The Free App Quest Continues! Animals and Christmas Adventures

One of the free apps i came across in my searches was Pet the Animals. It sounded cute but there is nothing more damning than when a four year old uses and app for two seconds and emphatically asks for a "new game." I had to agree with Wormie that Pet the Animals is hurting. The premise is pet the animal on the screen and the animal will "buzz" with excitement and make the appropriate sound. Dog's bark, horses neigh, cows moo. The graphics look like cheap stock photos and the app looks worse than AOL 2.5. Add in a overdose of the vibrate function and you've created one of the most popular free apps in the iTunes Free library. Strong work Apple.

Wormie got it right away and i actually think she was stunned at the stupidity...she had a look on her face like, "There is more right?" Sadly i couldn't find anything else. I did make the mistake of hitting the info button where users are prompted to buy other applications including Bikini Baristas and a WTF moment, apps that sound so lame they can only be real.

Age Range: 2-3
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 1/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 1/5 (5 being helpful)

Wormie has gotten pretty good at navigating herself around my menu's and found one of the apps I was lining up for her to test on her own. The Christmas Card Match game was a free seasonal app similar to the Halloween matching game i reviewed in October. Wormie started it up and played a few games before making her way back to Santa's Cookies which I reviewed two weeks ago. The Christmas Card Match really wasn't in the spirit of Christmas cards but it was 1. free and 2. very Christmassy. My only complaint were the sounds were a little too "Space Invaders" for me so I guess the a publisher couldn't get his hands on any seasonal bells or something. That said I don't think Wormie minded too much since she played it for a good 5 minutes before moving on. All said and done I was impressed that Wormie made her way back to Santa's Cookies and proceeded to use the app for the rest of a car ride to day care which was another 10 minutes. I might have underestimated Santa's cookies!

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful)

SantasCookies is Free But Not to Filling!

It is very likely that Christmas will kill me and while I am using iPhone to track present shopping I really was hoping for some cool Christmas applications. My “Free App Review Week” didn’t work out quite as I planned (house remodel, work crisis) I figured free Christmas apps was my next target.

I searched high and low and first decent free Christmas app I could download was called SantaCookies. The idea is cute; you decorate cookies to be left for Santa. The start function is straight forward; you just touch the screen and are in the app. At first I had some trouble figuring out that to decorate the cookies you had to press the cookie decorations in the bottom navigation. The tricky part was that the decorations would appear in the middle of the four cookies to be decorated, when I was looking to drag it up to the spot I wanted to place it. I showed Wormie and she got it right away. Her bad habits had not been trained like mine.

Wormie spent a good 15 minutes playing with the app the first time I gave it to her. After her initial session she never spent much time with the application again. There were additional little features like you can leave a note for Santa and save the cookies you decorated to your photo album but those were not of any interest to Wormie. Overall I would rate this as a good free download with some seasonal appeal but in the larger scheme of things it will get deleted shortly after the holidays.

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free

Peekaboo Barn - A Solid "Lite" Small Child App

I picked up Peekaboo Barn based on a recommendation from a friend who said her daughters were really into it. I went for the free version and got Wormie started right away. The start button was easy for her to figure out and the game play was well done. Here's a quick run down. Open to a barn scene. Barn shakes, touch doors, reveal animal, animal makes noise, door closes, repeat.

As per all "Lite" apps there are only a few animals to cycle through where in the full fledged app there are a supposedly a bunch more. I swear i read someplace there is a night time barn party scene. That sounds a little too Cinimax for me, but that could be a mis-read. Wormie liked the app, but it was a little too young for her. I'd peg this for 2-3 year olds since the game play is simple and tight. In addition the limited number of animals made it a pretty quick play session.

