“Up With A Fish” is a fast-paced stacking game, not unlike “Scoops” (both are made by Nimblebit), where you lean your iPhone or iPad left or right to collect falling objects, which are balanced on the Cat in the Hat’s head. Catching fish bowls increases your life. Dodging trouble-making kids will also increase your score. You can pause the game at any time by tapping the screen. 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.
Lean the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone left or right, to steer a single balloon through a maze of tree branches or clouds that gradually get harder. The higher you go, the more points you score,and high scores can be posted on a leader board. The free version has less content. The $.99 version contains more mazes and balloon options. 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.
The Princess and the Frog comes to your iPad with this 23 page/screen adaptation that mixes highlights of the movie with two games, two songs, three coloring activities, the ability to record your own narration and a new feature for the read-along series, three jigsaw puzzles. Features include the ability to have the story read automatically, or to let the child flip through the book, one screen at a time. A pair of mouse ears at the screen bottom lead to a tray of options that include a microphone for recording your own narration, the coloring activities, and a scrolling set of pages, that makes it easy to jump directly to any page. There are two games: Facilier’s Fortune and Firefly Chase. Both games are active, and have three challenge levels. 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.
If you’ve played any of the other Oceanhouse Media Dr. Seuss titles, you’ll find no surprises with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, a $3.99 app from Oceanhouse Media. 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.
The electronic edition of Dr. Seuss’ classic graduation story features three modes: Read to Me (the narration starts automatically when a page is swiped), Read it Myself (touch pictures or the text to hear it read or described) and Auto Play (the story is presented, slide-show-style). Each page is turned with the swipe of a finger, and illustrated with swooping animation, using a Ken Burns effect, to highlight specific scenes. 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.
Inspired by the Mandala patterns of the Buddhist monks, this app makes it possible to convert your finger drawings into snowflake-like symmetrical art, set to zen-like music. There are two drawing modes, normal and blend. The palette contains 35 colors and three types of brushes. Content includes ten songs. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Magic Piano leverages the power of the iPad’s multi-touch screen to give a child their own 3 1/2 octave long piano keyboard. There are five modes of play. In the default mode (solo) you can configure the keyboard in a spiral, circle or traditional horizontal format. While the keys are small, the multi-touch screen makes it possible to play chords — just like a real piano. The Songbook lets you choose one of 20 classic songs, and play along, in a paint-by-number fashion. Selections start easy, with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and get as hard as the Nutcracker March and Flight of the Bumblebee. A settings control panel lets you control such things as auto-sustain, pitch mapping and toggle on a “no-fail” mode for the song book. According to the credits, this app was inspired by Lang Lang. 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.
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.
Modeled after the classic See ‘n Say spinner toy, the See ‘n Say app mixes cartoon-like farm animals with clear video of real animals. After you start the App, children see six of the 12 animals (a different selection each time) and can either touch a spinner in the center of the screen to randomly select an animal, or manually turn or “steer” the spinner to an animal they want to see. 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.
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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.
Strikingly beautiful graphics, a fun format, but limited game play and content are the hallmarks of the iPad version of Disney Fairies Fly (called just “Fairies Fly” in Apple’s App Store). Note that limited versions were previously released for iPhone and iPod Touch. The beauty comes with a price. This is a large (458 MB) download. To fly, you simply tilt the screen to control your fairy as you progress through a side scrolling maze, moving up or down to collect items such as flowers or orbs, while avoiding hazards like stinging bees and thunder clouds. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
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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If there were such a thing as PhotoShop for your pocket, it might resemble something like the iPad version of Brushes ($10, brushesapp.com). Originally designed for iPhone and iPod Touch, Brushes iPad Edition offers a set of non-watered down menus that let you adjust brush size and texture, down to the pixel. 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.
FISHER-PRICE LAUNCHES FIRST-EVER IPHONE APPS
Classic Chatter TelephoneTM, See ‘n Say®, Little People® Farm Toys Transform into Magical, Fun iPhone Games
EAST AURORA, N.Y. – March 18, 2010 – Fisher-Price, Inc. (a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. NASDAQ:MAT) today put a fun, digital spin on some of its beloved, iconic toys by launching its first-ever iPhone applications, enabling children to experience classic toys in an exciting new way. The Chatter Telephone™ toy (first introduced in 1962), See ‘n Say® product (first introduced in 1965) and Little People® Farm (the Little People® brand was first introduced in 1959) applications, for ages 2-5, are available for download on the iTunes App Store now for $.99 – $1.99 each.
Caroline Hu Flexer had a busy, curious daughter who liked her to play with her iPhone. “I wonder if we could make a better children’s app?” Using her background in business and music and guided by the vision of keeping her daughter happy, she made one of the best-selling education apps for children in 2009. Listen as the Co-Founder of Duck Duck Moose Design tells her story. You learn that multitouch magic requires (a) the inspiration of a child, (b) an adept programmer, (c) some late nights, and (d) a sense of design. It also helps to know how the App store works. This app worked because it let the child drive the interaction, and not the other way around. There is no doubt that this is one of the best and first small screen implementations of the “pop-up” book of the 21st century.