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Snowman Scramble By Matthew Demma

  • September 16, 2011 7:48 am

Snowman Scramble By Matthew Demma is a game for just about any age. The idea is you need to stack snowmen before they melt. The game is simple, well put together, and fun to play. We played it on the iPad, but it was designed for the iPhone in the initial release.

Snowman Scramble By Matthew Demma doesn’t teach you much except that snow melts and snowmen can dance and give each other “‘sup bros”, but that isn’t the point. It is a fun game that is challenging. Your kids are going to have a better score than you and they can rub that in dad’s face!

Fun – 5
Learning – 0
Attention – 4

Total – 9

Tappie Colorit By ADUK GmbHZanymation

  • August 29, 2011 7:01 am

Tappie Colorit By ADUK GmbHZanymation is a fun app for youngsters to learn about shapes and colors. Tappie Colorit By ADUK GmbHZanymation is a very simple app with only a few aspects to the learning, but that is the point.

The app opens and tells you that it is appropriate for 1+ and I bet Digital Baby would agree. It is the perfect app for the child who knows how to use an iPad, but hasn’t gotten all the shapes and colors down yet.

My four year old likes the app, but has it mastered. She still has fun playing it for 10 minutes at a time.

Fun – 5
Attention – 4
Learning – 5 (for young kids this is a great learning app).

Total – 14

Air Display By Avatron Software, Inc.

  • August 23, 2011 7:33 am

I asked Avatron is I could review Air Display because I thought it would make a great way for my daughter to play Flash apps on the iPad and I was right! Since my daughter is usually using my iPad in the house (90% of the time) she is connected to the same wifi as my computer.

With Air Display I just load up a browser with Nick Jr and she can tap away! It take a minute or two to configure Air Display the very first time, but after you have the little widget installed on your PC or MAC (we have tried both and they work well!) you can connect over wifi by selecting the iPad running AirDisplay.

I have used it on my iPad as well when I just needed another screen. Actually that is what the app is meant for, but I really wanted my daughter to have a full Firefox web browser experience on the iPad for a few things and this solution works well. You can do the same thing with your iPhone, but for kids this screen seems to be a little small.

(no rating because this is not actually a kids app exactly, but a solution for parents with kids)

Great app. Definitely worth the list price. Next to iTad RDP and VNC which I am also reviewing this one requires almost no configuration at all.

BilingualABC English-Espanol by BilingualABC

  • August 15, 2011 7:46 am

BilingualABC English-Espanol by BilingualABC is a fun app to learn your ABCs in English and in Espanol. My ten year old daughter has a friend who speaks Spanish, so my four year old is familiar with the idea that some people speak different languages. I was not as concerned with her learning the letters in Spanish as I was interested in this app working as a reinforcing app for her English ABCs.

It is a neat app and works well. It has some interesting choices for the objects that represent each letter, and that is a nice touch. The voice is very well done. I can also see my ten year old, or myself, using this app to actually learn the alphabet in Spanish.

Learning – 5
Attention – 3
Fun – 3

Total 11

Animal Words by Oh, Hello!

  • July 1, 2011 2:25 pm

Animal Words by Oh, Hello! Is a simple fun app for young children to learn about animal sounds. The interface is simple and clean–just what you want in an app like this. Your child selects an animal and hears the name of the animal. There are three different voices/languages to choose from. Two English and one is Czech I believe.

That is about it. Simple,fun, interesting, but ultimately a short lived app for a young child. Is it worthwhile? Sure.

Fun – 3
Learning – 5
Attention – 3

Animal Sounds By Oak Multimedia

  • June 4, 2011 7:04 am

Animal Sounds By Oak Multimedia is a simple app for a small child. It has a set of animals that your young child can pick and listen to the noises they make. The animals are drawn well and the sounds are right on. It is great for a young child of 1+ years who is just learning their animal sounds.

I think it is a good app, but it has one flaw. The never really enjoy shaking my iPhone or iPad. It is hard for my four year old daughter to shake the device sometimes too. For a one year old it would be nearly impossible. . The developer has updated the app to address this issue and you now have the option to not need to shake the device! Awesome! That being said this is not the type of app that a small child would play with by themselves. It is a way for an involved parent to teach their child animal sounds in a new and interesting way.

I do recommend the app, but would like to be able to touch the animal to make it make its sound!

My four year old is giggling and having a fun time while she is playing with the app.

Attention – 4
Learning – 4
Fun – 4

Total – 12

Hokey Pokey Superheroes by Cambridge English Online ltd

  • May 25, 2011 7:56 am

I remember dancing to the Hokey Pokey at the local skating rink when I was kid. It was fun to make silly faces and dance around crazy to the song. Everyone participated–even the parents. It was a lot of fun.

Hokey Pokey Superheroes by Cambridge English Online ltd brings back that same fun and silliness. Hokey Pokey Superheroes by Cambridge English Online ltd makes the game fun again by playing the song so we can dance along. There are a few other treats in the app as well like a song that lets you add your own body part.

The point is the game is simple and fun. Camping? Play the app? Sitting around the living room with the kids and have five minutes before bed? Do the hokey pokey. It just works.

Fun – 5
Learning – 1
Attention – 5 (it isn’t that your kids will play for hours, but rather that you will play with your kids for a bit!)

Total 11

Pop Out! The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Loud Crow

  • April 15, 2011 7:13 am

Pop Out! The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Loud Crow is yet another stellar app/book for your iPad or iPhone. The neat thing about this app was the little tabs you can pull on to get the characters to move, but that is only the start. Click the tree or the blueberries and you are in for a surprise. Keep clicking them!

Loud Crow was kind enough to give away a promo code for this book and we have awarded it to a randomly selected reader. Her review is already in and the app is a success with her <1 year old! Wow I would not have thought that this book would have been appropriate for such a young age, but I am convinced.

Does the app read to you? Yes. A pleasant voice? yep. Interactive? You got it. Learning is there too with the highlighting of words with selection to repeat the word. My daughter loves the book and we are at the point now where we are pushing apps to the farthest pages of our device. This app stays in the reading books folder for sure.

Attention - 5
Learning - 5
Fun -5
Total - 15

How could you not like this book on the ipad or iphone?

My Family Food by FamilyFUNdamentals

  • February 14, 2011 7:44 am

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.

Talking Tom by Outfit7

  • October 1, 2010 7:22 am

Starting off the month with an app that is pure fun and offers almost no learning potential might be a little silly, but here we go.

This app is for anyone and everyone. It is simply fun. Tom is a cat that mimics your voice. Anything you say into the phone Tom repeats in a silly voice. It is a neat app that my 3 year old likes to just leave running all day and laughs when Tom decides to repeat what we have said. It passes the time in the car and can snap a little one out of a funk.

Talking Tom is a free app that is ad supported and sometimes those in app purchase options get in the way, but overall a fun app that is worth an upgrade or two.

I give it a 5 for attention and 5 for fun, but a 0 for learning for a total of 10.