Age Range: 2-3
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free

The Free App Conundrum: Shape Builder - Lite Version

So i take a rather loose interpretation of iTunes App store lists of the top Free or Paid Apps. I'm sure the algorithm that determines what ends up in the "Top" lists is so complicated that they have an army of mathlete optical laser engineers who work on it. However - I hope that a good dose of fun gets worked into the equation somehow. Wormie and I try to tease out the fun strings from the messy App Store algorithm when we are testing applications. I mix up the free and paid applications we review, but given this is cyberweek i'm going to try and do a free app a day during down time at work. Here's the catch...i'm going to do a "Lite" review.

In general a lot of the free applications that are appropriate for kids are limited in functionality and are designed as free trials with the goal of upselling you to their paid version. Shape Builder Lite is a puzzle application that was high up in the Free Education Apps section of the iPhone App store. This fit my criteria of peceived value and the right price.

The premise is simple - you get an outline of a puzzle and the missing pieces. You then drag pieces into the corresponding spot on the outlined shape and build your object. Once it is complete the object forms into a picture and makes a sound. I make a puzzle guitar, the puzzle turns into a guitar, the guitar then plays a little ditty.

Wormie grasped the basics right out of the gate. She could start the app on her own and quickly started trying to drop the pieces into the relevant spots. The challenge, and my only complaint about this application, is that the game play of dragging pieces was a little off. Wormie and her four year old fingers wanted to direct the puzzle piecec by holding it right in the middle. It was much more effective by dragging the lower right corner of each piece and dropping that slighly past where the puzzle ended. That was an impossible concept to explain, but after a few frustrating tries she seemed to get it down well enough to complete a puzzle with limited cries for "Daddy." After several days she had the game play down cold and did not need any help.

Wormie likes it. I don't think there is any educational value to forming the letters or objects but she likes it and i think is a fun brain teaser. I am tempted to get the full paid version since she cycles through all the free puzzles (5-10) quickly.

Age Range: 3.5+
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 25 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free

ABC Tracer: First Step in Making My Girl a Genius

As previously mentioned Wormie has become extremely interested in reading her books. So much so that she will pass watching TV or a movie after dinner so she can pour over her library books. After the success of the iPhone kid book app i figured i would try something more educational. My first experiment with educational flash cards didn't go so well. I'm giving that app some time before writing the review but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

My method for picking my apps for review is not very complex. I usually use the app store on the phone and will try a mix of paid and free versions to keep it balanced. I found the ABC Tracer in the Education channel in the iPhone store. My assumption there is that the best selling or most popular will be the versions that Apple puts at the top of the list. It's not a complex equation but I figure its worthwhile to work through the top apps first before digging down into the weeds.

So... i found ABC Tracer to figure out the basics before handing over to Wormie. This apps got everything for type A parents.

• Flashcards? CHECK!
• Phonics? CHECK?
• Freestyle drawing to express your innner Picasso? DOUBLE CHECK!

The basic gist is that you can trace letters (upper case/lower case) and numbers in order to practice you writing skills. There are other little features like you can change the color of your ink and sound features (phonics i guess) like touching an object associated with your letter, which will then make the appropriate sound. Trace an A, touch the alligator, alligator roars... Wormie nailed it.

Like i said last week the iPhone book was in Wormies top spot, until she found ABC Tracer. I showed her how to start the app and she started cranking away on the tracings. I thought that i would have to show her how to work the menu but she was comfortable navigating all on her own. She even discovered some features i had missed, like a free drawing component that was probably designed for letters, but she used for pictures. Wormie went through each letter and number all on her own and would then go back to the beginning to start over.

The look and feel reminded me of a Fisher Price toy a la 1983, but the functionality is so strong, and Wormie was so engaged that I can forgive the lack luster aesthetics. Aside from dated artwork the only other criticism i have is that the app is trying to teach a "right" and "wrong" way to write a letter. I'm sure there is some theory and method behind this but for hte life of me i couldn't figure it out or see a way to explain the "correct" way to write a letter to Wormie. Perhaps I am just a roadblock on her way to a James Joycean understanding of the printed word, but I think she will be just as smart if i don't let her know that the red lines in her tracing means she did something wrong. Regardless this was not a blocker for using the application and Wormie has continued to bang the heck out of the ABC Tracer. I would highly recommend this to parents whose children are just getting into reading and letters.

