Tag: preschoolers

iPad App Review: Eurotalk Maths Age 3-5

I have to say I tutted when I was first asked to review this app as the first Topic is free and then you have to pay for the others.  However, my daughter is loving it and keeps going back to it again and again.  She only has the Sorting and Matching Topic. I think the most motivating thing for her is the certificate we can email to ourselves when she completes each section.  I’m tempted to purchase the other modules but do think they are a bit pricey.  All ten topics are £9.99.

For more of our App Reviews click here!

iPad Apps for Kids: Fun Felt

A friend of mine, with the technical ability, would like to develop an app for kids so I’ve been trying to help him come up with an idea. The other day, after spotting my daughters Fuzzy Felts, I thought they would be a great idea for an app. However, by the time I text him and he replied, low and behold I found one already existed, Fun Felt by Quiros Apps (.69p).

I absolutely love it. My four year old and I’ve been playing with it for ages. It’s great for creativity, shape recognition, fine motor skills, spatial awareness and you’ll see it also lends to literacy and numeracy.

Only negative is that it froze on a couple of occasions which was a bit frustrating.

So what do you think of our first attempts?

Click here to download

Disclosure: I have used my own affiliate code for this post. So, on the off-chance that you purchase it I get a measly couple of pence.

Shopping for Little Girls!

To my shear shock and horror Madame asked me to buy her some dresses last week.  I’m not a girlie girl and usually dress her in jeans and t-shirts, which explains why the first few years of her life she was always mistaken for a boy and having a boy’s name doesn’t help either.

Once I’d calmed down and came to the conclusion that a couple of dresses wouldn’t do her any permanent harm, we hit the shops to try and find some non-frilly dresses.  That’s sounds a lot easier than it was.  I don’t know why all girls dresses have to be frilly, have kittens on them or practically say ‘I’m Sexy’!  She picked up a hideous pink, frilly, shiny one with a big satin flower on it!  Barf! I think I might have said ‘over my dead body’! We abandoned the mission and went home empty handed.

Plan B, I hit Google with credit card in hand, with the help of the lovely @lexxclarke.  It took some going, but we managed to find a selection of non-frilly, practical dresses (Next, Vertbaudet, Woolworths and The White Company).  What do you think?  The red one is a bit ‘cute’ for my liking but….

I do hope manufactures of children’s clothing is taking notes!

Humf Iphone App

Available from Itunes for £1.79

In addition to being a mum of a 3 year old, I used to be a former primary school teacher and I’m now an ICT trainer (I do software/hardware training in schools). All apps that ‘we’ review are not only trialled by Madame but I’ve also had a good play with them.

I’ve never watched Humf. I have no attention span for children’s programming and put too much faith in the Children’s TV producers, but Madame loves it. We were given a copy of the Humf Iphone App to review. We both really like it. Madame is continually asking me to play it and I have to battle her to get the phone back.

It has 9 different solid activities which are not only fun, but they also have an educational element to them (counting, sorting, numbers, and colours), which makes mummy happy.

Here’s what we thought

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As you can see we highly recommend this app!

The only suggestion I have for the developers is to build in some sort of reward. Possibly children could collect stickers along the way and a ‘place’ to stick them. It would also be great if the instructions were ‘read’ to the children as they are unable to read them for themselves.

Do you have any that you would recommend or like me to review?

Iphone Apps for Pre-Schoolers (Books)

When I first bought my Iphone I never thought in a million years that I’d let my 3 year old play with it.  She absolutely flies around it, when my hubby wouldn’t be able to make a call on it.  I’ve downloaded so many apps, I’ve started organising them by subject (Literacy, Numeracy, etc).  This may stem from my former life as a primary school teacher.

I don’t tend to download games such as Paper Toss, Angry Birds etc as I’d like them to have some educational content but I haven’t gone as far as downloading flash cards.

I was looking for some classic books (Cinderella, Pinocchio, Snow White, etc), which I didn’t find but stumbled upon these books by Kidz Story.  I think they’re great and so does Madame.  You have the option for the story to be read to you or read it yourself plus there’s a bit on interactivity built in.  They’re not free but for 59p I think it’s a great bargain!  They would have cost a lot more than £3 for 5 books on the High Street.

Here’s what we thought:

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Do you have any apps that you would recommend for a 3 year old?

Which ones would you avoid?