Kids Iphone App Review
Our kids test them, we review them!

Bob Books Reading Magic is another reading app, sure, but it is also a lot more.

The people at Bob Books came up with a way for your child to learn to read or spell while having fun. Sure there are other apps where your child is asked to drag letters to make a word, but this app says the letter when you pick it, it makes you place them in order and the process is part of the story as a whole! Together this makes for a really great learning app. My four year old sure does enjoy the process as you can see in the video below.

After each picture is spelled it then colors it in and adds it to the book. This progression seems to gain the attention of the child and gives them a sense of accomplishment. The graphics are simple, but the work on the pronunciation pays off. Navigation is simple and effective.

Learning – 5
Attention – 4
Fun – 3

Total – 12

Touchy Books – Goblin Forest and Moon Secrets is another reading app and what is more important than reading? The difference between this app and most of the others is two things. First the book has a very interested way of involving the reader. Watch the video for my four year old’s favorite part. Then it also highlights the words if you are in the read to me mode. That is really neat and together it makes for a very useful reading app.

I have said before that I like it when the book can read to you. It makes it like a movie for a young child who is just learning to read–like my four year old. What is great about that style of app is that you can also read it yourself–something my ten year old loves to do.

This app is really an iBook replacement for kids. There are plenty of iBooks that looks similar, but this app allows me to pick a new book in the app and holds the book in a bookshelf for me. A nice feature above the standard iBook experience and I bet it allows the developer/publisher a little more freedom. The did well with the execution in my opinion.

Check out the video for more details, but here is the rating:

Attention – 5
Learning – 5
Fun – 4

Total – 14 a must have app in my opinion.

My Family Food by FamilyFUNdamentals interested me a lot. As a guy that visits the gym a bit I tend to watch what I eat pretty closely. Personally I use Daily Burn, so when My Family Food by FamilyFUNdamentals came across my desk I was very interested.

The basics of the app are that it allows you to track the nutrition for each member of your family. I used it to track the nutrition for my two daughters, but I included my food most of the time too. The kids get awards based on their eating habits and this really excited them. I spoke with the creator of the app and it is not networked and this means that we had to track nutrition only on my iPhone rather than on either my wife’s phone or mine, which would have been a neat addition.

Does the app work? Yes it certainly does. I found it to perform well against our eating habits and on our devices. The kids were happy when they had eaten their goals and we always allowed a treat for the rewards too. It was fun for the parents, but it is also a lot of work. This app is for the parent who is really concerned about their child’s nutrition. We all should be making sure our kids eat well and this app can help.

I personally feel that a diet is something that is doomed to fail. Just the name means failure to me. I also believe we all have a diet–most of us have a bad diet. So using this app for a few weeks does one main thing and that is to teach your kids the healthy eating habits they should have. It took me into my 30′s to learn these habits. I still break them, but at least my four year old and nine year old are learning them young. For that reason this app is getting a high learning score.

I do not have a video showing the app in use since my kids rarely used it. My now ten year old would enter food, but she cheats, so really I used it. It is a great app for parents Lock your phone too.

Fun – 4
Learning – 5
Attention – 3

Total 12, but in this category a 10 would be awesome.

Food Fight! – An Interactive Book by Glenn Melenhorst By Jelly Biscuits – we have already reviewed this app. It is fun, creative, interesting and now it is updated. We really wanted to have the app read to our child. Not because we are lazy, but rather that my 3 year old would rather control the app herself.

This book-app takes the reading to you a bit further and actually turns the pages for your child as well. I like this feature. This makes the book more of a movie for you child when you choose that mode. She can find the stars, click on the characters, and have fun doing it.

Of course you can still read the book as a traditional book, but I find real books work really well for this.

Check out the new video. I really like the accent of the narrator!

Attention – 5
Fun – 5
Learning -3
Ages 3-9

Total of 13. You aren’t here to learn necessarily, but reading is a lifelong skill.