HowApp is the new parenting & kids activity app that offers instant access to over 1000 ideas of Montessori & STEM/STEAM projects, games and activities, that help you find new ideas of things to do with kids.

The “Home” Feed

The ‘Home’ feed is what a user will see when they first log in. If you don’t yet follow anyone, it displays activities recommended to you based on age groups you have chosen via onboarding. If you have followed users, it will display their latest feeds.  All the activities, as well as the top menu bar and a bottom menu bar for starting a new virtual playroom space of your own.

The home top menu

From left to right:

• The ‘calendar’ where you can see all your planned and tracked activities

• The app logo (just a logo)

• The invite system to add your friends! (More on this in a separate post below)

• The notifications section where you’ll see items of interest to you such as being friended and people react to your published activity.

The bottom menu

• Home feed where you get activities recommendations and following feeds

• Explore is a place where you can find activities or users, as well as 9 categories listed as quick access to activities that belongs to that category

• Create an activity of your own

• Planning is a place where you can schedule your days and weeks ahead for your kids

• Your profile including your picture, bio and activities, shelves and clapped activities

Explore Activities and People

You can type a keyword to search activities and people. Keywords can be anything, and will search both a user’s name and activity page. You can put in a commonly used material, animal name, or anything else you can think of to find the activities you’re looking for.

Activity filtering

You have some options for filtering the activities that you get from each category:

• ‘Age groups’ shows you 6 groups age 0-10+ 

• ‘Difficulty’ is a level listing filtered on the activities the author thinks is difficult or easy to play.

• ‘Seasonal’ theme shows only activities you have want for the season 

Publish (create) activities of your own

Read here for details.

Plan and track

Read here for details.

Get Organised with “Shelf”

Read here for details.

Activity description

Click into an activity post, you will see the following page.

The several options here:

• On top: You can ‘share’ the activity which will bring up a web version activity page. It allows you to send the link through things like text messages and your other messaging applications.

• On top “more” menu: Report an activity - Report an activity to the Trust and Safety team.

• The ‘Clap’ icon will send an applause to the author of this activity.  

• ‘SAVE’ will allow you to organize this activity into one of your shelves.

• ‘PLAN” will allow you to add the activity  to your scheduling routine/day/week so you don’t forget about it!

• Public activity links look like the following:

Notifications

Tapping the notifications bell will get you the following:

Your notifications feed will display some of the following:

• Your activities that others have clapped, committed to

• Activities created by friends

• People who have followed you 

Your profile

The last icon on the bottom menu bar will be that of your profile. This is the same profile information displayed for everyone, with the exception that you can edit parts of your own profile picture, bio, shelves and claps:

A profile contains the following information:

• Profile picture (tap on edit to change it) and bio (this is what the member search will look into when people type in keywords) Why should you create a profile? Some of our features can only be used with a profile. If you set up a profile, you can upload an activity, connect with others, create shelves, and also comment and clap activities.

• Follows / follower counts

• Twitter and Instagram links, if you have linked those services to your HowApp account

• Shelves: to create shelves, you need to click on the section “Shelves” in your profile to create a new one. Alternatively, click on ‘Save’ in any activity to get to the shelf menu where you can create a new one. To edit your shelf, click on one of your shelfs. There you find an ‘Edit’ button where you can change the title, add, move, or delete activity items. You can also delete the entire shelf. Currently all your shelves are private and can’t be viewed publicly.

• Claps: Currently all your clapped activities are private and can’t be viewed publicly.

Setting

Tapping the gear icon on your profile will bring up a listing of settings / other useful information.

• Account - A basic account information about your profile, where you can log out

• Age groups - you can update/change your subscribed age group here.

• Change language - you can switch the app to a different language

• Subscriptions - you can see the status of your paying plans

• Terms of Service - the terms of service for HowApp.

• Privacy Policy - All the privacy information about HowApp 

• And the all-important ‘other’ social media section: if you already have them linked, you see ‘Disconnect’. If you haven’t linked them however, you’ll see ‘Connect Twitter’ and ‘Connect Instagram’. 

• Contact Support - A link to the HowApp support team

We need your feedback. Please, use the app as much as you can, upload your first kids’ activities and create your first activity shelves. Send us your feedback to hello@thehowapp.com or in our Facebook group Montessori At Home. You should expect a few bugs in the app, since the app is new.