Zoodles is an Adobe-air based app that is designed to put pre-selected materials at your child’s fingertips; while keeping everything else out. The idea is to provide a safe, virtual playground that can be adjusted to your child’s age and skills. Once it’s installed on your Mac or Windows computer, your child sees games from popular children’s sites like PBS Kids and Starfall.com, stripped of any advertising content. The service is free for the basic service; the Premium Membership is $6/month. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Like the other Oceanhouse Media Dr. Seuss titles, Green Eggs & Ham follows the same formula of pulling the text and illustrations from the original Dr. Seuss story, and presenting it, one page at a time. The story can be presented in three modes: Read to Me (each page is presented, one at a time), Read it Myself (touch the words or pictures to see them labeled) and Auto Play (which presents the story, slide show style). To turn the page, you swipe the screen, which either presents a new page, or zooms in to highlight one of the features. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
VTech’s completely re-engineered MobiGo is an important new addition to the handheld learning category. There is no backward compatibility with the age-old V.Smile cartridges, a break from the past for V.Tech. Fortunately, the included Touch & Learn game cartridge offers six fun games. Powered by four AA batteries or AC power (neither included) there are also ports for earphones and a USB connector for saving progress online. Additional $20 cartridges feature characters from Toy Story, Dora, Mickey Mouse and Shrek. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
A kindle for the kindergartners? V.Tech (www.vtechkids.com) hopes so, with this week’s release of V.Reader (formerly called FLiP), a $60 ebook player targeting early readers with a clear touch screen and a membrane QWERTY keyboard. To read a book, you snap in a cartridge, or, if you’ve downloaded content from a Mac or Windows computer, you can touch the backpack icon. You can listen as the story is narrated in slide show fashion, or touch any page to discover hidden hot spots. When plugged into a Mac or Windows computer by way of the USB port, it will be possible to download additional stories from www.vtechkids.com, a feature not available until August. Stories in the library will include The Little Engine that Could, Disney/Pixar’s Cars, Shrek, Dora the Explorer, Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3, Disney Fairies, Mr. Men and Little Miss, Scooby-Doo and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Five activities — each previously released as separate apps — have been combined into one $4.99 universal app. See the individual reviews of each app, with ratings. Sound Shaker is a sound making game that uses the accelerometer, so you move the screen to make musical patterns (see the full review). Field Flier lets children control a flying bird. They touch spots on the screen to hear activities like sleeping, resting or hiding labeled. Count Caddy lets children count by 1s, 2s or 3s, by dragging and dropping items into a large circle. Sort Slider shows two objects, and asks children “which one matches.” To make a match, you can either swipe with your finger (left or right) or tilt the screen. In Pattern Painter, children are asked “which shape comes next” and are then presented with three options, multiple choice style. They are then asked to trace the shape on a template. If they have trouble, a short tutorial automatically starts. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Five bite-sized games feature a chatty, quirky little monkey, who serves as the coach and instruction giver. Content includes concentration, color matching (touch all the green fruit), jigsaw puzzles (drag-and-drop puzzles), odd one out (which fruit is not the same), find the fruit that starts with the letter B. Every three activities earns you a sticker,which can be saved on a flannel board. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
The second of two letter tracing apps (the first is Letter Writer: Oceans), this App combines a set of lower case letters with real space facts. For example, after you trace the letter ‘m’ three times, you are presented with a short narrated presentation all about the planet Mars. To complete a letter, you must follow a pulsing line of dots with your finger. See also Letter Writer Oceans for practice with upper case letters. Note that both apps are designed for the smaller iPhone or iPod Touch app (they are not iPad native). Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Featuring Diego, this musical app includes six simple songs like Jingle Bells and Mary Had a Little Lamb, each set in a different environment (e.g., the Savannah or the Arctic). Made for Nickelodeon by Chewy Software LLC. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a drag and drop creativity space for collages. After you choose a background color and a head shape using as set of slide-open menus, you can freely drag and drop different items into place to try out different looks. Finished products can be saved or shared on social networks. The program look and runs fine on the iPad although the version we reviewed was not universal. The clip art library was developed by illustrator Hanoch Piven. Content includes 20 face outlines and 100 objects. