Mo Chéad Fhocail is a newly released app by Folens in conjunction with Story Toys. It is a beautifully presented app aimed at younger pupils at the early stages of literacy development. The app opens up as a 3D pop-up book which will appeal to younger pupils.
The different pages of the book cover themes such as numbers and colours as well as objects grouped into 14 different categories including animals, vehicles and things around the home. Interactive quizzes at the end of the book are a fun and satisfying way for children to solidify and reinforce their learning.
The interesting thing about this app is that the teacher/parent can select a language for which they wish the pupil to learn this basic vocabulary. Languages available on the app include English, Gaeilge, French, German, Spanish and Chinese. The fact that Gaeilge is included as a language will be of particular interest to infant/junior class teachers in Ireland.
In the settings section of this app, the teacher/parent can choose to set a primary as well as a secondary language which means that pupils could be learning to identify items and objects in English and Gaeilge at the same time. Because of the paucity of Gaeilge apps, it’s a welcome development to find a new app which will help pupils learn Gaeilge in a fun and interesting way.
This app is available for iPad and iPhone/iTouch (it is optimised for iPhone 5) on the iTunes store. An Android version is also available on the Google Play store. The good news is that this app is free until this Saturday, May 23rd.
