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Teacher Review for Bean Bag Kids Apollo 11

Engaging visuals with interactive story elements for children aged 3-8.

Tamara L.
 ITRT - Instructional Technology Resource Teacher
Hanover County Public Schools
Ashland, United States
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My Subjects English Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Arts
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My Rating
Learning Scores
Engagement
Pedagogy
Support
My Students Liked It Yes
My Students Learned Yes
I Would Recommend It No
Setup Time Less than 5 minutes
Great for Individual
Knowledge gain
Great with ELL
General
Low literacy
Special needs
How I Use It
This storytelling app shares the experiences of Apollo 11 landing on the moon in a friendly, engaging manner, complete with read-aloud text and graphically appealing visuals. The astronauts are part of the Bean Bag Kids series, which appeals to younger aged children. In order to progress from one part of the story to the next, children complete a series of tasks (tapping colored control buttons in a specific sequence, catching flying space debris, etc.). Each section of the story includes a notes page which offers additional information in written form to extend learning for children who are able to read on their own. The app ran smoothly with no technological glitches and provided historical information in a child-friendly manner.
My Take
I feel this app is best used with individual students to support lessons or instruction about space exploration or the moon. As an informational app, it's strength is in the vivid graphics that constantly move or change across the screen, as well as the constant narration (which can be modified for English or Spanish). The app is a bit too long running for a center rotation (as it took more than 20 minutes to get to the actual landing on the moon), but might be enjoyable for an ELL student who is still learning the English language. The app offers "Extras", but the three options of SoundBoard, Making-of Gallery and Spot the Differences were very limiting. For the cost of $2.99 per app, I felt this was a bit expensive for an interactive storytelling app.