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Out this month from Mattel, a choir of singing plush toys that are designed to sing in harmony. In the default mode, they make a whole-tone; selected at random. When two or more toys are squeezed simultaneously, the two tones can form a chord that more-than-likely forms a chord with it’s neighbor. By squeezing the $13 toys in rhythm, you can make silly songs. The toys run on 2 AAA batteries, and can sing a variety of songs, including “Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone,” “Skip to My Loo,” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Turn your iPhone screen into a paint-splattered mess with this simple program. The app was first released in 2008 and has been updated several times; but it is basically the same. While there is no iPad version, it still works and looks fine on either sized screen. The program starts with a blank, white square turntable surrounded with splatters of paint. You can either swipe or tap to start it in motion, in either direction. A double tap makes it stop or increase in speed. If you hold your finger down, you can make a perfect circle, or you can choose the large paintbrush to make a big mess, quickly. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Teachers take note: WordTotz is a customizable flashcard app designed to help children learn their first words using familiar pictures and sounds.The app lets you create your own cards, using photos from your photo album. You can then record your own voice over the photos; potentially very valuable as a language experience. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This finger painting experience for iPod Touch and iPhone, with a new version for the iPad, has a clean visual design, a manageable 10 color palette and resizable stickers. You start by choosing from three themes (ocean, school or farm). Next, you see a well designed creativity space, offering colors, a single, one size paint brush, an eraser and a row of stickers. There are also icons for saving your picture to your photo library, or alternating between 12 backgrounds per theme, including a blank white or black canvas. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Poke the spider to change scenes in this adaptation of the classic nursery rhyme. You can make rain come down from the clouds, splash in the puddles, help a caterpillar become a butterfly or play peek-a-boo with a frog. Your child can also count from one to ten as a squirrel builds his house, find hidden eggs on a scavenger hunt, create your own music using eggs that play different notes, stack hats on the spider’s head, listen to classical music with violin and cello pizzicato, and record their own singing. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Turn your iPad into a beautifully illustrated story book, with this 37 page (screen) iPad version of How To Train Your Dragon (called merely “Dragon Book” in the App Store). If your child liked the movie, he or she will also like this storybook. That’s because the illustrations are taken directly from the movie, pixel per pixel. Children can swipe their way through the book, one page at a time, front or back, listening to the text read aloud. The book follows the movie, highlighting each key moment, and the narration sounds like it came from the movie as well. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Children explore with their fingertips, in this colorful underwater playground, where a school of quick swimming fish illustrate numerals (up to 20), the alphabet song, and a set of shapes. In the alphabet song, children can swipe forward or backward, hearing the alphabet backwards if they like. If they stop at a letter, such as U, they hear “U is for Umbrella.” The number line works the same way, only the quantity is presented along with the numeral, in the form of a line of small eggs on the bottom of the screen. The “Playtime” activity fills the screen with dozens of differently colored fish, of every shape, size and pattern. Other more structured activities include a game of concentration, and a discrimination game, that asks children to find the fish that doesn’t belong. The iPhone and iPod touch versions are available for $.99 at http://tinyurl.com/fishiphone; the iPad vesion is $1.99: http://tinyurl.com/fishipad. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Available in both free and full versions for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Drawing Den is a coloring program that offers eight pictures that you can color, and there are no stamps or undo options. Other features include the ability to quickly share a photo and a “stay within the lines” option that you can toggle off, in case you want to make a mess. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This touch screen coloring book looks good at first, but has some primitive features you should know about before spending the $5 for your young Dora fan. Children first choose one of five backgrounds, and can then rotate between three sets of tools: Crayons (seven colors, plus a magic “rainbow” crayon which paints the screen automatically); Stickers (about 60, featuring mostly Dora-themed items); and Backgrounds (representing each season). When each crayon is touched, you hear the word in Spanish. Other features include three levels of zoom, either on the background, or on a specific sticker, which is nice for getting into the crevices. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
