Mix-and-match different heads, bodies and legs of animals, in order to make a match. To change a part, you swipe. As more characters are created, more surprises are revealed: kids can poke animals to hear them roar, chirp or tweet; balls bounce; and a lion helps keep count of his steaks. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
As with other I SPY titles, the riddles form the basis of the castle theme. They also hide 12 mini games and three logic puzzles. The more riddles you solve, the more items you collect. These, in turn, unlock more rooms. A hint system helps you find the most challenging objects. There are three sign-in slots, so three players can save their progress. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This game came from an extremely non-educational company, called Double Fine, best known for games that the ESRB says are not for children. See for example, Brütal Legend. This time, Double Fine has taken on an even harder-to-please audience — preschoolers. After you log into your Xbox account (required in order to bookmark your progress) a storybook is introduced by Elmo and friends, and you are shown how you can turn pages with a slow wave of your arm. To jump into the page to play an activity, you move both arms slowly as if doing a slow breast stroke. Each page features a different activity, including jumping through an obstacle course (jumping, ducking and leaning left or right), growing a garden by tossing seeds and squirting a hose, flying through a maze by flapping your “wings,” dancing, pulling weeds, and calling out your name, to have it recorded by the Kinect microphone. 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.
Adapted directly from the printed Golden Book with the same title, by Janette Debring Lawrey, this is a 23 page, 12 screen ebook (two “pages” per screen). The story — of mischievous puppies getting into trouble — is supported nicely with good interaction, professional narration, and guided exploration on each page. The story is tried and true, and the springy illustrations wait quietly for a child’s touch. It is easy to jump to any page at any time, making this a solid addition to your ebook library. 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.
Your challenge is to spot the “odd one out” from a set of moving fruit, shapes or colors in this app. You start with a challenge, e.g., “spot mango” (with a picture of a mango). As the mangos fly across the screen, mixed with other types of fruit, your job is to tap just the mangos, and not the strawberries or bananas. The shapes and colors present harder levels. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Blue Hat, Green Hat is another interactive adaptation of a toddler board book, by author Sandra Boynton. Each page lets children combine colored hats, shirts, shorts or shoes on fun animal characters, using art directly from the book. There’s an “oops” button on several pages, that causes something to go wrong. For example, it might make a rain cloud fill up a page with water, or flip a character upside down. This successfully creates a hidden surprise on each page. 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.
Shape-O is a matching game where you build objects out of shapes, and then spell the word, by dragging and dropping each letter into place. Geometric shapes are pieced together to form images including animals, plants, landscapes, transportation, faces, robots, dinosaurs, pirates and many more. Content includes 100 puzzles. Features include the ability to turn off the background music or the game sounds. 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 top-down view of a tea party complete with slurps and spills, with a real-looking set of tea cups, juice glasses, pastries and so on. Your child can choose the table cloth, plates and cups to set the table by dragging with their finger. Next they pick their three favorite cookies and cakes, and then get some toys, dolls, or parents to sit around the iPad while they serve the tea or juice. 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.
Designed to introduce deductive reasoning using animal attributes, this App give clues such as “lives near water” or “has smooth skin” to help children narrow in on an answer. In the app, the animals are hiding in the jungle and your child has to help Babu the Meerkat find his friends by matching the clues with the animals they have met on their way. Attributes include physical appearance, size, living environment, and eating and sleeping habits. This is the first iPad app in Tribal Nova’s iLearnWith Educational Program, which is a cross curricular game-based learning program that helps prepare children for school. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Six sorting and memory games are presented by way of animated jellybean characters in this first of a planned series of apps for younger children. In the game, you help the wiggly Jellytoon characters win stickers by completing six minigames including: Flo’s Tidy-up Challenge – shape and color sorting; Inky’s Path Challenge – fine motor skills; Max’s Balloon Challenge – shape recognition; Noodle’s Fruit Challenge – logic; Pip’s Hiding Challenge – observation skills; and Rex’s ice Cream Challenge – counting from 1 to 10. Content includes 30 sticker rewards. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This collection of 16 tightly scripted, one player games is designed to introduce typical school readiness concepts to a young child. In the Wii version, children hold the Wii Remote like handlebars. Note that this is one of two new Sesame Street titles. The other is Sesame Street: Cookies Counting Carnival. Both run on Wii, Windows and DS. This title features Elmo and Zoe. Extras include a “Wii Gameplay Helper” — a soft cover for your Wii remote that hides buttons. Using this is optional. The DS version includes a Sesame Street stylus; also not required to play the game. After you pick one of the four player profiles, you start exploring the Zoo. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Go George Go! consists of two play patterns: Dress Up and Mazes. You start by dressing up George with an outfit by dragging and dropping different uniform parts into place. If you dress him as a farmer, you see him in a farm-themed maze, where you move either by tilting the screen, or by tracing a path with your finger. There are two levels of difficulty. 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 characters from the Jim Henson Company TV show, The Dinosaur Train, children start by finding hidden dinosaur eggs in a scene in this app. Next comes a multiple-choice style matching game where you put eggs into the correct nest, based on color and pattern. There is also a baby/mother matching game that includes dino-terms (a matching game with two choices), and a coloring activity where you fill in a scene. There are versions for both the iPhone and iPad. Other PBS Kids apps include Super Why! and Martha Speaks Dog Party. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This year’s edition is based entirely in Flash, so no downloads or installations are needed. All you need is a Mac or Windows computer and a speedy web connection.There’s also a new three room menu that puts all the content within a click, making it much easier for a young child to get out of whatever he or she gets into. Unlike Nick’s www.mynoggin.com or Disney’s www.preschooltime.com, no credit card commitment is needed. You get 15 days free — no strings or codes; a practice that is refreshing and respectful of busy parents. That also makes it easy to have a look for yourself, which we recommend. Note that there’s a new $500/year classroom edition option that makes it possible to track the progress for an entire classroom of kids, for up to a year, for either home or classroom access (each child gets his or her own login). 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.
