August 2011
The Archives
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08.30.11Little Red Riding Hood gets Bean Bag Kids book-appApparently my four year-old played LittleBigPlanet for the first time at a friend's house last week. I'm not sure what he made of it, although I'm not-so sneakily proud if he managed to work a PlayStation 3 joypad… Anyway, the sackboy characters have always been a big part of LittleBigPlanet's appeal, and there's a similar quality to Little Red Riding Hood by The Bean Bag Kids. It's a new Universal app for iPhone and iPad by developer Mundomono, which has already picked up its fair share of critical acclaim. The story is the familiar fairy tale, but with little bean bag characters ...
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08.30.11Ladybird Classics books come to iOS with Penguin’s Me BooksEven the screenshot to Penguin's new Me Books app gave me pangs of nostalgia, remembering the Ladybird books I used to own as a child. The brand is still going strong in print, but now it's also an app, providing access to 14 digital books with more to come. Me Books costs 69p on the App Store, and is a Universal app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. For that price you get one book preloaded: The Zoo. 13 more are available including fairy tales like Cinderella, The Gingerbread Man and The Three Billy Goats Gruff, but they cost £1.99 each ...
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08.25.11New Pirate Trio app introduces shapes and puzzlesWe have many shapes and puzzled in our house, which is great. My only wish is that more of them (i.e. some) were in their original boxes, rather than down the back of the sofa / behind the radiator / half-buried in plant pots in the garden. Any app that can reduce the mess is right up our alley. Shapes & Puzzles by Pirate Trio is the second piratical education app from developer Next is Great. I hadn't spotted the first one (Love to Count by Pirate Trio), but it's clear the trio in question are children dressed as pirates, rather ...
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08.24.11My 1st JCB trundles onto iPhone with mini-games app"TRACTOR!.. DIGGER!.. DUMP TRUCK!.." The average motorway trip with my two sons involves plenty of shouting as they spot the vehicles hanging around roadworks along the way. If it digs, rolls or carts away dirt, it fills them with joy. Which is why they're the perfect target audience for new iOS app My 1st JCB. As the name implies, it's a properly-licensed app based on the toy brand of the same name. The app offers nine mini-games and creative activities, including painting, memory matching, dot-to-dots and jigsaws. You can also take part in a JCB race, and create your own character ...
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08.19.1127% of parents lend their smartphones to their kids for gamingIt's been a bit of a slow day for decent child-friendly apps, but there was an interesting news story based on a survey of 3,250 parents and grandparents by games company PopCap (you may know them for the excellent Plants Vs. Zombies). Anyway, the survey - conducted with Goldsmiths University to ensure the results were unbiased - leads PopCap to believe that 3.8 million British parents and grandparents are playing casual games of some kind with their children. Even more relevantly from Apps Playground's perspective, 27% of parents said that their children borrow their smartphone every day to play games on. Based ...
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08.17.11Toca Robot Lab for iPhone and iPad (Review)Every night before bathtime, our two children get 10 minutes each on the family iPad: it's become something of a tradition. And for the last few weeks, the lion's share of that time has been taken up by Toca Robot Lab: about as high praise as I can give. Released by developer Toca Boca in mid-July, it gets your child to build a robot, then fly it around a colorful environment collecting stars. That makes it sound like a game, but really it's a digital playtoy, in keeping with the developer's previous (excellent apps) like Paint My Wings and Toca Hair ...
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08.17.11Injini childhood development iPad games look good… but at a priceLooking for an iPad app that's a bit more serious about educating your child through play. The Injini Childhood Development Game Suite might fit the bill, although I had better warn you right now that it'll set you back a considerable £34.99 on the App Store. But don't write it off just yet. What do you get for your money? Well, there is a lot of content: nine main games, hundreds of puzzles and illustrations, eight farm mini-games and other stuff. And the key point is that all of this has been developed with specific groups of kids in mind: those ...
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08.17.11Talking Cube Dog wants to take on Talking Tom CatHave you seen the Talking Tom Cat apps? They're hugely popular, but now they've got some canine competition in the form of Talking Cube Dog. It's an iPhone app from developer Podotree that takes the 'talking virtual animal' formula and adds some good twists. Such as? Well, for starters you get to customise your virtual dog, switching in different cube body parts, including nose, ears, feet, body and head, as well as outfits. Pirate, ninja, robot... There's lots of scope, which should keep the app fresh for easily-bored children. Like Talking Tom Cat, Cube Dog can repeat whatever you say into your ...
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08.16.11Grow Your Garden offers green-fingered maths for iPadGardening, maths and children? It sounds like an unholy combination in the real world, but a new iPad app developed by a team at the University of California, Berkeley (translation: tech central) makes it a compelling blend. Here's the idea behind Grow Your Garden HD: kids have to feed their flowers the right amount of water from virtual watering cans to ensure they flourish. There are 12 flowers to be unlocked in four different parts of the garden, with a game-like structure of 30 levels to keep your children interested. The developers promise that the educational element is subtly done, with addition ...
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08.16.11At last! A decent quality flashcards appMany ‘flashcard’ apps are let down by the quality of the pictures, and for this reason we rarely review them. Once bitten, twice shy... However the images in Baby Flashcard: Animals stood out from the rest: high quality, colourful shots that leap out of the screen. There are 120 different pictures in all and alongside the old favourites (elephant, cat, dolphin etc) are plenty of less obvious choices (for example hummingbird and firefly). The accompanying text is all in lowercase, which is a nice touch for younger toddlers who are just starting to recognise letters. The app is also easy to navigate ...
recent posts
- Five of the best kids’ apps for Fathers’ Day
- Free apps for kids #001: Toca Hair Salon 2
- Pettson and Findus get a pair of new Android apps
- Babar the Elephant (and his grandson Badou) is getting some apps
- LeapFrog releases Learn to Write with Mr. Pencil app
- Eye Paint Alphabet gets kids painting letters with photos
- Despicable Me: Minion Rush runs onto iOS and Android
