doing extra work with him whenever possible. In order to give our study sessions some direction, I decided to buy a workbook that would help focus our energies. The one I bought is called Spectrum Spelling Grade 1.

This book was developed by early education specialists, and contains many features that I like. For example, the phonics exercises cover both long and short vowels in addition to standard sounds like “A is for apple”. Moreover, the book presents a lot of so-called “sight words”, which are words like “the”, “said”, “you”, “many”, etc. — the ones that you can’t really sound out.

There are a bunch of different lessons that include not only spelling and phonics drills, but also “authentic” writing activities that require the student to think about a topic and write a few sentences about it (for example, “Write about something you like to make.”). This puts the spelling drills into context and really helps solidify the lessons.

Spectrum Spelling Grade 1 has helped my son brush up on some of the basics that he should have learned last year. This is a great book for homeschoolers or for those who just want extra practice over the summer — like us. At $10, you can’t really go wrong with this choice!

Motocross gear is very expensive, so I’ve been outfitting my son a bit slowly. Instead of spending $1,000 on everything he needs, I started with the important stuff (helmet and boots) and have been adding to his equipment bag whenever I can. My most recent purchase was these Fox Dirtpaw MX Gloves.

Motocross gloves are important because they’re padded around the knuckles to protect your hand against the rocks and roost that might churn up while riding on the track. In addition, some MX gloves claim to help prevent or reduce arm pump. This isn’t something I’d know about, as I don’t ride.

Anyway, these Fox Dirtpaw MX gloves for kids are pretty good. They fit snugly, serve as protection, and have survived several washes without adverse effects. The only thing I don’t like about them is that it practically required a certificate in document management to get through all the tags that were attached to the product at the time of purchase! Seriously, less is more, fellas.

The bottom line: for $20, you really can’t go wrong with these Fox Dirtpaw MX gloves. Now I just hope they last until my son outgrows them!