Important update from TheSchoolRun
For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.
What this means for subscribers:
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- In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
- As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.
A few changes to be aware of:
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Best poetry apps for kids
The apps reviewed are not produced or distributed by TheSchoolRun. All details were correct when we reviewed them, but please note that some apps can be very short-lived and may become unavailable to download. We are unable to guarantee that the app listings we provide are completely up-to-date at all times.
Best for inspiring creativity
Word Creativity Kit, £4.99, Apple
A finalist in the prestigious BETT education awards 2017, Word Creativity Kit is a brilliant all-round app that will help your child create poems and other creative writing.
It’s based on the concept of random stimulus, giving your child prompts to inspire their writing. They start with a selection of randomly generated words from seven different categories, then let their imagination run wild, creating poems, limericks, jokes, stories and even complete books.
Download a FREE Creative Writing toolkit!
- KS1 & KS2 workbooks
- Bursting with fill-in prompt sheets and inspiring ideas
- Story structure tips, style guides and editing suggestions
There are also lots of interactive features to make poetry-writing fun, including stickers, backgrounds, colours and customisable fonts, and your child can ask Siri to read their poem so they can hear how it sounds when spoken aloud.
Best for generating rhymes
Furious Rhymes, free, Apple
If your child is struggling to find the right rhyme for their poem, Furious Rhymes is the app they need.
The fast and powerful rhyming dictionary contains over 100,000 words for your child to use in their poems. They simply type in the word they want to rhyme with, and the app produces a list of suitable words including perfect rhymes, half rhymes, vowel rhymes, consonant rhymes and more (to access the full database, you’ll need a paid subscription at $3.99).
There’s a pronunciation playback feature so your child can check how the rhyme sounds, and they can look up the definition of a word, too. They can also use the inbuilt notepad to compose their poems. Just bear in mind that the app is in US English, so some spellings and definitions vary.
Best for pre-schoolers and Foundation Stage
Playful Poems, £1.99, Apple
This interactive app is aimed at children of pre-school age, introducing simple poems that relate to their everyday lives.
The collection of 30 short original rhyming poems covers topics such as pets and siblings and day-to-day tasks like tidying up, with clear, British English narration and colourful illustrations. It also includes instructions for finger games and actions, building fine motor skills.
For parents, there’s an extensive information area which includes tips for sharing poetry with children and details about how their vocabulary and comprehension skills should develop according to their age and stage.
Best for writing haiku
FiveSevenFive Haiku, free, Apple
Primary school children are often taught to write haiku – short Japanese poems that have three lines of five, seven and five syllables – as part of the English curriculum. This simple little app is great for helping them practise writing haiku at home.
Your child starts by selecting an image to use as inspiration, choosing from the stock images or uploading a picture of their own. They can then write their own haiku on top of the image, with the app tracking how many syllables they’ve used on each line.
Finally, they can save their haiku, and the app will convert it to an image with text overlay that they can share or print: perfect for sticking in their homework book.
