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

Word Wall HD By Emantras Inc a great educational app by a company who really knows that space well. Emantras has many kids educational apps for everything from words to dissecting animals. A really great app publisher with a lot of apps to offer.

Specifically Word Wall HD By Emantras Inc is meant to teach your child letters and then words. The app is designed to span a wide range of ages. My daughter who is four is ready to explore all the letters since she knows them well, but figuring out how to spell a word is something she is working on. The app covers the whole range.

There isn’t just one game in Word Wall HD By Emantras Inc either. It is a full set of learning games with a couple skill levels to choose from. My daughter was dragging letters to name the picture, simply choosing a letter to explore, and having fun while doing it.

When I was done with this video she stopped me and asked me to record her some more thinking that she had to stop playing with the app. It is fun and rewarding with stickers and achievements and she did not want to stop. Of course I explained that she could play with the app some more and I would watch

My daughter has been playing with the app for a while on our iPhones, but since we picked up the excellent Big Grips Frame for iPad 2 – Pink, we haven’t been able to pull her away from the iPad.

Emantras has an HD version of the app as well as the standard version that we were using, so be sure to grab the right one from the iTunes Store!

Fun – 4
Learning – 5
Attention – 5
Total – 14

Monster Coloring Book By The Guys In The Booth is a simple and fun coloring app for kids. The characters that your child is able to color are unique and interesting. The process of coloring is simple enough for the smallest painter and the stickers and patterns keep the older kids interested.

I was happy to see that The Guys In The Booth decided to do away with the in-app purchases. I do not care for that model at all. With the 1.1 update you get access to all the stickers and everything else in the app that I can remember was for purchase before.

There is a lite version of the app in the app store, but for a few bucks, just go for the full app! For younger kids you just start up the app for them and they are set. For older kids they will handle it all on their own. I was surprised to see my daughter could save her work and view it later in the gallery as well!

Do not forget about the case our iPad is in (I get an email after every review about this case). You can pick up the Big Grips! Case here: Big Grips Frame for iPad 2 – Pink

Fun – 4
Learning – 2
Attention – 5

Total – 11

Motion Math By Motion Math is another great math learning tool. This time you aren’t choosing the operand for the math problem, or saving the world from aliens NASA-style, instead you are bounding a ball. Sounds simple right? Not so fast.

The ball is bouncing on a platform which is a whole. The ball becomes a fraction that you need to use to bound on the appropriate portion of the platform (the whole). The neat thing is as you miss the platform gets more defined and you can tell where to bounce more precisely. It is a great spin on fractions learning and a fun game to play.

My ten year old and I were having fun with the voices during the video. Be sure to check it out!

Fun – 5
Learning – 5
Attention – 5

Total – 15 perfect score!

Mentor-Words By Mentor-Kids is an awesome learning app for kids to learn words by site. We have reviewed several books made apps that present learning words in the same way, but the puzzle feature of Mentor-Words By Mentor-Kids sets it apart.

The idea is simple you have three modes: Choose a word to match to an object, find an animal to match to a word, or spell the word using the alphabet and outlines.

The first two choices are a bit hard for my four year old to do on her own. She needs an adult sitting there with here. That is absolutely ok! This level of learning takes a bit of involvement.

The third choice she can handle on her own and it still has the potential to teach her the words along with proper placement or spelling of the letters in the word.

I am impressed with this simple yet potentially very effective spelling/reading app called Mentor-Words By Mentor-Kids. The game play isn’t perfect since the screen sometimes scrolls rather than clicks, but that takes about two times to get used to and you are on your way.

Learning – 5
Attention – 5
Fun – 4
Total – 14

Leo The Lightening Bug by Eric Drachman is a very nice book made app. The story of Leo the Lightening Bug is a very popular children’s book and it makes for a great app. The story itself is one of triumph and something a lot of kids will be able to associate with. From laughing at the misfortune of others to overcoming your fears and worries.

The graphics are very well done and the animations, although very simple, are appropriately used. The voices of the characters caught the attention of my four year old very quickly and made the book interesting. More interesting than I could have made it dare I say.

Will my four year old read this book more than once? I am confident she will read it many times in the coming years. How long does it last? Perhaps 10-12 minutes at a time, which is the perfect time span for a four to five year old’s attention. If she makes it five minutes into the book, that is fine too.

Attention – 5
Fun – 3
Learning – 3 (it is not a learning book)

Total – 11

Lilo Helps the Easter Bunny by Kids App Design Studio is a great learning adventure app. Really Lilo Helps the Easter Bunny by Kids App Design Studio is an app for exploration. My four year old will not put it down once we remind her to play it.

Just as the title says you are helping the Easter Bunny find their eggs. The app starts with a simple story and then changes into different activities where you can color eggs or paint them as the story continues. The app was developed by a Dutch developer and is available in a few languages. The translation is apparent, but it does not take away from the game at all.

This is the sort of app you could give to two kids on the iPad and let them work together to make it through the story.

You cannot see it in the video, but many of the items on the page move when touched. The spider crawls, the monkey moves, and there are several more interactive elements to each page. Be sure to explore!

Fun – 5
Attention – 5
Learning – 2

Total – 12

Story-Boards Little Bot Big Bot By OmegeBlueStudio is a really fun learn-to-read app. In the app you follow around the Bot and learn that he is small on his planet, but large on ours. In the game you are simply presenting with words on cardboard cut-outs. You are first read the words by a youngster, and then you can read them yourself along with the adult. The graphics are very interesting and the way the game is laid out makes for a book that is easy to follow.

Story-Boards Little Bot Big Bot By OmegeBlueStudio reminds me of the Dick and Jane book style of reading. Your child is learning site-words and the process of reading. Once they are comfortable with the words in Story-Boards Little Bot Big Bot By OmegeBlueStudio they can move on to another book or perhaps OmegeBlueStudio will release another book!

Attention – 5
Learning – 5
Fun – 5
Total – 15

This is a universal app, so it works great on both the iPad and the iPhone.

Paint My Wings by Toca Boca is an app my four year old absolutely loves. She took to it immediately and has painted probably 40 butterflies in the past few days. She spends a lot of time one each butterfly and of course she takes a picture of each one.

Paint My Wings by Toca Boca is another beautifully simple app. You are presented with a butterfly and asked to paint its wings. On the left you get several colors to choose from but the colors come as blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, etc. The neat thing is that when you paint the left wing the color is automatically repeated on the right (just like we assume in nature). When my four year old realized this she was very pleased. You could see the recognition in her eyes.

Your child just paints with her finger and can adjust the “brush” in the bottom left. For older kids (or parents) this means we can create some neat butterflies. For the kids it is a change of pace. Great app.

Fun – 5
Attention – 5
Learning – 2 (hand eye coordination, but really this is a fun app not a learning app).

Total – 12