Singing Fingers starts with a blank white screen, then you drag your finger slowly across the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad’s screen. A microphone is required. As you move your fingertip, you notice that your “ink” is powered by sound. The louder you sing, the fatter your line. And the color is associated with the pitch. So if you sing a scale, you make a rainbow pattern. After you’ve made a doodle, trace your finger back over your drawing, to hear your captured audio. If you drag quickly, you make a drawing, to play your sound back. If you trace your finger quickly, the sound plays back quickly, like fast-forwarding through a file. The app was created by doctoral students Eric Rosenbaum (who spoke at Dust or Magic 2009) and Jay Silver of the MIT Lifelong Kindergarten Group. 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.
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.
It used to be when you wanted to sketch out the plans for an invention, you grabbed a napkin. The iPad equivalent is Doodle Buddy, a multi-touch sketching utility. Content includes 24 backgrounds, including white, black and several for word games like dots and tic-tac-toe; four drawing tools and an infinite color selector. There are also 80 tiny stamps, and the ability to import a photo from your photo library. 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.
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.
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.
This $30 Nintendo DS game creates a nice extension of the traditional printed picture book (same title, published by Scholastic). Both tell the true story of Winter, a young dolphin who was injured in a net and lost her tail while recovering at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Children unlock parts of the program one chapter at a time, until all 11 chapters are unlocked. Progress is saved automatically in one of three game-save slots. Created by 1st Playable and turtlepond Interactive by Crave Entertainment. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Open-ended drawing activity
Mister Rogers was known to be a bit of a geek, and he would’ve undoubtedly been thrilled to know that he finally has a bit of his neighborhood captured as an app. Despite being limited in content, it’s hard to find too many faults with this first effort.
Designed to be a crutch for helping children describe feelings, this fill-in-the-blank story maker comes with five pre-packaged themes (pretending, playtime, books, at school and when I get mad) plus a well-designed open-ended drawing activity. This later choice makes it easy and fun to finger paint with a selection of markers, watercolors, crayons or stamps; and then save your work to your device’s photo library. So yes, you could theoretically print out your child’s picture and hang it on your refrigerator.
Created by Touch Screen Preschool Games (www.touchscreenpreschoolgames.com, aka Darren Murtha Design) for PBS Kids (pbskids.org/mobile). Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
A screen capture of the main menu taken July 2009
Note: in 2009, Kerpoof was acquired by Disney, and the company was asked to make the creativity portal for Disney.com. See also: Disney Create.
Well-designed, free (with subscription teasers) and powerful, this online creativity kit has grown up since we first reviewed it nearly two years ago, when it was mostly an electronic flannel board. Recently acquired by Disney, the free, Flash-based site offers children five rich creativity activities, making it possible to make sketches, greeting cards, drawings, movies and multi-page stories with tools partially funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The core of the site remains the electronic flannel board that makes it easy to drag and drop smart stickers onto over 80 backdrops. Each scene contains theme-related items that automatically resize, based on the scene’s perspective. For example, in the firehouse, you can position firefighters and equipment as needed. A firefighter positioned in the back of the picture looks smaller; when moved to the front, it grows. In addition, moving a light source — such as the sun — around the screen changes the lighting accordingly.
At various points in the experience, children are shown interesting items that are off limits unless they subscribe (e.g., “many of the items for sale in the Kerpoof store are for members only”). These premiums include the ability to form groups (e.g., for a teacher’s classroom), buddy painting (a very interesting collaborative drawing tool, for two children), and so on.
It is still easy to save and print work. Costs for membership range from $4.39/month to $44.79/year, although there is enough content (as of March 2009) available for free to make this site well worth the bookmark. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This third title in the Didi & Ditto series features the same film-quality animation that has become a trademark of the Canadian developer Kutoka Interactive, mixed with 16 games.
In the story, Didi & Ditto (young brother and sister beavers) are preparing for a visit from Mother Nature, but a sneaky wolf has been hiding the musical instruments and the food. After they sign in (to save games), children can choose to play in the adventure mode, or jump directly to one of the games, where they can sort letters, construct short words or match numerals with quantities.
The hybrid game comes on one disk that can be installed on either Macintosh or Windows computers. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.