ColorPlay for the iPad is a ten page coloring book featuring farm animals and looping banjo music. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This open-ended drawing program gives you the best of both worlds — free one finger scribbling on a blank screen, or coloring on one of 50 traditional-looking coloring book pages. There is a color palette with 20 common colors,12 stickers and eight pen sizes. You can also toggle on/off voice instructions, and it is easy to save work, continue works in progress which are presented in the startup menu, or import pictures from your photo library. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This is an electronic flannel board app. Content in version 1.0 for the iPad includes three themed sticker sets (Africa, Military Aircraft, and Underwater), each with a set of approximately 20 stickers. There are two types of sounds: Sticker Sounds and looping Ambient Sounds. Other options make it possible to share a picture via email (if your device is setup), and one touch saving to your photo album. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This app feaures one slate background, five colors, one line size and two erasers. A disk icon makes it easy to save your picture to your photos application. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
The content of this iPod Touch app includes one flash card per letter, which are presented randomly. For each letter, you see three animals. The idea is that you see a letter (for example ‘F’) and then touch the associated animal. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
If you’ve ever done a paint-by-number puzzle, you get the idea of “123 Color HD Talking Coloring Book for iPad” (the long name). This is the third update of this title, the first for iPad. You start by choosing from three sets of 17 black-line coloring sheets, one for numerals, upper case letters and lower case letters. There’s also a free coloring option. Each part of the picture is labeled, and a key is shown on the bottom of the screen. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Four early reading activities each feature a character from the PBS Super Why program. In Alpha Pig’s Lickety Letter Hunt, your child helps Alpha Pig find his way home by identifying one of three letters presented verbally (e.g., do you see the letter “v?”). In Princess Presto’s Wands-up Writing, the goal is to make objects appear by identifying letter sounds, tracing letters on the touch screen, and writing words. Wonder Red’s Rhyming Time presents words in a multiple choice format. The word is first presented (“press on the word that rhymes with trap”). Children are then shown two choices (DOG and CAP). Finally, Super Why’s Story Save is a fill-in-the-blank activity. As children play, they collect virtual stickers they can use to decorate a sticker book. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Featuring good music and bad design, this preschool app starts with a view of a farm that was modeled after the original Little People farm toy set. Various items launch short animated routines or games.
For example, touching a large turtle (hey, what’s a dog-sized turtle doing on a farm?) starts a multiple-choice matching game where you “touch two turtles that look the same.” The idea is valid, but the game starts too hard for the intended age range and has no contextual value. Inside the barn, children can play the haystack game, a memory puzzle where they track a moving haystack with their eyes. Two other activities include wiping mud off the screen, which is fun, despite frequent prompts to “move your finger back and forth to clean it all up.” Finally, there are two twitching children near the barnyard. When they’re touched, children hear a nice rendition of “Turkey and the Straw.” As they listen they can make the children move to the music by touching them. Created by IDEO LLC for Fisher-Price. Teaches: classification, fine motor skills, memory. Fisher-Price, Inc.. www.fisher-price.com, $1.99. Best for ages 3-5.
Rating: 
or .56%
Turn your iPad into an easel with this drawing experience. Content includes just two brush sizes (a bit limited), 60 colored pencils that look realistic on the textured paper, 70 crayon colors and four types of sprinkles. The sticker library includes 140 cars, animals, trains and toys; all of interest to children, fully moveable, and resizable with a pinch or a pull. Other features include one-touch saving to your photo library and the ability to email or tweet your picture in twitpic format, as long as you have existing accounts in place. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Introduced in 1962, the Fisher-Price Classic Chatter Telephone now has an app. Unfortunately, the play pattern is nothing like original wooden toy, where you could dial the phone, or (better yet) pull the phone around with a string as the eyeballs moved (see a short video of a newer version of the toy, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N0MQ9L1Ywc).
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Want to see a 21st century rattle? Innovative and easy to use, this bite-sized App engages young children with music in a way that could only be done with a motion sensing device like an iPhone or iPod Touch. You start by choosing one of six sound sets: chimes, a flute, drums, barnyard sounds, a xylophone and a random mixture. The instructions are short and sweet — “Tap the screen to add sounds.” From this point, your iPhone or iPod Touch screen becomes a musical open-ended busy box, where every tap becomes a ball, that rolls around the screen, using the accelerometer to detect the motion (hence the term “shaker”). Longer touches result in higher notes and larger balls, helping children understand musical relationships. This is part of the Tickle Tap Apps series. Teaches: music, scales, causality, logic, fine motor skills. zinc Roe Design. www.zincroe.com, $1.99. Best for ages 3-5.