Age Range: 4.5+
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :1/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 5/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:$1.99

iStoryTime: The Brave Monkey Pirate - Quirky, Quick - PERFECT!

I saw a post not long ago on Twitter from App Develop @iStorytime promoting their kids story application. I thought it was a great idea and posted something about it to @gabbaphone twitter account. @iStoryTime wrote me back and gave me a free promo code to check out one of their story apps. I felt a little weird reviewing a free game, i'm all about the journalistic impartiality don't you know, so I went ahead and bought one for $1.99. I went for 'The Brave Monkey Pirate" based on the funny title and cute art.

I checked it out myself before handing it over to Wormie and there were some controls for audio (ie. do you want a childs voice or adult voice) and some other basic set up controls. It was nothing you need to do before using the App with your child but i was curious at how robust the reader controls were - the answer is, not very. I went through the story myself and found it a quirky and cute. Its about a little monkey who takes a magical (read trippy) journeym and along the way he finds a way to make trips to the doctor visit less scary. The minimalist art is cute and cool, and the little parable going on about being brave when you go to the doctor is light enough that it does not come off as a "Oh my go could Berenstein Bears be less subtle" life lesson. A subsequent search turned the book up on Scribd and the Robert Hayes, the authors, site http://www.bluebison.net/. My only complaint about the application was that i wish the page turning functioned more like the Kindle application - but this item really had no impact on the 20 something page iBook.

I gave the App to Wormie thinking it would be a short trial. For what ever reason i figured she would get bored quickly and ask for a different game. I was SO wrong. Wormie is just starting to get into writing letters and has been pouring over books from the library. I can only assume that this new found interest in the written word helped spur her obsession with "The Brave Monkey Pirate." When I handed Wormie the App she figured out the page scrolling right away. She also liked the audio feature, which i know because when i turned it off after another viewing, she complained how the App was broken. When she got to the end of the story, she rewound all the pages and started over. She read and re-read the story for a full 10-20 minutes, which must have been about 10 reads of the story. The "pirate story" as she called it, has became the top requested app on my phone until I downloaded some letter tracing apps.

Overall - i was surprised, and pleased, at how much she really liked it. I believe the combination of quality art, cute story, professional audio, and her new found interest in "reading" sealed the deal. My only complaint is that at $1.99, for what is a considerably short story, this is an expensive proposition. However, if I broke down how much i've paid on a per viewing basis, I'm sure its beat most of the childrens books we buy at our LBS, Kepplers, at about $.10 a view and going down! I have been meaning to buy another story for some time to see how much is the form vs. content but until then Wormie still likes to log a few reads of "The Brave Monkey Pirate" while we wait for our breakfast every Sunday.


Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 5/5 (5 being helpful)

Halloween Treats: It's not spooky, but its smart!

In an attempt to get in the Halloween Holiday spririt i did a search on the iPhone app store for Halloween. I was suprised that i did not find much appropriate, and while i was tempted by Halloween Hotties i settled for a safer seasonal matching game. A later check on the PC dug up a lot more seasonal options in the App Store that I wanted to check out but I was already committed to a free app titled the Halloween Match Memory Game

I had tried one of the higher ranked memory games with Wormie to no avail a few months ago. I don't know if it was the game play or the graphics but the Halloween Memory Match was much more effective. The game is a good at keeping Wormies interest for a few plays at a time.

The game is simple... open the game and it loads asap, which is perfect for my toddler. Wormie is not big on waiting and i find it a hassel when I have to get involved with the set up of the next game. The premise is a straigh forward card matching game. Each turn you flip two cards with Halloween themed artwork. You go through the cards and match the different pairs like most of the other matching games in the App store. After the game is completed you get a count of how many bad pairs you rang up, which Wormie doesn't care about, but is easy to get by. Some ghostes and halloween characters float through the screen and you are onto your next game.

I think it was a cool little app, and the memory component made me think that I was contriburing to her later success in life. Lord knows, she's going to have to do some matching at Harvard.

