If you liked our review of First Words Animals by Learning Touch, then you will really like First Words Deluxe! It includes the same game play, but with Animals, Shapes, Colors, items in the home, vehicles and all words. I like the last one all words. This keeps my 3 year old going for a long time!
The existing review stands. Great gameplay with the scrabble like interface and the repetition of the letters and words is outstanding! You cannot beat an audible and visual game with an actual tactile movement. This means your kid learns while playing.
In this case I give it an updated 5/5 for attention. The additional categories make this an app that lasts a while! And she keeps coming back to it.
So Attention 5/5, Fun 4/5, Learning 5/5 for a total of 14!
Elementary Science 7-9 from Aimer Media is a great learning tool for your 2nd to 3rd grader. The questions are well done as is the gameplay which we will see more of in future reviews of the company’s apps. You can see that my 9 year old is having a pretty easy time with the questions, but she has left 3rd grade and is entering 4th, so still age appropriate. She has been a bit ill, but thought that she could play the game for a good 30 minutes at a time and would probably play it for 10 hours total – that is a lot!
After we shot a few videos she was left with my phone (3G in this case) and played for a good 20 minutes then asked if this was on “her phone too?” It is.
I give this one a 5 for learning, 4 for attention and a 3 for fun. As you can see from the reviews not all apps can be fun and learning. So far this score of 12 is really good. Well worth the purchase price.
The developer has different versions for the US as well as the rest of the world. We have another set of apps to review my Aimer Media and think they are doing an outstanding job! It is a great thing to build a learning application and provide it at a reasonable cost as a majority of our apps on this site have done. Thanks guys!
My 3 year old really like to spell and letters in general. She has really taken a liking to First Words Animals by Learning Touch. It is a simple game where the scrabble like letters are scrambled at the bottom of the screen and the animal is shown at the top. If you touch the animal a voice tells you what the animal is. You can then grab the letters to match them up to the word – scrabble like.
It may seem simple, but this game is really well done. Not only are there a lot of animals and the potential for many more with updates from the developer, but also the way the letters are pronounced and repeated along with each word is fantastic as a reinforcement for learning.
This game is suited for ages 2- 5. I give it an attention of 4, fun of 4 and learning of 5 for a total of 13.
My 9 year old loves math. I am an educator at a post-secondary school (university) and I know that our kids need math skills! How can we help them? Bombard them with learning fun at every turn. My 9-year old was just handed down an iPhone 3G since I picked up an iPhone4 on pre-order and she has been using it non-stop!
How can I take that interest and help her learn math? With math apps! So far I have found a few apps and Tic Tac Math stands out! My Daughter is 9 and just left 3rd grade. She is in a gifted program, so is doing 5/6 grade math next year. This app can handle a 3rd grader to a 6th grader depending on their level. It is fun and will at least keep them going through 1n hour or two each time they pick it up. In 10 minutes a child could go through a potential of 20-30 questions! If they spend only 20 minutes in the app each time they play it then they are going to get 50 questions. This is homework made fun.
Kids learn by a reward system. This game gives it to them with little punishment when they are wrong. They are NOT discouraged. Even when they get a question wrong the negative is minimized. This is a sign of a great app.
If you take a look around the developers website: http://iplaymathgames.com you can tell he like math, understands learning and has apps for every age. I am hoping to pick up a kindergarten version of my 3 year old!
So I give it a 5 for learning, a 4 for attention, a 4 for fun for a total of 13. Awesome. Well worth the purchase price!
Be sure to check out the video for my daughter commenting on the app!
Captain Duck by Harper Collins is one book in a series of books involving Duck. My daughter loved the story and liked the app. She was immediately entranced by the voice and the story:
She had a bit of a hard time figuring out the navigation, but she is 3 and the swipe is somewhat new to her. This was quickly overcome in a matter of days.
I give the app an attention of 4, Fun of 4 and learning of 3.
Patrick Klein emailed me a month ago about his new app: iPhone Spelling Toy. I took a while to review it for two reasons: 1. I am very busy and my 9 year old was not available to test it out appropriately. 2. It seems to use a video for a portion of the display and I cannot record that So I am left using the programmers (authors?) video. Pretty good job anyway.
My 9 year old really liked the app. She spent a lot of time using it and thought it was rather fun/interesting. Some of the words are at my best guess made for 2nd grade and up. My daughter is in 3rd grade and she had no problem with the words, but all kids are different.
The app is well written, the graphics are well done and the options are useful.
Overall I give it a thumbs up, but here is the real breakdown:
Learning: 5/5
Fun: 3/5
Attention Capture: 4/5
The SpongeBob Square Pants app is one of those apps you love and hate. My 3 year old loves the app and it takes up a bunch of her time. She likes to play with Sponge Bob and make him look silly and add our photos to his background (watch the video).
We hate this app because it is really annoying. You need to turn the volume down. How can you deny your little one a fun app with little educational value when they really like to see their little yellow square buddy dressed up how they like?
BlueOnionSoft makes a few baby apps. Baby Apps All-In-One is a grouping of four of those apps into one. A great deal at 1.99 at the time of this writing. You can see in the video:
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Your child can learn about animals, numbers, sounds and shapes and then be quizzed on those items. It is fun and rewarding for you and your child. My 3 year old loves the app and probably spends at least 10 minutes at t time on the various activities.
There is a fair amount of learning potential in the app and this alone makes it worth the $1.99
You can check it out in the iTunes store here: (iTunes Link)
iMoo (itunes link) from Panda Cub Productions is a nice remake of those little sound apps you used to see in the stores like KB Toys. You would pick them up as a kids and tip them over just to hear the sound they made. Well Panda Cub Productions has created a nice app for just that.
You can see in the video that you have the option of a several Cow sounds and you can record your own. You actually do need to tip the app to get the moo to play – just like the real thing.
My 3 year old was disinterested in the app, but my 9 year old thought it was a blast and was rolling on the floor laughing. It is a nice party gag too. Fun in meetings or on a phone call with the boss perhaps?
This is for any age range, educational value is nil and time spent on the app is simply minutes, but it is worth the price in my opinion!
Sound Shaker by Tickle Tap Apps is a fun and appealing app for young kids. On the screen your child can choose an instrument then press the screen to make a sound ball of that instrument. Only one instrument at a time. Adding many balls of sound lets the iPhone have something to work with. The balls drop to the “bottom” and the fun begins. You shake the iPhone to get the balls to make noise!
You can fling the balls and press for a longer period of time to make a slightly different sound too, but the fun is in the flinging and shaking.
Did my 2 1/2 year old like it? Yep. It took a bit longer to get the hang of and the interest wasn’t there as quickly as the other app from Tickle Tap Apps that we have reviewed, but this is still a nice addition to their line.
What does she want next? My 8 year old wanted to record her own voice and also enjoyed the app for a while. It is one of those fun apps that adults and kids can enjoy for a period of time.
Here is how I rank it:
Learning: 2/5
Fun: 5/5
Attention Capture: 3/5
Total: 10/15.
**Updated 11/20/2009**
Here is how I rank it:
Learning: 2/5
Fun: 5/5
Attention Capture: 5/5
Total: 12/15.
I had to update the scores since over the past week my daughter has really grown to love this app. She has discovered that if you hold down on the screen the sounds turn to an egg and hatch a bird. She loves it.
** end update **
Age: 5 and under (as recommended by the publisher: 3-5)
So I am left using the programmers (authors?) video. Pretty good job anyway.
