TOS Review: Mobile Education Tools – Rainbow Sentences

I'm VERY selective when it comes to paying big money for iPad apps. And by big money, I pretty much mean anything over $2.

I'm cheap. So sue me.

But if an app can prove its worth to me I'm more inclined to see the value in it and *maybe* justify spending more.

I think Rainbow Sentences fits this category.

What am I talking about here? Here's the official description of Rainbow Sentences from Mobile Education Tools:

Rainbow Sentences is designed to help students improve their ability to construct grammatically correct sentences by using color coded visual cues. The who, what, where, and why parts of sentences are color coded to help students recognize and understand how combinations of these parts create basic sentence structure.

Students will learn how to recognize the parts of sentences such as nouns, verbs, and prepositions, improve their understanding of how combinations of these parts create basic sentence structure. Students have the opportunity to record their sentences in their own voice to improve their receptive and expressive language skills.

Rainbow Sentences offers a unique environment for improving a student's ability to create grammatically correct sentences.

Here's the honest truth – at first brush I wasn't all that impressed. It seemed overly simplistic and I wasn't sure it was even worth having my kids test out because I thought they would just roll their eyes at me. I think now that's because I was using the part of the app aimed at the 3-6 age group. Recently I discovered that you can change the level and even take off the color coding. This is much more in line with the challenge level my youngest kids can handle – appropriate to the 6-10 age group.

Here's a screen shot of the app in action:

So you drag the words and/or word groups up to the color matched line. This was what I was thinking was too easy for where my kids are, but I can TOTALLY see how this could be helpful for special needs kids and kids who are at the very beginning of learning how sentence structure works.

Here are all the features this app contains:

• 168 images to create sentence from

• Intuitive drag and drop to create sentences

• Words are spoken as they are being dragged for non readers

• Words can be color coded for added visual support

• Word groups can be selected to simplify sentence construction

• 6 levels of sentence complexity

• Pictograph lessons to help students learn proper sentence construction

• Record feature allows students to record sentences in their own voice

• Save and email recorded sentences

• Students earn puzzle pieces during play to encourage continued play

• Puzzles come to life once level is complete

That's a pretty packed punch for $7.99. The reviews listed in iTunes are all glowing and a lot of them point to how helpful this is for special needs cases. I love apps that are truly educational and believe this one fits the bill.

See what others had to say about both Mobile Education Tools apps here!

Disclaimer: The product was provided for the purpose of review. No other compensation was received. All thoughts are my own. I keep a proper disclosure statement available here.

Tweet