Age Range: 3.5-5
Difficulty: 5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4/5 (5 being helpful)

iPhone Moms on the Rise!

TechCrunch reports that iPhone mom's downloading apps for their kids!

"The report shows several interesting patterns. For example, over 59% of iPhone moms surveyed say they let their children use their iPhone. And 41% of moms who own iPhons download apps specifically for their children to use.

Five Little Monkeys: Are going to follow me to my grave!

I am not particularly sophisticated when it comes to how I pick applications for Wormie and me to tes t. Five Little Monkeys belongs in the bucket of Apps i call "Songs Wormies Loves." It's above the "Apps i think will make Wormie smarter," bucket and below the "Cute Disney Like Apps."

Like the category says Wormie loves the Five Little Monkeys song. We sign it over and over and over. I don't mind the repetition, my wife however...well it drives her crazy. So, I'm thinking maybe i get the app and Wormie sings it to herself with the headphones on. Genius right? I know..i know, I'm a genius.

The app turned out to be a winner a "time waster" tool. The premise is easy... you pick the background music (Rock, Pop, and Country.) This was the only piece that Wormie had trouble with since the action wasn't completely obvious. On that note the music selections sound like the categories in a Gorbechev era Soviet Uniion music store. Who buys a "Rock" album...its all about Classic rock! Zepplin, AC/DC, and Wormies favorite...QUEEN!

Once you are in the game its a chinch. There are a few easter eggs you can click on and get an action like a ball, a baloon, etc and they are easy to spot. You touch a monkey, he falls off the bed, he breaks his head etc etc. The doctor pops up and says... you got it.. "NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPING ON THE BED." Then you go back and there are four little monkeys on the bed. Repeat, repeat, repeat, and done! Wormie got the action required straight out of the gate and even though its a little boring from a parents POV it seemed to be a winner.

Frankly, the art is mediocre, the music is best described as "elevator like" but the package works well and can keep the girl occupied for a little stretch of time in a moment of high need.

Age Range: 3-4
Difficulty: 4.5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :2/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4.5/5 (5 being helpful)

Preschool Adventure: Simple Pleasures

This is a great starter application for your 3-4 year old. Even better, its a good way to figure out what kind of applications your kids might like. One challenge I have had is spending money on applications that Wormie will play for all of two seconds before getting bored. And thus GabbaPhone was born, where i strive to deliver the unmitigated truth of how an application meets the needs of my child's finely honed technological pallet. Or...how much time i can get or to play it while we are at a restuarant.

Preschool Adnventure is a collection of six games that have no discernible tie to one another other than that they are simple and easy to use. The "games" are labeled Colors, Numbers, Shapes, Body, Matching, and Sounds - while not winning any awards for creativity they work for Wormie. The coolest part about giving the app to Wormie is that she intuitively started jumping between the games. The buttons were big and inviting and she was able to quickly figure out what to do with each game once she hit the button. Watching her explore the application and figure it out each little bit on her own was cool from a parent's angle. I've rated each game below with the number of "Wormie plays" before she would jump to another game.

• Colors - Hit little ink spots and sea animals pop up with a little sound. (4 plays)
• Numbers - Connect the dots (numbers) in order and draw an animal (6 plays)
• Shapes - Hit the shape and it pops out of a crater in a planet (1 play)
• Body - Touch body parts of a monkey and they reattach, kinda weird (2 plays)
• Matching - Match animal body parts and animal does something cute, like yodle (3 plays)
• Sounds - Touch cute animals on the farm and they make farm sounds (no recollection)

I was surprised, and excited. that she liked the numbers game the best. Overall she will spend a good 10-15 minutes sorting through the different options on Preschool Adventure jumping from one game to another. I wouldn't recommend this for an older kid (5+) or "genius" child but it was a great fit for Wormie, who likes her independence and the freedom to use the device all on her own.

