Thursday, August 4, 2011

Learning with an iPad: Bags and Books

borsabellabag

One random fact about me is that I hate buying purses. I can’t remember the last time I bought a purse. My friend Pam took pity on me a couple years ago and gave me one of her own purses. My mom has given me hand-me-downs. I’m just not a purse person. I hate spending the money and they always fall off my shoulder. Plus, I’m used to diaper bags—lol.

2borsabellabag

I bought this though. I love this bag from Borsa Bella! It’s technically not a purse, but it could be. Can you see what’s inside? Yep. My iPad. This is not an iPad case (I’m getting one of those soon thanks to you who use my Amazon affiliate buttons), but rather a cool way to be able to carry around your iPad. It is made so well. In addition to the main pocket, there is an outside zippered pocket perfect for keys, wallet, additional electronic device etc. I decided I needed a way to carry my iPad back and forth from our upcoming co-op classes. I plan on utilizing my iPad for several activities and wanted a bag that gave some protection. I searched for awhile before coming across this bag. I highly recommend Borsa Bella if you are in need of a bag for any of your electronic devices (Nook, Kindles, iPads, purses, and more). Besides being functional—they are so pretty!

If you are thinking about a bag, Melissa from Borsa Bella is giving you all a 10% coupon code good on her site: Spell10

readingwithipad

What Have We Been Doing with the iPad?

So far I’ve been using the iPad with my toddler and preschooler the most. We’ve just started downloading books to read. One of our newest books is The Berenstain Bears' Bedtime Battle.

BookBBBedtimeBattle_00

My girls were already familiar with the Berenstain Bear family so they were so excited to see that we could read this on the iPad.

BookKWLeoTheLightningBug03

We also have Leo the Lightning Bug book on our iPad. This is a cute story about a little lightning bug who can’t light up no matter how hard he tries.  He feels like he’s too little to do anything. With a little encouragement and some confidence, he find out that he can do it.

Both books have 3 different modes:
* "Read to Me" — listen to the narrated story with words highlighted as they are read * "Read it Myself" — read the book in its traditional form
* "Auto Play" — plays like a movie, automatically reading and turning pages.

Leo the Lightning Bug has hidden sounds if you click on the pictures. Berenstain Bears show the words for the items clicked, so there are also some interactive aspects to the books too. I thought the narration and audio quality for both were well done. The pages stuck a little on the Leo book in the Read it Myself mode, but once I figured out where I needed to “flip” the page, it was fine.

I’m excited to be able to use the iPad with books. Remember the books on tape centers at school? Well I think that I’m going to do something similar with my  toddler/preschooler. After reading and discussing the book together, I’m going to create a center opportunity with the iPad and pocket chart/magnetic board/writing center. I’ll post once I put my idea into action. :)

If you have an iPad, how will you be integrating it into your curriculum this year?

Disclosures: I was given The Berenstain Bears and Leo the Lightning Bug apps free for review purposes only. Opinions are mine.

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6 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

JDaniel is loving the apps we have on our iPad too.

August 4, 2011 at 1:53 PM  
Blogger Monkey's Mommy said...

My husband has the Ipad but I dont so I will be using his old ipod for monkeys tools and music...I have all sorts of things on there including a couple of preschool apps that teach numbers, letters, colors, and writing...I will most likely use it while we are out and about...My husband does dnld movies for Monkey though...we got the leap frog letter factory and he is putting it on his ipad as i type.

August 5, 2011 at 4:12 AM  
Blogger Faith said...

We have an iPad, thanks to our oldest winning a writing contest this year! I absolutely love all the educational apps, particularly Stack the States, Math Bingo, and Sight Word Bingo. Our younger daughter also enjoys Story Starters and Conversation Starters. Thank you for sharing. The bag is so pretty!

August 5, 2011 at 8:15 AM  
Blogger Sarah said...

Thanks for the tip on iPad books! I have many games on there for the kids but need to get more books... Esp w a vaca roadtrip coming up!'

August 5, 2011 at 10:32 AM  
Blogger zookeeper said...

I've been thinking about it, since I have some educational apps the kids use on my iPhone that I could see being friendlier on a larger screen. But do you know if there are a lot of free children's books to download? I think if I could have a fair amount of free content, I could nudge myself towards being closer to purchasing.

August 7, 2011 at 4:15 PM  
Blogger Melissa Taylor said...

I think the iPad offers some great educational apps for kids. My philosophy has been to only download educational ones so that my kids aren't tempted by games. We have a ton that we're enjoying. Here are a few -- http://imaginationsoup.net/2011/07/best-educational-ipad-apps-summer-2011/

August 8, 2011 at 12:13 AM  

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