Duck Duck Moose’s fourth app contains two nursery rhymes woven into one app: Baa Baa Black Sheep and Row Your Boat. There are three ways your child can navigate from scene to scene: manually, by swiping or touching; using an arrow button; or selecting autoplay in the preferences to automatically change the scenes. As children explore, they can hunt for four hidden outlines in the pictures. 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.
How many times can you touch a target in 60 seconds? That’s the challenge of this fast-paced matching game for one to four players, that runs on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. First you are shown something to pick, such as a colorful tomato or a potato. Next you see your item, mixed in with two other choices. The goal is to touch it as quickly as possible. Wrong answers result in a buzz — correct answers bring up a slightly larger, harder set of items, one of which is yours. 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 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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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.
In the story, you help Sylvie Leroux, a young archaeologist, as she travels to Malta at the request of her uncle, a world renowned historian. When she arrives, she discovers he is missing and it is now up to you to help her save the professor and decipher the clues to the secrets of the Knights Hospitaller order. Content includes 50 locations, 14 minigames, and a special game mode called Hidden World, that allows you to play classic hidden object levels. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This collection of 25 minigames is organized into six happy themes, all available through six numbered tabs on the top of the touch screen.
In the Invitation Game, children play a spin on whack-a-mole that requires some fast decisions. In Button Factory, they sort the buttons on a moving conveyer belt, in order to create outfits for the party. On the last tab, you can paste together a simple outfit and take a picture. Each game is timed, and you are given instant feedback about your choices. Created by Barnstorm for Majesco Entertainment. 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.
Are you hungry for more virtual cooking? This third Cooking Mama game for the DS includes new recipes, the ability to shop, dish combinations and multiplayer cooking challenges. Using your DS stylus, you will chop, grate, catch falling marshmallows and much more — in over 200 minigames. You can create 80 new recipes including chili con carne or mushroom quiche, and the recipes progress from simple to complex, from small to large dishes. Based on the quality of your cooking, you can earn bronze, silver and gold medals from Mama, while impressing your friends with your dishes. Developed by Cooking Mama Limited. 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 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.
Looking for a baby or toddler’s ideal first computer experience? Available as a $20 download from www.giggles.net (think of it as an App for your computer), for Macintosh or Windows, Giggle’s: Computer Funtime for Baby My Musical World expands on Leveractive’s library of baby/toddler selections. This title, with a musical focus, succeeds in letting your busy child freely explore a standard mouse/keyboard interface, sans worry. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Unlike the three DS versions of CGC (Charm Girls Club) this is a party game, specifically designed for one to eight girls, with about every imaginable stereotype, from hair dressing to pillow fights. Content includes 27 minigames that vary in quality and difficulty. As a result, there’s something for everyone. Games include Speed Hair Teasing (shake the Wii Remote as fast as you can to see how big you can make a hairstyle) and Water Balloon Fight (target your friends to see how you can earn the most points). There are several DDR style rhythm games, where you compete to earn points by following moving commands. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This toy laptop comes with a small, extremely low resolution color touch screen, a membrane alphabetical keyboard and 35 reading and matching games. Content is based on PBS Kids Super Why characters (Super Why, Wonder Red, Princess Presto, and Alpha Pig). Each character comes with a set of noisy activities that vary in quality. For example, in Why Flyer you are aske
d to find the word “soup” (presented verbally) and then are asked to touch the screen when that word is shown. In the Emperor’s New Clothes, you spell out short words on the alphabetical keyboard, one letter at a time. Children used to the keys in QWERTY order will be confused, because the keys are presented in alphabetical keyboard style. In addition, there are some buttons on the side of the screen that have no function, which confused our testers at first.
Other features include built-in speakers, two levels of volume control and a tethered question-mark stylus for the touch screen. The device is powered by 3AA batteries and there is an auto sleep function if the toy isn’t used for a few minutes. Learning Curve Brands, Inc.. www.learningcurve.com, $35. Best for ages 3-up. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.