Apps for your iThings - Special Needs Edition

I write a fair bit about Apps for our various iThings (Pod, Pad, Phone).  While we don't have a dedicated iPad for Snail yet (we're working on it!), I do have a collection of Apps that Snail loves to play with on my iPad.

A couple of notes - Snail is limited to very simple Apps, single touch or two choices only, really.  We'll be working more on choices between two options once we get the iPad and work it into her school and therapy curriculum.  So, if you're reading this and have a special needs child, the Apps here are fitting into a pretty limited range.  Snail is very intellectually affected, and is worse since seizures and meds over the past few years.  She gets (few) days where choosing is possible, and many where we can scarcely interest her at all in anything (or she is asleep the whole day). With that in mind, here are some Apps she's enjoyed.

Toddler Counting.  This is a fun, simple as anything app where, as you might suspect from it's title, things get counted.  Lolly has got a lot out of this one, and Snail loves it, too.  A simple touch, and the things on the screen are counted aloud.  It moves on automatically to the next screen when finished.  You can set it to stick to numbers under 10.  This app cracks Snail up, every time.  She finds it hilarious, and it consistently gets her to touch the screen and keep engaged [with pauses for bouts of laughter].  She is not great at aiming at the numbers, but the app seems fairly forgiving with where you touch.

Sparkabilities 1 and 2.  These are just fabulous.  See the Sparkabilities site for their principles and DVDs, too.  They respond to single touch to move the simple "story" forward.  They are bright and interesting, and use simple words, most of which Snail can say.  Lolly still likes them!  Awesome.  There is a "find it" section Snail can't do, the prompt (shown below) is a tad small, and these days her focus is not that great :(.

Verbal Victor is a great App for augmentative communication.  You basically make photo options for your child and recording your voice underneath them.  There's a range of options, and being able to record your own message is just fab.  Their site and instructions are here. 

A couple of site recommendations.  I like Babies with iPads (thought I hate the name, as Snail is 12 and it just makes me sad that she can't do most of the "Babies" apps, *sigh*).  The reviews and information is great, and they also collect donations and give away iPads to special needs kids, which is a great, direct way to give a bit of money!  Spectronics has comprehensive lists of apps and prices.

My other App reviews are here.

More iPod/iPad Apps for Kids!

Lolly is now a month over 3 years old.  She's constantly changing her use of our iThings, she uses an iPod, and our iPads, mostly mine, which is now crammed so full of kids apps I can scarcely fit my own stuff on there.  Thank the iPad gods for folders!  Here's what she's chosing lately:

Nosy Crow's awesome retelling of the Three Little Pigs.  This is interactive fairy-tale fun at it's best.  Quirky art, great animation, and a fun story, you can tickle the pigs, there's a range of voice responses from every character, and lots of interactive bits as a natural part of the story.  The tale is re-told with a great sense of humour and fun.  Highly recommended!  Lolly and I are looking forward to the other apps Nosy Crow has slated for the rest of the year.  The one drawback I have is the usual gendered stuff, the "female" pig is a tad girly, and there's a couple of typical tropes there about how she can't build and likes to decorate.  Honestly, it's not that hard to leave this stuff out when you're building an app like this, it doesn't add anything.  *shakes fist*

Unfortunately, Lolly is more than obsessed with Outfit7's money pit Apps "Talking *Everything*" (Talking Hippo, Dino, Cat, Giraffe and so on ad nauseum).  Some are free but ask for in-App purchases.  I'm loving that Lolly's common chat now includes "we're not buying food for that Giraffe!"  My favourite of this lot is the one aimed more at kids, Talking Hippo. If you haven't had the joy that is the Talking-Shit Apps, they basically "listen" and repeat what they "hear" via the mic on the iThing, in a variety of amusing voices.  They have basic interaction, you can touch the screen and interact with the character, for example you can give the Hippo food, a dummy (sigh), a balloon, and make a butterfly appear.  This is totally awesome, really.  And Lolly LOVES them.  Can I repeat that again for effect: LOVES them.  I have come out out of the study to see her with her Talking Hippo propped up on the couch "watching" Octonauts on the TV with her.  Now that's a sight from *the future* - my kid interacting with her touch screen responsive talking virtual pet.


