TableTots
By Chris Morris,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Customizable learning app encourages parental involvement.
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TableTots
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What’s It About?
Parents and teachers can set up educational lessons that fit their lesson plans, using a variety of themes and layouts -- as well as multimedia bonuses like sounds, rewards, and transition curtains. From there, it's really up to the creator where to go. They can create counting lessons, focus on arithmetic, teach shapes, and more. The app has a diverse set of tools that let you create the lessons you want, mostly by dragging and dropping. The lack of a tutorial, though, is frustrating.
Is It Any Good?
Spinlight Studios has created some of the best educational apps mobile devices. AlphaTots and TallyTots let kids work by themselves, but TABLETOTS brings parents more into the mix. This extraordinarily versatile app lets parents put together hundreds, if not thousands, of lessons in everything from letter and number recognition to spelling and math. The only real hiccup is there's no tutorial for putting those lessons together, which generally means some hunting and pecking before you know what to do. There are some good pre-set lessons, which are good starters, but some parents may get frustrated before finding them. There's also no way to save scenarios you've created -- a minor annoyance, but something that's worth correcting.
The app won't know when a child gets an answer right or wrong, either, but there's no getting around that -- and it encourages parents to be actively involved with their children as they learn, something that's hard to complain about.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Before diving in to create custom lessons, check out some of the pre-set lessons in TableTots to get a better feel for what you can do with the app.
Help kids take some of the skills they practice in the app into their everyday lives. For example, when kids see a group of objects (blocks, socks, O-shaped cereal), help them count.
App Details
- Devices: iPad , Android , Kindle Fire , Nook HD
- Subjects: Math : arithmetic, multiplication, shapes, Language & Reading : letter or word recognition
- Skills: Self-Direction : academic development
- Release date: March 24, 2012
- Category: Education
- Publisher: Spinlight Studio
- Version: 1.2
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 4.0 or later; Android 2.2 and up
- Last updated: July 9, 2020
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