App Name: Chalk Walk
Overall Rating: 5/5
Mom’s Rating: 4/5
Kids’ Rating: 5/5
Recommended Grades/Ages: Preschool, Kindergarten
Skills Developed: Fine Motor Skills, Pincer Grip, Pencil Grip
Available On/Price: iPad – $2.99
Reviewed on: iPad
App Description:
There aren’t many apps that focus on the development of the pincer grip and other fine motor skills that need to be developed by pre-writers. Chalk Walk requires your child to practice the thumb to index finger pincer grip by moving the fingers close to each other and then following a curving, looping line with the fingers held together through a variety of neighborhoods.
Each neighborhood includes five tracing activities that are led by an animated icon, making the initial trail. Your child then traces over it to complete each activity while successfully forming loops and curls around letters to collect them and form a five-letter word – one letter per activity. Each activity shows a score out of three stars and results in a colored paving stone on the main Chalk Walk map. Once all five activities are completed your child’s tracing motions can be viewed in a video recording of their work that seamlessly displays her progress through the neighborhood. When all five paving stones are colored the neighborhood picture on the map animates and your child can keep moving along the map.
There are 11 neighborhoods in all, resulting in a total of 55 interactive, animated tracing activities!
It is easy to turn off the music and sound effects separately from the settings menu, and to reset the game so another child can complete it, or so it can be enjoyed again.
Other Notes: This app doesn’t include any ads, in-app purchases, external links or social media integration. A text-only email is included on the help screen.
What We Liked:
I love that the app ‘forces’ correct pincer grip finger positioning but can be set for left or right handed children. My six-year-old took the iPad to bed with her and worked through the entire app in a couple of hours one evening, just for the fun of it! She has even gone back and started it again from the beginning at a slower pace – getting to the end of the path on the map was a huge motivator for her as were the colorful buildings that animated once each neighborhood was completed. This is an incredibly low conflict way to encourage proper pencil grip and can easily be spaced out on a daily basis to help encourage find motor development skills. The continuous flow of the motions is also particularly valuable if you are preparing for cursive instruction, the loops and curls can help to form motor memory pathways even before letter shapes are formally taught.
What We Didn’t Like:
This is a pretty busy app with a lot of different things going on – I didn’t feel that the collecting of letters to spell a word in each neighborhood was a truly effective early literacy tool as no audio of letter names or sounds was provided during the letter collection or upon word completion. The prizes also don’t seem to serve much of a use or motivational focus – they just sit on the bottom of the screen once collected.
Overall:
Chalk Walk is a captivating and incredibly motivating way to practice the fine motor skills so necessary for successful printing and handwriting. It’s colorful, playful map-like journey naturally engages children’s desire for completion and moves them along in their pincer grip development painlessly, making it easy for parents to reinforce the hand position needed for holding a pencil.
Buy this universal (iPhone/iPod/iPad) app now for $1.99!
Have you downloaded this app? Let us know what you and your children thought – leave a comment!
