September 2010
The Archives
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09.27.10123 Glow HD is a colourful Halloween iPad treatHalloween should be fun this year: my oldest child is young enough to fit into one of those pumpkin costumes they sell in Sainsbury's, but not yet old enough to slap me with a lawsuit for fashion-related distress. Happy days. Actually, though, this Halloween will be more of a treat thanks to a new iPad app called 123 Glow HD. It's a 'glow painting' app with a Halloween theme, with 14 spooky pictures for your child to colour in by tracing their fingers on the screen. However, there are also dinosaur pictures, Autumn scenes and shapes, so it's not all scary (depending ...
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09.27.10My Magical Animals HD growls onto iPadI'm famous in my own household for being somewhat vague when it comes to identifying animals of the world. Especially when they're toys: we have one that I named Mr Cow, only to be told that he was a giraffe. I could do with some revision, basically. My Magical Animals HD might help. It's a game for 3-7 year-old children on the iPad that involves discovering 20 animals from farms, the jungle and the savannah. Each has an animation and sound associated with it, with a random mode or the ability to choose which animals are found. That's good if your child ...
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09.27.10Spot the Dog gets schooled for iPadSpot the Dog is a perennial favourite for kids, across a series of books that have been well-thumbed (or pawed) by children down the years. Now Penguin Books have brought him to the iPad. The app is called Spot Goes to School, based on the book of the same name. That means he meets his teacher, dresses up, has fun in the playground and then gets expelled for weeing up the headmaster's leg. (Okay, not that last one) The e-book is interactive, in a lift-the-flap way, so your children can get hands-on with the cartoon pup. There's more that can be done here ...
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09.22.10Moshi Monsters is coming to iPhone (sort of)Update – August 2012: Read our review of the Moshi Monsters: Moshlings app for iPhone and iPad Do your kids play Moshi Monsters? The online game is hugely popular, with 22 million users and two million new children joining every month. Now it's going mobile, although not in the obvious way. The company behind it, MindCandy, is working with a UK developer called ustwo to make a Moshi Monsters version of an app called MouthOff. Seen it? If not, it's well worth a download. It shows a cartoon mouth on-screen, which you hold in front of your mouth while talking. The on-screen mouth, ...
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09.22.10Monsters Love Gum chomps onto iPadThere are no hippos in Monsters Love Gum - for hippo-related gaming fare today, you'll be wanting to check out Scoop Shoppe. But new iPad game Monsters Love Gum does remind me a bit of Hungry Hippos, the classic toy/game for kids where up to four players try to gobble plastic balls with their hippos. However, it goes much further. Each of you takes control of a monster, and have to get gumballs by any means necessary. That means using bombs, stuns, hammers and kamikaze pigeons. It's not a game for children per se - it promises decent artificial intelligence, and ties into ...
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09.22.10Scoop Shoppe is a tasty iPhone matching game for kidsHippos and ice cream. Together at last! I don't really need to say much more than that to recommend Scoop Shoppe, a new iPhone game that's been released by developer Jackson Fish Market. Oh, alright then. It's a pattern-matching game aimed at young children, featuring a hippo named Honey, a robin called Rafael, and a bunch of other jungle animals. As the title implies, it's set in an ice cream shop, with the goal being to make ice cream cones for customers by tapping on ingredients. It's colourful and cute, with impressive production values setting it above the herd of child-focused iPhone games. Jackson ...
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09.20.10Park Math lets your child add up the animalsUS company Duck Duck Moose was one of the first developers to see the potential in making iPhone apps for kids. It's done a great job too, as shown by the awards for previous apps like Wheels On The Bus. Now the company has unveiled its latest app: Park Math. It's set in a park, as you may have guessed, and is focused on basic mathematical skills. Oh, and there are all sorts of animals on board to help out. It's aimed at 1-6 year-olds, with seven different activities, each with a different numerical focus. Swing: Numbers is about counting as a ...
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09.20.10iPad gets alphabetical building blocks appBuild 'em up to knock 'em down. It's what music magazines to do bands, and it's most certainly what toddlers do to wooden blocks. In fact, mine often get so excited about the knocking-down part, they only get halfway through the building-up bit before swiping them across the room. Builder Blocks Preschool HD takes this idea, and translates it to the iPad.It costs 59p / $0.99 on the App Store, and includes a set of virtual wooden blocks, each with a letter of the alphabet on them. The idea is that kids can drag the blocks around the screen and drop them ...
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09.20.10Princess Sticker HD brings animated stickers to iPadIf there's one kind of children's app that iPad is perfect for, it's sticker books. Being able to drag'n'stick virtual stickers onto scenes is tailor-made for a touchscreen tablet. Princess Sticker HD shows why this is the case. It's by a company called Captive Games, and continues the theme from its previous Make Me A Princess app. It's packed with virtual princesses, princes, castles, animals and other stickers, which can be placed on-screen with simple swiping. What's nice is that the stickers are also animated, with different actions for each character and animal. Your child slaps a bunch of stickers on-screen, then ...
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09.20.10iPad gets its first 3D pop-up e-bookI have two children, both boys - one aged three-and-a-bit and one aged 16 months. They're boisterous, loud and constantly on the move. But yesterday, both spent 20 minutes at my side, rapt in attention. The reason? An iPad app called Grimm's Rumpelstiltskin. It's the work of an Irish company called Ideal Binary, and is the first iPad e-book to use the company's PopIris technology. It updates the classic fairytale for the tablet, offering 30 pages of text, and 11 double-page pop-up scenes, inspired by real-life pop-up books. However, the scenes are interactive - you can change your view, tap on characters ...
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