Letters Home from Camp Tadpole

Grade Level: 1st - 2nd 
Category: Reading & Phonics

In Letters Home from Camp Tadpole beginning readers enjoy reading short letters written at Camp Tadpole. Five levels of difficulty offer letters of one sentence in length to letters containing five or more sentences. Set options to provide one of three levels of audio support, or have students read on their own. Audio support options include full narration, click to hear any word, or click to hear challenge words only.

Letters are followed by comprehension questions. After each set of 3 letters, students earn a camp patch, and may work to collect the entire set. Miss Lizzy provides feedback and guidance. Detailed performance records are available.

Method to use in Classroom:
This program will help students struggling with phonics and reading.  This program can be used as a center during small group time.

In Sammy's Science House five fascinating activities help students build early science skills and practice important scientific processes. Students also expand their science vocabulary as they learn about plants, animals, seasons, and weather.

Special features of Sammy's Science House include graphical and spoken instructions, questions, and feedback, which allow students to work independently and enhance comprehension, and a Field Notebook from which students can print creations and pages.

Method to use in Classroom:
This program will help students struggling with early science.  This program can be used as a center during small group time.

In Combining Shapes students discover the properties of simple geometric figures through concrete, manipulative experiences combining shapes. In this playful investigation, geometric concepts are demonstrated through hopscotch and kite-flying games. Students combine one or more different-shaped figures in activities involving numbers, measurement, estimation, and geometry. Students can construct and deconstruct figures, describe shapes and their properties, and save work from the activities in personal multimedia journals that can be used as an assessment tool.

Method to use in Classroom:
This program will help students struggling with geometry and combining shapes.  This program can be used as a center during small group time.

Clock Faces provides students have lots of fun with four main activities: telling time, setting the time, answering questions by using calendars, and matching times. Also, word problems are provided to exercise both clock and calendar skills. While students work, they enjoy the friendly company and encouragement of amusing clocks that love to celebrate student successes. Directions for all program activities are available in both English and Spanish. Student and class records, summary screens, and printouts carefully track children's progress.

The network/site license version includes 1 CD for installation on a network and/or an unlimited number of individual workstations at one site.

The Tab Kids is a friendly and colorful software for kids to create animations and cartoons. It is so easy that any kid can use it with spectacular results, and yet it is powerful, as it relies on the Toonz technology developed for the industry to produce feature films and television series.

• Letter-sound training (phonemic awareness)
• Sight word practice
• Initial reading mechanics
• Reading comprehension skills
• Basic sentence structure awareness
• Extended listening comprehension practice
• Active vocabulary practice with 1200 words and expressions

Students work in groups, at a table where the E-Blocks® sensory panel is connected to a classroom computer. In response to stimuli and questions presented on the computer screen, students place the blocks on the touch-sensitive panel. Exciting pictures, music, animation and games stimulate cooperative interaction and make learning a concrete social experience.

High quality voice recordings provide the opportunity for students to practice listening skills based on authentic accents. All software levels offer a choice of American or British accents during installation.

TouchMoney uses a combination of teaching activities and games to help students master the TouchCounting method. As students complete each step and play its corresponding game, they learn to successfully count any combination of coins.

The main menu guides students to complete the steps of the program in order. Once students show their mastery of counting by 1's and skip-counting by 5's in the first activity, they move on to identifying coins and their values and then learning to TouchCount coins. Activities 2-5 are each followed by a game that reinforces the knowledge students have gained. Game titles include: Money Tic Tac Dough, Money Match, Coin Concentration, and TouchPoint Bingo.

As students progress through the activities, they hear the sound of coins clicking as they “earn” money for answering correctly. This money is used in TouchMoney Market, the final activity of the program. Students shop at one of two stores where they use their “earned” money to buy items.

A tutorial can be accessed for a review of a step if a student needs clarification. Specific examples are provided in the tutorial to guide the learner and further explain the step.

Teachers can access an individual progress chart to see student scores. The last two scores for an activity are shown on the progress chart.

Method to use in Classroom:
This program will help students struggling with Math.  This program can be used as a center during small group time.