Intro to Letters is a great app for kids to learn how to pronounce (or is it enunciate?) letters. It also allows them to trace the letters to learn to write them. It features a great voice and very intuitive interface. At times the arrows are hard to follow for my 3 year old when she is tracing, but she usually figures it out. She has spent a lot of time in the app having fun and learning. Kaylin already knows the alphabet, but you can see in the video there is always room for improvement when it comes to saying and writing the letters!
Great app!
Fun – 4
Learning – 5
Attention – 4
Total = 13/15
Ages 3,4,5
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
Count Caddy from Tickle Tap Apps is an app that simply allows your kid to drag items from one side of the device to the other. The counting starts by ones and then progresses through twos etc. It is a visually appealing app with great use of sounds.
Did my 2 1/2 year old like it? Yep! She loved it. She was quick to learn how to swipe her finger — this took a minute to learn. The sounds kept her interested and it was really reinforcing the counting exercises we do outside the application. She wanted to play with it well into the 5+ minute mark and obviously she was having fun (see the video). She was learning hand eye coordination at a really detailed level at least those couple of fingers
It is worth the $? Yes it is. In the app store it is a few bucks and well worth the money.
Here is how I rank it:
Learning: 5/5
Fun: 4/5
Attention Capture: 4/5
Not too bad at 13/15.
Age: 5 and under (as recommended by the publisher: 3-5)
So for our first app of the site we have Preschool Adventure from 3Dal LLC.
This app is an entertaining choice, and some actual learning too. It teaches some hand eye coordination, colors, shapes, animals, and animal sounds. How long does my 2 1/2 year old like to play with it? About 10 minutes or more. She is adept at pressing the X to close the current activity as well as choosing another. The learning is colors and shapes although the style does not lend itself to great retention by the child.
Here is how I rank it:
Learning: 4/5
Fun: 4/5
Attention Capture: 5/5
So I am left using the programmers (authors?) video. Pretty good job anyway.
