early education

Gracie & Friends Lemonade Stand in the Apple App Store!

Posted on by first8studios

With the launch of four apps focused on subitizing (instantly recognizing how many there are of something), Gracie and Friends is proud to announce the first of four apps that help preschoolers develop their skills in equipartitioning! Equipartitioning is equal sharing a collection of objects or a whole object by dividing it into equal groups or portions.

Lemonade Stand, now released and available for download through the Apple App Store, invites children to create equivalent cups of lemonade for customers in 20 increasingly tricky levels of gameplay. They slide ice cubes around a table and into cups by tipping and tilting the iPad! Every cup needs the same number of ice cubes, but not any lady bugs! Can you make similar servings at your Lemonade Stand? Try it out and see!

A True Birthday Celebration for Gracie & Friends!

Posted on by first8studios

After four years of National Science Foundation-funded research and development, our team launched the first of the eight game apps last week! Our iPad app Gracie & Friends Birthday Café is now available in the Apple App Store!

The app is part of Early Math with Gracie & Friends™— our new, mobile app series and math curriculum supplement developed by the First 8 Studios at WGBH team under the Next Generation Preschool Math project. A randomized control trial demonstrated significant learning gains among the children who used the apps.

The hands-on activities are currently available at the First 8 Studios at WGBH Web site! The remaining apps will be released in the Apple App Store over the upcoming months, and the digital Teacher’s Guide will be released in early 2015.

Our own Christine Zanchi, Executive Producer, says, “The Gracie & Friends apps are laying the research foundation for how to use technology with young children. Our research and preschool partners, the teachers and children, are integral to this process. As this and other projects demonstrate, public media has an incredible role to play in setting the bar for mobile learning.”

We’re so excited to share our work with the world!