Afrikaans apps by Cleverkiddo: Seisoene and Olke Bolke

I was alerted by Carien van Zyl, the developer of  the Cleverkiddo series apps for preschoolers, about it's existence on my blog post about Afrikaans on the iPad.

As I love hearing about new Afrikaans apps for our children, I downloaded it and Little Missy took it for the test-drive.

Little Missy busy with the Seisoene app in the
Summer dress-up section 

The Cleverkiddo series consists of  the Seisoene and the Olke Bolke apps.
They are both R21.99 (2.08 USD) on iTunes, which is not expensive at all, and luckily I have an iTunes gift voucher that comes in very handy.

Seisoene

Seisoene (print screen)

The "Seisoene" (Seasons) app addresses the four seasons of the year, with each season having four activities: Puzzles, forms, counting and dress-up.
The dress-up sections are especially cute since it  helps the children to identify which clothes comes with which season.

The app is also available in English: Seasons by Cleverkiddo
                                 AND      in French:  Saisons par Cleverkiddo


Olke-Bolke

Olke Bolke (print screen)

The "Olke Bolke" app is an app with 6 Afrikaans songs by Elizabeth Fourie:

* Lekker om te Lees
* Tekkies
* Olke Bolke
* Feetjies in die Reën
* Hondemaatjie
* Haasbek

What makes it interactive is that there are three musical instruments available for each song that the child can shake to add to the music.

"Haasbek" (tooth missing) song by Elizabeth Fourie
(screen print)

This will keep her busy for a while.

Please let me know of any other Afrikaans iPad apps?


Related posts:

- Afrikaans op die iPad

- An Afrikaans app on the iPad: Die Drie Varkies

- What makes pirates being afraid? - another Afrikaans app for the iPad

Feed Maxi - an interactive speech-language app for children

Feed Maxi 

This guest post comes from Pamela Mandell, the creator of Feed Maxi.
She is the mom to two rowdy boys and a speech-language pathologist who has been working with toddlers and preschoolers for over 14 years. She created Feed Maxi as a means to improve language skills in little ones in a fun, creative, and meaningful way.

Pamela with her e-learning department staff: Maxi Monkey,
Marty Macaw and Freddy Frog 

"Feed Maxi is an exciting new interactive speech-language game app for iPad that is captivating toddlers, preschoolers and kids with special needs with its high quality graphics and 3D animations. Children "feed" the adorable and very hungry Maxi the Monkey requested food items from a field of one, two or three foods that are child friendly (i.e., "goldfish crackers, yogurt, etc."). Maxi responds by commenting and engaging in endearing animations to show his pleasure. During the game, children love to give "FIVE" to Maxi and they look forward to the end scene where they get to explore a rainforest and pop balloons filled with food. 

Joy when playing with Feed Maxi 

The app is unique in that Maxi the Monkey uses simple sign language combined with verbal requests to get the foods he wants. The graphics are gorgeous and the app is highly interactive and intrinsically motivating for kids. Feed Maxi is completely customizable and keeps score for up to 5 children at a time. It utilizes real-life pictures of food items that toddlers can easily relate to & identify.  Feed Maxi enhances all aspects of communication including receptive, expressive and pragmatic language skills - all in one app! Feed Maxi also helps with vocabulary, problem solving, attention span, picky eaters and emergent literacy skills. 

Speak Eazy Apps is a member of Moms With Apps, a parent friendly group of mom & dad app developers that support children's safety and privacy. In Feed Maxi, there are no in-app purchases, pop-ups or advertisements. The only links to outside sources, such as our website & the App Store, are kept behind a parent gate that only adults can enter."

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I was given a promotional code and played around with Feed Maxi as well. 

At $2.99 it is a very reasonable app.

What struck me about the app is that it can be used for second language learning as well. 

My preschooler will definitely broaden her vocabulary of the English language, while having loads of fun. I also like the fact that the spelling of the words are shown when the right object has been selected. 

Photos supplied by Pamela Mandell. 

What makes pirates being afraid? - another Afrikaans app for the iPad

I found this cute adaptation of an Afrikaans book, "Waarvoor is seerowers bang?", as an application for the iPad.

Arrr! Everyone knows pirates aren’t afraid of anything! But when something on deck starts smelling worse than the breath of a hammerhead shark, Sanmarie suspects there might be one thing that makes her fearless pirate dad and his crew tremble in their dirty boots ... This hilarious, rip-roaring, rhyming pirate adventure by well-known children’s author Jaco Jacobs comes to life on your iPad – thanks to innovative animation, fun music and lots of interactive elements."

                                                                           - Waarvoor is seeerowers bang?

