Community reviews for Montessori Crosswords

Excellent, See my comments above.

Montessori Crosswords allows students to use the convenience of a touch screen App to use letter sounds and phonics to spell words. I would recommend this App to parents who want their child using electronics to learn.

This app is great for word building. I love using it in my kindergarten classroom. The self-correcting feature enables my students to use it without my help.

A very well done app that is nice to look at, engaging for students, and offers a fun and safe way for students to increase their phonological awareness and connect it with spelling. As a special education and RTI teacher, I especially like apps that are low pressure and promote students taking risks without fear of failure while still achieving learning. I feel like this app accomplishes both of those things. Students are able to get sound "clues" by tapping on letter tiles, there are picture "clues" offered as well, and, if they get really stuck, the missing words are provided for them to then copy by dragging the appropriate letter tiles into the blank squares. I also like that it works well for a variety of grade levels and can be used for at-grade level practice as well as for remedial practice for students who are performing below grade-level or who have learning disabilities.

Montessori Crosswords is a low key yet fun way to encourage and support phonics education. There are six categories to pick from: simple words, consonant blends, words of any complexity, focus on one sound, Christmas words and a movable alphabet. For all but the movable alphabet a picture tile comes up followed by blank tiles of the appropriate number. The student can tap the picture to hear the word. They can tap the empty tile to hear the sound of the word. They can tap letters of the alphabet to hear their sounds. Students can drag the letters to the appropriate box to spell the word. If the letter is wrong it will not stay in the tile but return to its place in the alphabet. At the successful completion of the word is a moveable design intermission. For example a blaze of shooting stars. If the child touches the screen, the stars will shoot from the place they touched. Or there is a spiral sequence. Everywhere on the page the child touches begins a new spiral. Every intermission is different and requires some experimentation to figure out the pattern or action. This intermission can be limited or not limited depending on the teacher or parents wishes. There is a feature where the child can find the answer to the word by touching it. Even if they do this consistently they must still drag the letters to the empty tiles thus hearing the letter sounds anyway. Teacher or parent can allow or disallow this feature as they prefer.