MY BABY FOOTSTEPS

OFA = our favourite apps.

Name: Monkey Preschool Lunchbox
Age: 2+ years
Cost: $0.99

My latest purchase, one week old, and I’m already loving it. The first time my girl activated the app, she was excited and engrossed. Then again I guess all new apps does that to her. But the good thing was she stayed with the app for more than an hour at the very first use! That meant something because usually when she doesn’t get the point of the game / app, she’ll close it and go back to her videos.

*HURRAY*

So the lowdown… It teaches:

1. Colours: My girl knows her colours already. But this one teaches her to listen to instructions! How many of your kids actually listen to instructions “Pick out the red fruits”? … Ok, maybe yours did but not mine. She’d just poke EVERYTHING on screen before listening. But with this app, I finally got her to wait and listen! Maybe cos the monkey is really so CUUUTTTEEEEE….
2. Matching: Gosh… I had a battle with her on this. Refer to #1 above. She’ll poke EVERYTHING on screen without thinking. So to her, the purpose of this was to just flip the cards open and close and open and close. How to get the kid to understand the objective was really to find a pair? … That is, if she understands the concept of pairing. I guess I need more work on this… afterall, this app is only a week old… I have a loooonnngggg way to go.
3. Counting: Another challenge for me. Yes, my girl can recite to 10. But the actual counting? Not really. I actually think counting should be taught physically, not through electronic means… at least not the basics. So I’m going to let this go and let her poke-poke-poke everything away.
4. Letters: I love this. Again, she FINALLY listened to instructions and understood when the monkey says “Find the words that start with the letter A”! I have tried teaching her this with homemade or commercial flashcards but they just didn’t work. Just one day with this app and she understood.
5. Puzzle: Chicken-feet for my girl who mastered Tozzle.
6. Spot the Difference: Again, something I’ve tried to do physically with homemade cards but I can’t really tell whether it was successful. I had like 20 flowers on a A4 page. 19 coloured pink and 1 coloured yellow. I asked her which was different and she pointed correctly. But did she understand the concept of difference? Or was she just pointing out the one who stood out the most? I don’t know. So I hope this app will help reinforce the idea.

And each time she completes a task, the monkey does a little celebratory cheer. She’d turn to me, beam a huge smile and tell me “MONKEY HAPPY!” … yes… and mommy’s happy too.

after telling a lot of friends what apps my girl loves… and each time digging through my daughter’s iPad and trying to recall which are her favourites, i decided to log it down so next time someone asks me, i’ll just throw them the link to this page. this is what we call E-F-F-I-C-I-E-N-C-Y, right?

not in any particular order… our Top Five Apps! remember, my girl got her very own iPad for her first birthday. of course we could start the apps right from the very beginning right?

Name: Peekaboo Barn
Age: 0-1 year
Cost: $1.99  (Free lite version available)

If you ask me why? At this age, they are still learning about cause-and-effect. That if i touch something, something else happens. And this app lets you knock on the barn door, which then opens up to an animal! Not just that… the narrator will say the animal’s name, which then makes a sound! This was probably my girl’s first paid app… and we all love it!

Fun and educational… though it was really cuter after she learnt how to imitate the animals’ sounds. and she’s still doing it! at her age, she doesn’t realise neighing loudly like a horse on a public bus is really quite embarrassing…

Name: Classic Nursery Rhymes Lite featuring Humpty Dumpty
Age: 1-2 years
Cost: Free!

Who wouldn’t want a free app… especially one that’s really cool! You get to (1) shake Humpty off the wall, (2) put Humpty back together again, and (3) put Humpty back up onto the wall! Quite easily, my girl learnt how to shake the iPad to make Humpty fall down… see Humpty crack apart *whops*… then use her fingers to piece Humpty together in a puzzle… and lastly push Humpty back to sit on top of the wall again.

The puzzle is really easy cos you don’t really have to match the puzzle pieces exactly. As long as you put the pieces near to the puzzle, it just zips into place! Not that we shouldn’t be training them precision, but this at least it teaches them the OBJECTIVE of puzzles right? Which then leads me to the NEXT FAVOURITE APP…

Name: Tozzle
Age: 1-3 years
Cost: $1.99 (Free lite version available)

Because Humpty Dumpty’s puzzle was so easy (anything is if they are not asking for perfection, isn’t it?), it taught my girl the aim of puzzles -> to put the pieces into the corresponding holes.

So this app was the level-up for her. First you have the easy melissa-and-doug kind – 5 BIG animals into 5 BIG holes. Then it slowly moves on to more and smaller items… the whole 26 letters in the alphabets… and then you see the kid CONSTRUCTING THINGS as the puzzles come into place! This ranks one of my top favourites cos there are just so many puzzles to keep her occupied for so long! And cos the difficulty increases gradually, she just naturally picked up how to finish each puzzle by herself without help!

Name: Alphabooks
Age: 1-2 years
Cost: $3.99 (Free lite version available)

I like how this app doesn’t just tell you “A for Airplane”. It carries on to form a sentence with the word “Airplane”, e.g. “the airplane is in the sky.” Nice…. SUPER NICE. So it doesn’t just teach vocab. It adds in sentence construction… prepositions… nouns… questions etc. Who could resist an app that is fun and educational at the same time?!

You know, I had tried to teach my girl the alphabet with some home-printed materials… but before I could get to the letter ‘M’, she has already learnt it from all these apps she’s been playing with. Who said kids shouldn’t play with computers and watch videos before the age of 2?

Name: The Monster at the End of This Book
Age: 1+ year and on
Cost: $3.99

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by my sister who has 2 kids of her own. Do I then need to wonder whether this would be a good buy?

Yes. Because her kids are the kind who’d sit down and enjoy a story quietly while mine prefers to run… jump… hop… skip… sing… and dance. *sigh* But THIS app really holds her attention! I like that she HAS TO let Grover finish one page first before she can get to the next page (arrow doesn’t appear otherwise). And the drama Grover brings to the story really keeps you captivated right till the end. She loves it. But then again, who doesn’t love Grover.

Wow! it’s so fun being a kid in this day and age, isn’t it? actually we have tons of apps… but I can’t be writing a review on all 231 apps we have downloaded. most of them are mainly free cos my mentality then was, why spend money on something that the girl will grow out of very soon? (not to mention a little bit of money saved goes a long way…)

but recently i’ve decided to pay for some good apps cos i’m concerned she’s always hitting the youtube button each time she plays with her ipad. it wouldn’t be so bad if she watches the usual sesame street videos… but she’s been following through the related links and sometimes she gets spoofs which i honestly don’t like. so i hid the youtube button inside a folder (let’s hope she doesn’t find it so fast), and downloaded a few new apps for her. let’s hope we get another few favourites that she’ll play with and make the money spent worthwhile.

pray, share with me what are your favourite apps too so i don’t have to go on a hunt to find the best apps for the girl. and for me, i’ll try to add on when i find another winner from the few i’ve just purchased.