This Sparky's Birthday Surprise app also includes:
Fire safety is a hot topic for kids! With this resource, little ones will read, color, draw, and play as they are learning about prevention and, as an added bonus, practice naming shapes, counting, and adding numbers! Reading, math, and personal safety all in one app!
Concepts
Additional Tags
App Overview
From the home screen, select from three modes: Just a Book, Read to Me, or Read & Play (narration, interactives, music, and sound effects). Learn about fire safety through a story about Sparky®, the fire dog's, surprise birthday party!
Press the Menu button to open a set of icons to access features:
- Home
- Pages: Jump ahead to selected pages in the book
- Video: A music video with the lyrics to a song about fire safety
- Games: Birthday Shapes, Piñata Counting, and Sparky Addition
- Paint: Select a black-line version of any one of the book pages to color or add stickers to. A More arrow pulls down icons to save completed pictures in the camera roll, completely restart the current coloring page, or erase the most recent action.
- Options: A genius feature that allows you to select the volume for the music, sounds, and voice individually
At the end of the story, there is a Thinking Corner page that contains discussion questions for follow-up. There is also a page listing the Common Core standards which can be met with the use of Sparky's Birthday Surprise.
Curator Rating
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Adherence to task
In addition to teaching fire safety, it goes above and beyond with tasks that meet Common Core standards
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Worth the money
An outstanding value at no cost
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Fun factor
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Scaffolding of learning
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User safety
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Control and feedback
Narration, sound effects, and music can all be turned on or off
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How techie do I need to be?
Novice
Instructional Ideas
Follow the reading of this story with a field trip to the local fire station or by having a firefighter as a guest speaker in your classroom.
Fire safety is a terrific topic to use as the backdrop for some of your English language arts and math activities. A few Common Core standards can be addressed in each area.
Classroom Considerations
In options, you can individually control the volume for the background music, sound effects, and narrator's voice. So, if you want narration with no music, you can have it. If you find the sound effects annoying, turn them off!
The standards targeted are for kindergarten, but you may find the reading to be too challenging for most. With this in mind, little ones may not be able to sing along with the music video unless you teach them the song, little by little. Frankly, the song is not very catchy.
Pros
- Shape recognition, counting, and addition activities
- Spanish language option for ESL children
- Bright, kid-friendly graphics and animations
- Each page of the book is interactive
- Easily navigated
- Can be used in addressing Common Core State Standards
Cons
- The Paint feature is a fun follow-up, but not educational