Parenting Pointers: Preventing Summer Slide

Summer holidays are here and no doubt kids are looking for a respite from the classroom. The well-deserved downtime comes at a cost though - the “Summer Slide” according to the US Department of Education. The Department provides some fantastic tips including heading down to the local library and creating a reading list. In addition, parents can use technology such as the iPad and/or iPhone to download educational apps designed to teach kids through play.

Shiny Things has five apps designed to help prevent summer slide for kids of a variety of ages:
Shiny Picnic - For ages 2-4, toddlers join Charlie the Monkey and his jungle friends catching flying fruits, packing the picnic basket, and feeding their animal friends across three fun and educational games that teach essential pre-number skills, such as matching and sorting. Shiny Picnic is also a storybook with highlighted text as the story is ready aloud.
Shiny Circus - For ages 4-6, this app introduces mathematical concepts in a fun and engaging way. Kids will begin to identify measurement qualities and their relationships and lets kids experiment with weight and distance. It’s also an interactive read-along storybook. Watch the trailer here.
Shiny Bakery - For ages 2-5, Shiny Bakery introduces early number sense through counting, measuring, dividing, and sequencing activities as kids help Alice the Zebra help mix, measure, decorate, then serve cakes and cookies to customers. Watch the trailer here.
Quick Math - For ages 6-12, Quick Math improves math proficiency and promotes development of mental strategies for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and mixed operations. The in-built unique handwriting tool improves the child’s handwriting skills and strengthens muscle memory.
Quick Math+ - A challenging step up for ages 8+, Quick Math+ builds on Quick Math, introducing indices, negative numbers, and order of operations questions. It includes new game modes to test memory, logic, estimation ability, and pattern recognition. Watch the trailer here. 

Shiny Things apps are specifically designed to be used as a supplementary tool to classroom teaching to practice concepts. They do offer advantages over regular pen-and-paper drills to help children learn, in that players can get immediate feedback and revise their answers. With multiple difficulty levels, players can also move at their own pace allowing for differentiated activities in the classroom. 

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Improvement over time: All of the

​Shiny Things "Quick"​

 apps have individual user profiles which track each user's scores (scores reflect time to complete tasks). Players, parents and teachers can review players' score graphs to see how scores stack up over time, and also to check which games and levels have been played.

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The apps are also designed to be intrinsically motivating for students - with immediate feedback and a focus on personal improvement students can actually see their maths skills improving over time and are encouraged to compete against themselves.

​ The app also has some

 small rewards in there too to increase engagement, with players being able to unlock new avatars as they play.