The story is written and narrated by Jaco Jacobs, with the illustrations by Chris Venter.
It was developed by Lapa and Full Circle cooperation.


There are three features available:

- Children can read the story by themselves.

- The story is read to them and they are able to interact with the animations on the screen. The animations include touch elements, flickering green arrows and an extra sidebar with extra character comments.

- There is also a puzzle game available.


This is definitely the small fee worth, especially since the hard copy is three times the price of the application.

I could not wait to hear what makes a pirate afraid!
Very cute!


Related post:

- An Afrikaans app on the iPad: Die Drie Varkies

On the red carpet

Little Missy has been asking us to also go to a musical event. She gets very upset when she sees that we have been to a show and that she was not there.

I took her along to an Afrikaans music show on Friday. I thought that she would enjoy it, especially since she is always complaining that "hulle praat nie my taal nie" (they do not speak my language). We are being asked to translate the English songs playing on the radio.

She loved it! But sitting quietly for one and half hours is not a strong point yet!
It was an exercise in patience and "shhh..." on my side. Especially when she asked whether the artist is a boy or a girl. Very loud!

She was also very interested in the artist in the wheelchair, and why are his legs not working?

I was thankful for a packet of sweets and chewing gum in my bag. Next time I will remember to bring water  along as well. I had to distract her for longer than an hour because she was thirsty! (She had a drink just before the show).

I also had to dislodge chewing gum from her fingers, and mine, when she was finished with it. I ended up chewing the gum, and dislodged another piece of a tooth which needs to be fixed now!

I breathed a huge sign of relief when the show ended!

We will be going to more shows! But next time we will be sitting in the corner, near the isles, and not in the middle of the theatre!

Afrikaans op die iPad

Everyone who knows me, or have read some here, knows that I am extremely excited about the use of tablets at school.
iPads for children are really the next big step to revolutionize the education systems, worldwide, but specifically here!

Yes, for us here in South Africa it is still a new thing.
My Little Missy's schools does not have the technology incorporated at the moment! But there are some positive moves in the right direction...

I am excited about ZA Books, the eTextbook solution for South African schools that was launched a couple of weeks ago. There is an app available for the South African curriculum on your iPad.

I got excited last year when Apple in Education had their awards evening, and I learnt that 72 schools have already taken part in the competition, and to see how creative the children are with the technology!

One of the things that gets asked most is about the language barriers for children. I have found that the children does not see it as a barrier at all, and that our Afrikaans speaking children do not have a problem with it.

I attended Afrikaans the iPad way session at the iStore on Monday.
Liande Engelbrecht is the Afrikaans teacher at Redhill School who uses the iPad to make Afrikaans alive to the children.

Linade Engelbrech to the left, and Lulu Burger (Think Ahead)

I was amazed to hear that she does not suggest the apps to use, but mostly gives an assignment, and the children comes up with their own solutions on the iPad.

The apps that they are using in the Afrikaans class are as follows:

- Spelling Free
- 50 Languages: Afrikaans/...
- YouTube
- Google
- Paint
- Garage Band
- Spin Art Studio
- Comic Lite / Zoodle Comics
- Poplets
- Keynote
- Infinite canvas
- Maramedia e-boek
- Notes Plus
- Educreation
- Vegas
- 100 floors
- 4 pics 1 word

You will notice that most of the apps are not in Afrikaans, but are used for Afrikaans language teaching.

A student demonstrating Keynote

The children demonstrated how they used the apps, and showed us some of their work.
Very inspiring.
I have since downloaded some of the apps myself to test it out. ;-) (Feeling like a tech geriatric!)

One other interesting fact is the way how the children handle these devices.
Because it is so very expensive, and because it is expensive to repair, they take care of it!
Their school has built in a system of training of how to handle the devices, and they have lockers for it!

Another interesting development is that iPad Genius Clubs are being launched at schools. The children manage the iPad labs, and the training is for free.


I love the technology that's available now to our children!


Related posts:

Excited about ZA Books

Apple in Education 

iPads for children #iStoreMomsandKids

My Heaven!

The first "swear words" that the Toddler has picked up! From me!

"My Hemel!" (Translated: My Heaven!)
We've heard it a couple of times over the past weekend.

It could have been a lot worse! There's more than these words being spoken , and Hubby and me remind each other regularly to tone it down...

I was not even aware that I use this phrase so often...


What is the first swear words that you have heard spoken by your toddlers?

Some Toddler stuff

Latest news in Toddlerville:

I love listening to the Toddler with her verbal skills at the moment.

