Cambridge and Seaforth Summer IPad Club

After learning from the other school’s experiences we have decided to do a summer ipad club for 3 weeks during the school holidays- starting Monday 28 th July at the Seaforth Venue and Friday 1 st August at Cambridge. Both sessions will be open to families with children aged 3-11 years old. The Cambridge session will have a crèche for children under 3. After visiting Poland and seeing the value of having younger children in the room the Seaforth session will have a dedicated activity worker and play area for those under 3.

Measuring distance travelled: Pre and post group assessments Assessing the children and parent skills before and after. Session observations and photographs. Parent and child evaluations.

The aim of the sessions is to encourage parents to use educational programmes with their children rather than the children just play on the ipads by themselves. Session 1- will use the Sock Puppet app. This session will help families get to know how to use the different features on ipads- including touch screen, voice recording and by the end of the session they will have produced their own mini sock puppet movie! This will enhance hand eye co-ordination, speech and language and use of imagination.

Session 2- will use the Kids Doodle app. This app focuses on using hand eye co-ordination to draw pictures, families will take photos, make short animation films to share with the group.

Through the sessions we will demonstrate to parents how to download the apps on ipads, tablets and smart phones. If families have smart phones/tablets at home we will ask them to do tasks at home and show the group how they have used the apps at home. There will be emphasis on E-safety, communication, language and literacy and how ICT is used within the classroom so they can continue their child’s learning in the home environment.

Session 3- will use the Animals app. This app feature the work of world renowned artists, dedicated to young visual explorers age 3 and up. Develops fine motor skills and hand coordination. Stimulate the creativity and the search of visual complexity. EyePaint offers your child the opportunity to create amazing illustrations alongside world-renowned artists, by completing their illustrations and making them their own. Use the mobile device’s camera as a tool to capture colours, patterns and textures to interactively fill areas in the drawings selected by the child. The final result is a drawing full of organic features, shades and details. The EyePaint interface is colourful, animated and extremely simple – even for very young children.

Plans for Year 2 We would like to do some evening/Saturday sessions called “Dads and Ipads” which will be dads/male carer only sessions. We will do some sessions with new parents to the nursery schools to demonstrate what their children are learning in nursery.