Rainbow Sentences ~ Schoolhouse Crew Review

Thumbs up.

That's what Brynne "said" to me when I asked her how she liked the new Mobile Education iPad app Rainbow Sentences.

"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."

Features Include:

• 165 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

If you would like to watch a video tutorial of Rainbow Sentences then you can go HERE.

What did we think?

First of all I would imagine that this would be the PERFECT program to teach beginning sentence building! There are three levels: Level1, Level2, Level3. Brynne started with Level1 with the Correct Answer Reinforcement, Line Color Coding, Word Color Coding, and Word Grouping activated and it was, well, super easy for her. But for a child just learning about sentences, the color-coded words and word groupings would be excellent!

She bumped it up to Level2, and deactivated the Color Coding. She could do those without a challenge, as well.

To really challenge her, I moved it up to Level3, deactivated all Color Coding and Word Grouping. So she had to completely build a pretty long sentence word-by-word without any help. It was difficult, but she worked it out.

Brynne loves how you earn puzzle pieces when you complete levels. And her favorite part was definitely recording herself reading the sentences and then playing them back.

I asked Brynne if there was anything she would change about the app and she said, "No. I like it all."

I couldn't find anything I would change, either. I will say that this is an app that I don't see my kids picking up randomly to play. It didn't interest them like that. They liked to play it when I asked them to, but not once have they asked to play it. And, for me, the price of $7.99 is a little high for what I would pay for an app. I am more of a free-$1.99 app kind of gal.

But is it worth it for $7.99? I would say ... YES. The program really is good for teaching proper sentence structure to children.

It can be purchased from iTunes by going HERE.

** UPDATE (9/2012): After struggling with other grammar curriculums, we decided to incorporate Rainbow Sentences into our weekly assignments. At least two days a week, I have the kids build three sentences. Right now they are consistently on Level 2 with no color coding. When they are done building the sentences, they write the noun, verb, and prepositional phrase on a little worksheet I prepared. They are loving it, and so am I! Not only are they building sentences from context clues in the pictures, they are identifying the parts of the sentence in a fun way.

{Disclaimer: As a member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I was provided this product free in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.}

You can also see what other's thought of Rainbow Sentences, and Mobile Education's other app for review, Story Builder, by going HERE.