She uses full sentences, such as "Mamma, het jy my bottel saamgebring?" (Mom, did you bring my bottle?)
I just want to eat her up when she uses the right words in the right context!
"By wie gaan ons kuier vandag?" (Who are we going to visit today?) - Yesterday morning preparing for the first day of the week
"Wat is verkeerd?" (What is wrong?)
"Voel jy sleg, Mamma?" (Do you feel sick, Mom?) - While I am panting exercising on the stationary bike.


Yesterday morning went off real smooth because she could take cupcakes to day care. They sell it for some extra money, and luckily Hubby got some in the shops the previous night. Not the same as the previous time when I had to make a plan with muffins when no cupcakes were left (Sunday night cupcake conundrum)...

The Toddler made her first stick figures on paper over the weekend. I definitely want to keep the evidence!



Potty training is going very slow, but over the weekend she announced that she was going on her own to the toilet, and proceeded to climb onto the big toilet. We were not allowed to help her...
Slowly, but surely! ( I hope!)

She had a nightmare about Bambi the other night, and woke up crying about Bambi's mother. We can only read the first part of Bambi, before it comes to the part in the story where the mother gets shot... She pages back in the book to the beginning when we read her the story now!
I think we can put the book away for a while! (I find it upsetting myself!)

What an adventure... enjoying the milestones with our Little O!

Please, please don't grow up so quickly!

But, we love seeing you reach another milestone!

(The constant ambivalent feelings... ;-) )

The cute things she does

A couple of cute things The Toddler is doing at the moment. It is all connected with her command of acquiring new uses of the language...

Saying all Teacher-like: “Dis reg!” (It’s correct!), when we are doing or saying something that she approves off!

She uses the “Yes!” in a tone which says: Of course! (What else?)

She saw a plane passing by over the play ground, and told the teachers at day care the “vlieghuis” (fly house) broke the clouds.

I thought she said yesterday that her nose is bothering her. I gave her a tissue, and told her to blow her nose. She literally blew on it with her breath, and chucked it over her shoulder... A giant miscommunication! We had to smile! But it made me realise how trustworthy she is. She does something just because I told her to do it, without questioning me...

Today when I went to pick her up at day care, she started to run to me. But stopped abruptly, and turned back to the teacher: “Sweeties!” They had made a cookie and Smarties autumn tree in class today, and she had remembered to ask for it when going home!

She is afraid of heights! She does not like walking on the high beams or jumping into the sponge pit at the gymnastics class. But she loves playing on the jungle gym at our local mall where I sometimes cringe when she climbs onto the slide from the bottom or climbing up a rock climbing-looking wall...  It is a good sign that she only needs a bit of time to get used to the heights!

She holds the top of her bottle hold over one eye, and tells us to smile. Just as I tell her in the mornings to smile at my cell (Morning’s first photo at day care).  See the photos of this morning where I had to tell her to smile again, because she was giving me a really skew smile.

I love this age! (Huge smile!)

Toddler word creations: Flying House Bow

I want to record all the creative words that the Toddler uses while she acquires language. Her first language is Afrikaans, and it is not always possible to get the same connotation when trying to translate to English.

You tend to forget the cute word usage, as well as how they combine different word meanings.

(Don’t forget to write down these cute words. It stays a source of great delight when reading it back years later... Wink smile)

The Toddler came up with “vlieghuisboog” on Wednesday. “Vlieghuis” is her word for airplane. Literally translated it means “flying house”. In Afrikaans it should be “vliegtuig”, but no matter how many times we have tried to correct her, she still uses the same word.

We saw a rainbow (Afrikaans: reënboog), and showed it to her. The next moment she came up with this word: “vlieghuisboog” – “flying house bow”!
It just shows how the little mind works…

Cute! (I am allowed to say it!)

What little girls are made of?

I saw a discussion on Mommaliscious Mamma’s about the naming of private parts. I find it very interesting that people are still teaching their children funny or cutesy names.

The following came up:
Flower
Fluffy… (?)
Willy
Winky
Daisy
Fanny
Butterfly
Cooks
Cookie pot
Peenie
Cookie Monster

I did a quick search on Google, and saw that most of the search returned top for the use of appropriate names. We taught the teen appropriate names when she was small, 15 years back. “Vagina” and “Penis” were the only names she knew, and she had no hang-ups about it. She came to tell me a few times about children that use strange names, and it had everybody guessing for a while at the crèche. Names also like “paddatjie” (froggie), if I remember correctly.

I believe that it is much easier to make no issue about it, and to name any part of the body as correctly as possible. Badparenting believes it is a bad parenting technique, because toddlers can embarrass you when you expect it the least. Funny! (I’ve found it helps to keep a straight face…)

A family member teaches her sons about “verkeerde plekkies” (wrong places). When the Survivor series was on, the survivors were eating “verkeerde plekkies” of animals, according to them.