Rating: or .96%
One of a library of Qbooks, Sebastian’s Tail is an eBook on an iPhone with excellent text decoding, but some weak points in the interface. There are also two additional games: concentration and a word search. After you choose your language option (US English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and NZ Maori) you can either hear the book narrated, or explore the words and draw on the illustrations yourself, or (for the iPhone only) record your own narration. To record your own voice, you find the recorder button, which pops up quite frequently, and start talking. The next time you touch the words, you hear your voice. We reviewed the Lite (free) version. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
What could be better than an old-fashioned dot-to-dot puzzle? A touch-screen version, naturally. To connect the dots, children touch the letters or numerals in sequential order; gradually forming an outline. Correct connections create a line, and when the last dot is touched, a picture appears. Puzzles are grouped by category, including 26 transportation pictures, 35 musical instruments and others. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This flannel-board-like game lets you experiment with different faces on one of five different puppet “monsters.” Children can touch anywhere on the face to scroll through different combinations of features, As each part is added, the monster thanks you. When things are in place, you can play with your monster in one of three ways. You can take her photo, bring Elmo in for a well done skit, or dance with your monster by touching anywhere on the screen. Made for Sesame Workshop by IDEO LLC. (http://www.ideo.com/work/item/sesame-street-iphone-apps/) Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Part of zinc Roe’s Tickle Tap App series, this $1.99 App turns your camera-equipped iPhone into a color sampler. After a brief introduction, children see a viewfinder surrounded by six colors. Once an item is scanned, the app tries it’s best to average all the pixels into one color, and concludes “this looks like orange.” Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Pirate Parade
In the story, you help the Backyardigan gang (Pablo, Uniqua, Tyrone, Austin and Tasha) travel to outer space, collecting garbage, capturing evil villains as masked super heroes, and tapping on instruments to play music in a pirate parade. Created by Black Lantern Studios for 2K Games. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Telling Time is an iPhone/iPod touch app designed to drill children on telling time using both digital and analog clock faces. The best place to start is with Free Play, where you can touch and move clock hands around the dial, and see a digital clock reading at the same time as the analog clock and hear the time spoken out loud. There are three challenge activities: Set the Clock – you must drag the hour hand and the minute hand to the correct setting; Which Time? – you must match the time on a digital clock by moving the hands of the analog clock to the correct position; and How Long? – you have to set the clock to a target time that is earlier or later than the time shown. Each activity has three levels of difficulty. The problems are arranged in sets, and each set is greeted with a round of applause. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Warning. If you’re expecting to find the charm of the original Reader Rabbit titles, first published by The Learning Company, you’re in for a disappointment. In the game, Reader Rabbit and his sidekick Sam the Lion, are flying their Dreamship when they are captured by a giant bubble wrap. They land in Balloon Town, an island made of balloons where all sharp objects including their airship are locked away in a palace. To free their airship, they must gather the 5 different instruments for the band that have been scattered around Balloon Town and use them to wake up the sleeping bull in front of the palace. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This collection of ten games, for 1 or 2 players, is a mixed bag. The main thing to note is that while the game plays like the other Nick Jr. inspired titles from 2K Play, where you simply tilt the Wii remote like handlebars to move, this is not a side-scrolling platformer. This is more of an activity pack, and the games vary in quality.
After you select the number of players, you choose a Ni Hao, Kai-Lan character to serve as your avatar. There are both male or female options. Next, you see a game-board-like menu representing the games. Prices are $40 for the Wii and $20 for the PS2 version. Developed by High Voltage Software for 2K Play. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Best described as a work in progress, Kidos, or “Kid Operated System” is an Adobe Air application that makes it possible to design your own desktop for your child (or children) by mixing parent-and expert selected videos, music, pictures and websites with a iTunes-like store. The store is how the service makes money, by making it easy for a parent to soup up the experience for a child, with a picture of a cute dog ($.50), a non-interactive storybook for $2 each, or a $10 musical album. The store uses a shopping cart model, and your credit card is billed automatically, iTunes style. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Apple Harvest Game
Seven simple math games for the iPod Touch or iPhone provide practice with counting and number patterns. To start a game, you simply touch an icon from the main menu, which it is easy to jump back to at any point (tap the “menu” icon). In the first game, Melon Harvest, children first hear an elephant ask for a quantity of melons, from 1 to 9, for example “I need 7 melons.” Next, they must drag the melons to the basket, one at a time, until the quantity matches the numeral shown on the basket.Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
QUESTION
I am writing to ask for some advice with quality mathematics software for 4- and 5-year-old children. I am conducting a pilot research study exploring the potential benefits of educational software in facilitating children’s learning of mathematics. Could anyone help with some quality titles on mathematics software and possibly some good interactive websites??? My focus is mainly on number sense but anything related to mathematics would help. (From the NAEYC TechLearning Listserve)
ANSWER
Here’s a quick listing of about 12 options, from the CTR database. I’m certain this is more than you want. But it makes you realize how diversified the platform choices have become for early childhood math learning. The recent iPhone/iPod Touch apps, for example, where you use your finger to touch, move and manipulate quantities, can be rich with number learning potential and should be studied. Hope this helps! W. Buckleitner, CTR