Age Range: 3-4
Difficulty: 4.0/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :2.5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4.5/5 (5 being helpful)

Price $.99

Wheels on the Bus: The "Titanic" of toddler apps

I had great expectations of "Wheels on the Bus." It is continuously one of iPhones best sellers making it a Hollywood style hit in iPhone land. Legend goes this was created by three friends looking to entertain their kids (GENIUS!) who must be ka-jillionaires by now. I even liked the name of the publisher "duck, duck, moose," its cute, creative and nails the spirit of fun and humor i want to have in front of my children. To cap it off "Wheels on the Bus" is one of Wormies favorite song requests... which comes complete with dance steps, hand gestures, and made up verses not found in the official lyrics book.

The first run through of the application with Wormie was pretty successful. She got the actions down p quickly, and figured out how to get through each screen on her own. I figured it was game on and walked away assuming she would be at it for a while. About two minutes later she was back... "I want a new game," she demanded, sounding much, too much like Arnie in "The Terminator." I was bummed - this was not the James Cameron blockbuster i was expecting!

The game play is simple and straight forward making it ideal for the toddler set... swipe the buss to move it forward, swipe the doors to open them, push the teddy bear to make him jump. For what ever reason though the song and iPhone app did not click for her. In a nutshell i think it was too tame, and not as good as the real life version for Wormie. Maybe she was too much of a fan, and maybe hollywood has upper her expectations but this app was a miss for us.

One of the parent hooks for this is that you can make the song play in several different languages. While i think this is awesome for you overly competitive, want your child to rule the world types, my kid had no interest when she realized that all the verses we have made up in our family were not in the application. When she heard the song in French is was all the more reason for her to "Move on Back" to one of her more engaging apps.

I have not completely given up though I will try it with Deadly when he gets a little older, since my gut tells me thisit is better suited to a slightly younger toddler who can handle a device. Given my childs disinterest, and my desire to like the app I would be interested in hearing other folks experiences.

Age Range: 2-4
Difficulty: 4.0/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2.0/5 (5 being helpful)

Price $.99

This could be good! Whiteboard Pro

I wanted a drawing application, any drawing application, so i went to the iTunes app store and this was the top rated one in the list. I was thinking of going with the Free/Lite version but that experiment did not work so well with the Faries Fly Lite.

This application comes with a collaboration feature so if your toddler wants to whiteboard an escape out of their daycare they can silently share the plans amongst themselves. Other than that somewhat overboard feature this is a pretty cool tool. The big problem is its not really toddler friendly. The ability to adjust the "pen" size and color is easy for an adult, but not a toddler feature.

That said...once i got the little drawing board set up Wormie was enthralled. She cranked out six different drawings over a period of 20 minutes. As we refined the the pen size and played with colors she became more and more excited. While it wasn't the best parent helper in my tool kit but it was one of the most gratifying since we were able to play with it together. Currently its the application she most wants to use, making it great for restaurants, but not so good for car usage.

A week after playing with the App I discovered a cool feature. I was scrolling through my photo library and all the drawings Wormie had made were saved. It was kinda cool to go through and check out all of the odd little butterflies and stick people she had made when we were playing with it.

Age Range: 3+
Difficulty: 2.0/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4.0/5 (5 being helpful)

Price $1.99

Faries Fly Lite: Not Enough Disney Magic

I was skeptical but hopeful when i saw the Faries Fly Lite app by Disney Interactive Studio. The rating was 4+ and i figured it was worth a shot since a free version , hence the "Lite" moniker, was being offered.

If you happen to have a small child, specifically a girl, chances are you are in the midst of Fairy/Princess obsession that appears to have a lot of legs.

We took Wormie to Disney in April, which was a lot of fun, and while she was shy of the real life avatars - she has continued to gush about all the Princesses and Faries she met at Pixie Hollow and Ariels Grotto attractions we took her too. So... enter iPhone - Faries Fly Lite - stage left.

The real game enables you to choose from one of several faries, where Faries Fly Lite you can only pick Tinker Bell - which is fine - and you can only play the game located at the "Beach Cove" world. The production value is amazing... it has a great video intro, good music and fantastic art.

