Minneapolis, Minnesota – Preschool University today is pleased to announce the release of Partners in Rhyme 1.4 for Mac OS, their seventh educational app designed to help young children learn the important skill of rhyming. This app utilizes proven Accelerated Learning Techniques and Montessori principles. Partners in Rhyme helps build strong phonemic awareness skills and helps develop foundational reading skills through entertaining and interactive games. The app’s four different learning games all help develop rhyming skills in different ways. Children are hearing the sounds of words and matching rhyming pictures, or discerning whether or not certain word and picture pairings rhyme.

Preschool University apps have been among the most popular, free reading skill apps on the Mac App Store. They have even made it to the top ten list. According to Preschool University President, Richard Colombini, “Rhyming is a great way to begin phonemic awareness with young children. Rhyming games help children develop phonemic awareness by allowing them to focus on the sounds most easily discernible in words: the final sounds.”

Partners in Rhyme operates in portrait orientation. From the Home Page, users can select one of the four games.

The first mode of play is ‘Line Matching:’
A secondary menu is brought up after leaving the main menu page. On this new page, users determine if they would like to do ‘Line Matching’ with either 6, 8, 10 or 12 objects. After deciding this and choosing one of the four options, the app user will then be brought to a page with a column of pictures on the left and a column of pictures on the right. Each picture will say its name when touched. The object is to connect a picture on the left with its rhyming counterpart on the right by connecting the two pictures with colored yarn. A success is revealed by the pictures staying connected with the colored yarn. An incorrect guess will have the yarn disappear. Play continues until all of the pictures are connected. Then a new screen will appear just like before with pictures on the right and left to match. After successfully clearing five screens, stars will flash across the screen and gameplay is done, and the user can return to the home menu.

‘Matching’ is the second mode of game play:
After touching the ‘Matching’ icon on the main page, the app user is brought to a menu where they can choose to match 6, 8, 10 or 12 objects. After choosing one of the four options, the app user will hear the app voice say, “Find the matches.” The app user is brought to a screen where they see some photos and watch as they disappear into pink cards with stars on them. If one of the game cards is touched, it will sound off a word as the picture is revealed. The app user must then select another card. If the two cards have words that rhyme, the cards will vanish. If the two cards do not rhyme, the photos will spin back to the pink cards. Gameplay continues until all of the matches are found, whereupon, stars dance and twirl on the screen. The user can return to the home menu by tapping the home icon.

‘Do They Rhyme’ gives children a fun way to listen and discern if two words rhyme:
From the main menu the user taps on the ‘Do They Rhyme’ icon. The app voice announces, “Do they rhyme?” The user is brought to a page with a “yes” hand and a “no” hand at the bottom of the page. There are two blank boxes next to each other. First one picture and then another fill the space. The app announces “hat” as the first picture appears, and “cat” as the second picture appears. The app user is then to tap on the correct hand below since these two words do indeed rhyme. If the user taps the yes hand, it will spin around as a bell sounds off, and two more words will appear. If the user chooses the no hand for the hat/cat combo, then there would be an error message, and the no hand would grey out. The user would need to tap the yes hand to finish this screen, and go onto the next screen. There is a counter in the lower left of the screen that keeps track of how many items have been completed. Gameplay can continue until the user is done. The counter easily tracks over 100 rounds. When the user is done with this game, they can tap on the home icon to return to the main menu.

‘Which Set Rhymes’ is the fourth game on Partners in Rhyme:
After touching this icon on the menu page, the user is brought to a page with two pictures side by side on top of the page, and two pictures side by side on the bottom of the page. Pictures appear in the boxes as their words are sounded out by the adult female voice of the app. In the top two boxes appear a frog and then a dog. In the bottom two boxes a frog appears and then a photo of a boy yelling. The app says, “frog, dog. Frog, yell.” A token appears in the middle of the screen. The app user is to move the token to the correct rhyming pair, in this case the frog and the dog. Placing the token anywhere on the game tile, where the two side by side pictures reside, will be seen as a success. The token will twirl as a bell sounds off and new pictures appear. If the user guesses incorrectly, the token will grey out, and bounce back to the center so that it can be placed correctly. The user must place it on the correct pair for gameplay to continue.

Feature Highlights:
* Four learning games provide practice in hearing and listening for rhyming words
* All pictures will say their word when touched
* Different levels of difficulty can be chosen
* Learn to match rhyming words
* Learn to discern if two words match
* Help build vocabulary with new words

Created by a team of educators and experts in early childhood development and education, and tested with preschool children to ensure maximum fun and learning potential, PARTNERS IN RHYME features the outstanding user interface found in all Preschool University apps. The educational games offer entertainment and incentive, and employ the most effective teaching methods.

System Requirements:
* OS X 10.7 or later
* Size: 52.2 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Partners in Rhyme 1.4 is free and available worldwide exclusively through the Mac App Store in the Education category.

Preschool University
Partners in Rhyme 1.4
Download Free Version from Mac App Store
YouTube Video (Demo)
Screenshot
Application Icon

Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Preschool University’s mission is to create and promote excellent reading materials and high quality learning tools for children. Established in 2010, Preschool University is an accumulation of over 22 years of experience and success in child reading development. It began as a promise by Montessori preschool owner and lead teacher, Richard Colombini, to prospective parents. The promise: “All Kindergartners Are Guaranteed To Read.” The company currently offers more than 22 free educational apps in the App Store. Copyright (C) 2011-2014 Preschool University All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.