The Archives
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05.16.13Tunetrace iOS app turns real drawings into musicIf you're anything like us, your fridge door will be festooned with your children's pictures. But have you ever wondered what they sound like? Now you can find out with an innovative (and free) app called Tunetrace, which has been developed by researchers at Queen Mary, University of London. It works by taking a photograph of a drawing – any drawing, it doesn't have to be a child's picture – and then "translates the photograph into a skeleton of line endings and crossings". Continue Reading...
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05.02.13Mindshapes’ My Story World app offers stories and creativityChildren's developer Mindshapes is perhaps best known for its Magic Town virtual reading world, but now it's trying something new called My Story World. It shares some features with its predecessor: stories, and a subscription-based model that sees parents paying £3.99 for unlimited access to all its content for six months at a time. The app is launching with 20 stories, and the promise of five new ones every week. But creativity is also higher in the mix this time round: drawing, painting and colouring tasks are embedded within the stories. Continue Reading...
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05.02.13SquiggleFish iPad app turns kids’ real drawings into digital fishIf you buy one iPad app for your kids today, make it SquiggleFish. It's a brilliant, creative idea that its developer Stripey Design should be thoroughly proud of. It's the latest example of an app that tries to get kids creating in the real world, not just on-screen. The idea: they draw a fish on a piece of paper using thick black pen for the outline, and then colour it in. Then, they use the SquiggleFish app to scan the drawing using the iPad's camera, and watch the fish come to life, swimming around the on-screen fishtank. "Encourage them to create fish ...
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05.02.13Get girly with Crayola ColorStudio HD Barbie Edition for iPadOver the last year, Crayola has put its name to a series of digital colouring apps for kids on iPad. The latest features a familiar face: Barbie. It's called Crayola ColorStudio HD Barbie Edition, and is designed to work with Crayola and Griffin Technology's ColorStudio HD iMarker accessory – a fat pen-shaped gadget to draw on touchscreens – although it doesn't require it. The app contains five colouring books with 30 pictures for kids to colour in using the iMarker or their fingers. More are available to buy as in-app purchases if and when your child gets tired of the default set. Crayola ...
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04.29.13Get drawing with Pippi Longstocking and Pettson appsGood news if you're knowledgeable when it comes to Scandinavian children's fiction: Swedish developer Filimundus has released a couple of creative apps based on Pippi Longstocking and Pettson and Findus. (Pippi, we know. Pettson and Findus we're less familiar with, although the books by Sven Nordqvist have apparently sold more than 6m copies around the world.) The apps adopt the same format: a series of black and white illustrations of the characters for your children to colour in using digital paints, brushes and pencils. There are also stickers to rotate and resize, with a neat-looking "cutting board" mode to make their own. Draw ...
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04.17.1317 best iPad apps for kids who want to be creativeVery few things make us happier with our own children than seeing them enjoying being creative, whether it's building Lego towers, drawing monsters or making sprawling sticker collages. Or using apps. For yes, there are lots of excellent apps designed to stimulate kids' creative instincts, rather than simply get them staring passively at the screen. Here's a roundup of 17 of our recent favourites for the iPad, which also serves as our riposte to critics who suggest that children using iPads are in some way being less creative than if they were drawing, colouring or sticking in the real world. Continue Reading...
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04.15.13Drawnimal app review (iPhone / iPad)It's safe to say that Apple's App Store is well stocked for delightful animal alphabet apps. Animals Alphabet; Idlezoo’s A-Z of Curious Creatures; Wee A B See; Alphabet Animals: A Slide and Peek Adventure; Mini-U: Zoo Alphabet; Funimal Phonics; Happipets… All excellent. Yet there's still scope for new apps to spring a surprise in this crowded genre. Witness Drawnimal, which slunk quietly onto the App Store last week, and has since captured us with its charms. The twist here is that the app is designed to get your children drawing in the real world. As its App Store listing notes: "All you need ...
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04.10.13Drawnimal app gets kids scribbling for real (and learning the alphabet)We love apps that blend digital and physical play, with Drawnimal the latest to merge the two worlds. It's an iPhone and iPad app that gets kids to place the device on a sheet of paper, then draw around it to make animal shapes – with the animated faces then appearing on-screen. A is an alligator, B is a bear, C is a cat and so on. The app reads out the letter and animal name, and when your child taps on the screen, they get an animated surprise. Continue Reading...
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02.11.13DrawQuest iPad app offers daily drawing challenges for ‘all ages’Like many parents, our daily drawing challenge is to spot and stop our youngest son scribbling on the table / walls / his own face. New iPad app DrawQuest thankfully offers a less-messy take on daily drawing. It's described as "a free drawing community exclusively for iPad" which is aimed at "people of all ages". So it's not specifically a children's app, but we think it will appeal to kids who are 8-10 years old and above. Here's the idea: every day you're presented with a new Quest of the Day, with examples being "Create your own superhero", "What did you dream ...
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02.11.13Can this app teach your kids to play safe with your device?We like the idea behind this app, which has been put together to help parents teach kids how to treat their device with the respect and care it needs, via a series of games and activities. There are six different activities in all, including puzzles, drawing and tapping games. Four of these have different levels of difficulty, which will help to keep older children amused too. There is also a parents’ section with some advice on how to manage your kids’ time on tablets and protect yourself (and them) from in app purchases (IAPs). Continue Reading...
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- Disney’s Perry gets new Where’s My Summer? mobile game
- Five iPad apps trying to teach programming skills to kids
- Wubbzy’s ABC Learn & Play app gets alphabetical