The game itself is pretty simple. You tilt the iPhone to control TinkerBells vertical postion. I found it easy, it was a more difficult concept to teach Wormie. Tinker then has to avoid obstacles, birds and tree stumps, and pick up what look like screws, coins, and magic bubbles for points. You can only get through one level before getting an upsell message but the restart path was easy enough that Wormie could get the game going again.

Wormie lost interest pretty quickly and wanted to go back to scoops. I think the game play and avoiding the cute little birds was pretty lame. She had no interest in the points, of course, and once the video portion had concluded her interest was gone.

Overall i could see this being popular with slightly older girls who are still in a Fairy phase of their childhood. I imagine that is a somewhat limited group but who can tell. It's a total bummer because the subject matter is perfect for her age group. To me this looks like a recycled game with first class music an art. With a modicum of effort on the game play and targeting for the little girl market this would be great - especially for our next trip to Disney!

Age Range: 5+
Difficulty: 2.5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :4.5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful

Price: Free

iToddler Tamer - Not sure I want to give my phone to a kid that likes this!

Both my kids have been perpetually obsessed with my iPhone, well... all my phones, in fact. At one point i even glued on print out of Palm menu glued it to an old Palm 650 and told Wormie that i fixed it. When i got a Blackberry i started letting Wormie play the Brick game that came with the ATT factory install. Now "Deadly", all of 10 months, wants in on the action and Wormies refinement about games is getting more complex, much like her taste in television - she has a complex low brow/high brow mix of "Care Bears/Nausicca Valey of the Wind" thing going.

Anyway...i was extremely excited by the title of iToddler Tamer -I mean, come on... it speaks to my whole desire of what a iPhone can do for me while waiting for Pancakes at Stacks! I downloaded iToddler Tamer and passed off to Wormie - tester, age 4.5. When i playedthe game i thought it was super lame - of course, i am not toddler and therefore not a adequate judge of how well this pupper works.

It is simple - and a little boring. Of course, i say this about an age group that has equal amount of fun splashing in puddles and popping bubble wrap. It does not have much functionality yet it avoids the "Mail To", game points, general confusion, and restart issues I have found with other applications. The general concept is that you can pick a Scene/Level- Babies, Ocean, etc - then different pictures (shell, baby bottle, etc) scroll through. You can move the pic and make it multiply before it darts off the screen and a new image shows up. BAM - that's it. That's all there is to it. Not good for 38 year old dad or mom... in fact the wife was super adamant that this was a stinker.

All that said Wormie was able to figure it out on her own so I liked it for that component. So many games i have to walk her through the functionality before she gets the hang of it. I'd say she actually spent 10 minutes with the game before getting bored which was not too bad. Still... not the best investment ever made. I think it will be good for slightly younger childern but I'm not sure i want to give the phone to a one year old so I will have to wait a bit before trying it out. on a younger set.

Age Range: 2+
Difficulty: 5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :3.5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful

Price .99

Sneezies Chain Reaction - It could have been so great!

Well, i downloaded Sneezies a few months ago. I think when i originally got it it was ranked pretty high in the children's section of the app store. The art, cute furry animals in bubbles, and description "Sneezies is an overload of cuteness" made it sound perfect. However...its actually a pretty standard linking game. You pop one bubble and then it goes and pops a whole bunch more. The art and game play are totally professional but they don't really go well together.

I gave the game to "Wormie", thats the 4 year old's nick name of choice, I'm going to call the 1 year old Deadly...pretty cool names i think, and she really loved it. For like 5 minutes...then she hit some button and i had to restart the game. After a few tries she was able to move from screen to screen but the bubbles that the cute little guys float in get progressively smaller and after a point it was too annoying and she gave up. In face it wasn't just the size of the bubbles she was getting annoyed with it was the fact that you only get to hit one bubble and then you watch the chain reaction as the bubbles pop each other. I think the general concept was within her grasp but the strategic component, and level of patience required, were not ideal for a four year old girl.

