Sometimes an app is good because of what it doesn’t do, instead of what it does. Consisting of nothing more than three rows of five brightly colored musical squares, this app turns your iPad screen into a colorful music exploration. The red squares (the top row) make drum sounds, yellow squares (the middle row) play whole-tone piano notes, and blue squares (the bottom) play whole-tone guitar notes. 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.
Created in Berlin by Heidi Wittlinger, this app starts with a peaceful outside view of a farmhouse during the summertime. As you hear the crickets gently chirping, you can touch seven areas of the scene, where you find an animal that is still awake. Hidden in each scene (but easy to find) is a light switch. Once touched, the scene darkens, and the animals gently settle into their sleeping mode. The sheep snuggles into some straw, the chicks snuggle with their mother, and the dog settles in his doghouse. Once “in bed” the animal can be touched but it stays asleep. 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 the Tickle Tap Apps series, Boogie Bopper lets children play ten simple melodies like Bingo and Mary Had a Little Lamb by touching a rainbow shaped xylophone, with circle-shaped keys arranged from low to high. 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.
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.
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.
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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.
This touch-and-explore book for the iPhone/iPod Touch contains 20 pages of surprises, hidden in simple, hand drawn illustrations. In the story, two best friends, a Monkey (Madera) and a Frog (Figaro) work together to find a lost cat named Ginger. As you move throughout the story, you can either freely touch to find hidden routines, or complete simple matching, counting and sorting tasks on par with what a child would encounter during the first week of Kindergarten. For example, in one screen, children touch and drag acorns to a matching squirrel hole. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.