It’s been a busy week with a lot on my plate, when my brain has gone numb I look to my iPad to play around and recharge. Here are 5 apps that caught my eye this week!

My Story:Bookmaker for Kids– This app by High Def. Web Solutions is a fantastic app to create quick and easy Ibooks with kids. You can have them write simple sentences, design pictures for each page, take photos, and even record voices. The books can be exported to Ibooks after or emailed to show off wonderful student work!

Splashtop IWB– Another fantastic app from the makers of Splashtop. This app remote desktops into your teaching machine using your iPad as an IWB slate. It lets you manipulate whatever is on your screen while you walk around the room teaching and provides the same tools an IWB would provide. (Yup! I use this with my Quaver IWBs!)

Chakra Chime– This app I actually found and recommended to a kindergarten teacher  who was just looking for a simple chime app. It is normally meant for yoga or meditating but its tone and duration is a perfect attention chime for classes. You can not only just hit it when you need to, you can also put it on a timer to go off at certain times.

Pete the Cat– This is a very cute app you can use as a 5 minute filler after reading one of the Pete the Cat stories in class. It is a find it game based a lot on the second Pete the Cat book “Rockin’ in my School Shoes” I will have my students in front of the projector with this one and I will use my Apple TV to mirror my Ipad to the projector. They will then take turns finding the different objects on the list while we sing the songs from the books!

AtPlayMusic’s Recorder App– I have not had a chance to really use this in class yet but am in the process of going through it myself and find it very impressive. The app is divided into  lessons and songs teaching students how to play the recorder. The lessons are animated conversations between a teacher and a student about how to play the recorder with playing together and games in between to reinforce the new concept. I love how they integrate the teaching concept of I/We/You in one app.