I think this game looks good for kids but is more suited to adults. I think i would be embarrassed to be caught playing this on the train. Ultimately it is more suited to cat lady in 11a who gives us cute styrofoam ornaments of her pets every year. I liked the game but my kid would NOT pay .99

Age Range: 6+
Difficulty: 3/5
Look & Feel :4.5/5
Parent Helper: 1/5

Price .99

Dora The Explorer: I get int on the iPhone so i don't have to watch it in real life!

This isn't necessarily iPhone specific, in face I originally downloaded Dora for my iPod but the larger has given Dora episodes i downloaded a year ago new live. My girl (going on 4.5 years old) does not get to watch cable at our house because we believe in the good old hippie way of life. Wool socks, sweatty homemade peanut butter, and no cable. I lie, we skipped getting cable after moving to Califorina because we found that Netflix did a better job of getting us timely TV episodes, and enabled us to truly feed our addictive tendencies by watching a whole season of 24 in two nights. The by product has been our kids don't get access to a lot of the normal shows. This has an upside... my daughter can sit through a two hour movie because thats all she ever watched (for some reason we had a lot of Disney/Sudio Gibli DVDs) and that when we do get 20 minute cartoons she watches them like they are Child Approved Narcotic.

My first experiment was downloading Dora the Explorer. We were going to Canada for several weeks and I wanted to get a some shows for the plane ride. I ended up downloading Season 1,2, & 3 of Dora to keep the kid occupied. I would say from a value perspective i got at least 3-4 viewings per episode making the $1.99 or 19$ per season worth my while. My daughter liked it for a solid 3-4 months before nixing Dora all together. I even occassionaly would let her watch it on the Mac at home...which actually is not preferable to the iPhone. On the iPhone i don't have to listen to the repetitive and interactive components like when Dora repeats the mission objectives with her sly hypnotic chanting.... "Bridge, Chocolate Mountain, Ice Castle!" in an attempt to brain wash my girl. I don't mind the brain washing Dora... i just don't want to hear it. I reccomend whole seasons of Dora...the shows go by quick and the kids get engaged. If I'm lucky my daugther will be fully bilingual by the time season 10 roles around.

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 1/5
Look & Feel :4/5
Parent Helper: 4/5

Prices
Per Episode
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

Scoops: The first iPhone ap I downloaded for my toddler

I was telling a friend of mine about this great iPhone application i had for my kid. He told me in a not so subtle way that it was a stupid idea, and that he just had his kids play with "Scoops." (I'm still working on my genius idea and will let you know when i get it going but until then i have to content myself with what ever i can jerry-rig for my 4.5 year old.) My friend, Chris, who i think is going through a "downer" period described the functionality that his two daughters liked and it did sound good for the age i was looking at.

The look of Scoops is perfect for the pre-school set. Its bright, has great colors and the general game play is appropriate. The objective is to get as many scoops of ice cream, and other falling objects onto your cone by tilting your phone. When you tilt your cone veers in the direction you want it to go (left of right) all be it a little fast. The speed of the moving cone was the biggest issue I had with the game as it worked well for me but was a little too "slippery" for my daughter. I think the game would work better for slightly older kids who are not jaded by the loss of Santa Claus or questioning a world in which ice cream scoops are randomly falling from the sky. Overall the game nature seemed to be a little overkill, since what adult, or self respecting teenage is going to want to save their "Scoops" high score.

The biggest drawback was a mail button that could be found after i entered my name in the high score. I had given this game to "The Girl" and she was able to get through all the screens, despite not being of reading age, except for this one. She kept hitting the mail button which is assumedly for "viral marketing" purposes and would end up in my Gmail account trying to send her high score to the CEO of some start up we are working with. That said "The Girl" liked it enough to request it, though i did have to intervene when she would hit the mail to button.

I'd buy it for 5-7 year olds, its okay for slightly younger but functionality requires some parentaly involvement.

Age Range: 5.5-7
Difficulty: 3/5
Look & Feel :4.5/5
Parent Helper: 2.5/5

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