What do the funny names teach our children? That a normal part of their anatomy is not normal, and somehow “wrong”!

No! We are teaching the toddler the appropriate names. There’s enough for her to cope with already, and not to struggle with figuring out why there is strange names for some body parts. Hopefully not to end up with sexual hang-ups…

The toddler saying her own name - not yet

The toddler does not say her own name.  She is 21 months. She says the names of her friends, and of her sister, but not her own name. Mieka is not a difficult name to say.

She copycats us when we tell her to say something.  She does not always get it right but she usually tries. That’s why it is strange that she doesn’t want to say her own name yet... A friend with a boy just three weeks younger than Mieka also says that her boy does not say his own name. He is also more verbal than Mieka.

Mieka is pointing to us and our faces. She says “Mama”, and “Papa”. She point to her own face, and we repeat with “Mieka’s nose, Mieka’s eyes, Mieka’s ears, Mieka’s cheeks” etc. She knows and points correctly. Maybe she still thinks we are extensions of her, and that’s why she does not verbalize her own name. (?) She gets it perfectly right to say “Arnia”, the name of her sister! Arnia is very difficult to say with that “r”!

Waiting for another milestone to cross...

When did your young ones say their own names? Can you even remember? I can’t remember when the teen said her name, 15 years back...

(Photo: Mieka with her sister, Arnia, reading in the background)

The toddler uses a language of sounds

I regret that we did not make more effort to learn the toddler sign language. She still gets by with her pointy finger and lots of grunts. But I realize that she uses a lot of sounds to indicate what she wants. And it works for her, because we understand her… Perhaps the sounds are not such a bad thing, and it works on the same principle as sign language.

Sounds used by the toddler: (I hope I get it right)

“Ah-Ah-Ah” with open mouth – she wants to be breastfed
“Woef” – used for the dog
“grrrr” – ants
“sswee-ssweee” – going to the toilet
“weee-weee” – planes (with hands making a sweeping movement above her head)
“uh-uh” – anything she wants, with pointy finger
Negative “eh-uh” – NO!
“poef” – dirty nappy (with finger trying to pull nappy down)
“s-s-s-s” – fish
“hawrrrrr” – roar used for lots of animals, such as lions, tigers, foxes

That’s about it! It is remarkable that she can do so much with these sounds. Luckily we hear that she is beginning to copy us when we say something…

Related post:
The toddler is 20 months

Playing Friday Follow 40 and over. Check Java for the details at Never Growing Old.

Cute toddler things

The toddler is doing so many new cute things; I can’t wait for the monthly update. Things change so fast, and I am afraid I will forget some of it.


The most favourite word at the moment is “klaar” (finish). The food is “klaar”. The programme is “klaar”. The bottle is “klaar”. And the arms make a wide open swinging movement!

She even got it down to a perfect pitch. The teen caught her doing the following: she got a sandwich at day care, and saw the teen looking away. She dropped the sandwich, and when the teen looked again, she said: “Klaar!” (With conviction!)

She loves her bath. When we announce that it is bath time, she starts climbing up the stairs and we have to rush to follow her up the stairs. A friend of mine told me yesterday that her boy (who is three weeks younger) refuses to bath, and that she has been sponging him for the past seven weeks. Margot at joumaseblerrieblog also complains that her Felix throws tantrums when he has to bath.

Luckily our Mieka enjoys it and “helps” us with the washing, focusing mostly on her right leg. Not sure why (?). When she gets excited the Epizone E cream (we use it against the eczema) goes all over her hair as well! She loves doing the hair “washing” (anytime), because yesterday she came home with sticky hair (still trying to figure out what THAT was).

The sleep is a bit of a struggle at the moment. She is more in our bed, than in her cot. I suspect it was the holiday room-sharing that did the trick! Missy loves sleeping in the middle, and she kicks all the blankets off, and we pull it up again. She kicks, we pulls... The winter cold does not seem to have any effect on her. *Shiver*

The tantrums are here, but we are able to distract her. I try to ignore it as much as possible. So far it has been working. It is getting more difficult to go to restaurants. She is not as contented to sit in her table chair as she used to be. Same problem with the chair in the car as well... She goes stiff, and throws her back in an arch! (“This too will pass!”)

The teen says that Mieka seems to stay more with the teachers, than venturing around when they are outside. I see the same behaviour with us; she stays in our vicinity, and gets us to walk with her in the arms. I hope it is something that she will outgrow, because it sounds so very much like me. I was stuck to my mother's side when I was small, and they had endless problems to leave me. Luckily she goes to day care. I believe it helps a little with helping to get over the “cautiousness “(if that is what you call it?).

But: We are enjoying the personality more and more as the lights are being switched on! Really!! (no sarcasm here)