What I object to here are the in-App ads, cross advertising for the millions of other Talking-Shit apps, and on some of them, the violence. Talking T-Rex attacks another dinosaur, you can "hit" Talking Tomcat and knock him over, that kind of thing.  Arguably, most of these Talking-shit apps aren't for kids, but, let's be realistic, you advertise them inside the kids apps, most kids are going to want the talking dino/cat/whatever as well.  Lolly loves to open them up one after the other and listen to different voices.  I'd rather the kid rated versions stuck to advertising the kid rated apps, or that there was a parent-controlled way of setting preferences, or that you could choose to pay a dollar more to get a version that didn't have the cross-version ads in them.  But, I do think these are great Apps for kids.  Lolly still looks so amazed and full of wonder to hear the Hippo talking back to her, and she can chat to it for ages.  Worth a go, with the ad-based limitations in mind.

The final App for today is the fabulous and hilarious My Underwear.  Thumb Arcade have produced a great new app for kids with four games.  Adorable drawings and animation, and easy to control games, Lolly has been chosing this nearly every time since we got it a couple of weeks ago.  There's underwear matching, a memory match game, a paint-your-underwear paint game, and a hungry undie-eating monster game.  And the music is infectious and awesome.  DO give this one a go, it's worth it!  And I love that Thumb Arcade have given us all four in one game, rather than rorting parents for four separate games.  That is extra awesome. 


Oh okay one more, we have recently been crazy here about You Tube (can you spell, *Mummy learning parental controls frantically*?), and discovered Eric Herman's the Elephant Song.  Which has an App (basically just the song, a bit of interaction, and a puzzle game.  Worth it, though, this song is just great, and Herman's got heaps of other kids music that doesn't make me want to poke out my eye.  Try 'em out on YouTube.  The pirate song is a particular fave here, and the whole family is also dancing like they've got ants in their pants...

Enjoy!  And do let me know in comments if you try any of these out on your own iThing!

More fun apps for your iPod or iPad for kids!

Here is what Lolly is choosing regularly on the iPad/her iPod lately.  She is nearly 3. 

Madera and Figaro Save the Day
Many books on the iPad only really give the same experience as a paper book, with someone else reading the text.  That's fine!  But many are billed as "interactive" when really you just touch words or characters and get a single unchanging sound or movement.  I don't know about your kids, but mine finds that interesting for about 2 seconds.  It's the truly interactive apps that she loves.  Something with variety, where she sees that she is affecting what is happening, different levels of challenge, bright and cheery.

Lolly is nearly 3 now, and definitely more interested in story than she was.  So, we love these two apps from Lyn and Line.  They are some of the few "book" apps that are really stretching what a book means given the new technogies we use to view and truly interact with them.  There is a central storyline, with activities on each page, interactive things to touch, things that move and dance (we love the mice!), puzzles and elements to move on the story line onwards.

Even some choose your own next step stages, where you can choose between three options to do next.

Just a great and challenging app/book.  One of the best apps I've seen for toddlers and young children.

They have another game, but this was made for iPhone, which means it's not as speccy on the iPad: Madera and Figaro: The Rescue of Ginger.  Still awesome though! 

Bartleby's Book of Buttons:
Okay, I'm including this one though it's a little too advanced for Lolly to get the most out of, but it too is an awesome app that is stretching the technology available on the iPad. 

At the moment it's a little complex for her, but there are some stages she is really enjoying, and I see her choose it on the iPad often just to have a look and short play, so she is obviously attracted to it. It would be a great choice for slightly older children.

Clicky Sticky:
This is one of the best of the 'sticker' apps available, with lots of screens and stickers to choose from, and interactive "stickers" to use.  Lolly loves it too as she is very keen on "ocean animals" at the moment, so she loves the ocean scene.

You can save and email the pages made too, which is very cute.  A simple app, but Lolly chooses it reasonably often.  The plane page is cute too, and makes some good sounds with simple animation.  A good sticker app for young kids.

Park Math:
By Duck, Duck, Moose, who have some great apps for kids.  Again, this is an app for iPhone, so we miss the high definition graphics.  But Lolly likes this app a lot, it at the same developmental level as she is, she gets challenged by it and often chooses it to play.

**Oh I just noticed they have an iPad version now!  Yay! *goes to download*

It has simple maths, counting, addition, sorting from large to small (and small to large), with nice clear graphics and an easy-to-use menu.

Sorting from small to large -

Feeding the hippo (counting, discrimination) -

Lolly loves this last one, the food you aren't supposed to feed the hippo gets stolen by ants and carried off, and she thinks this is the height of hilarity.  If you hold your finger down on the "wrong" food, the ants can't get it.  I think she thinks this is the point of the game!  Very funny, and she totally cracks herself up "stopping the ants from getting it!".

Their other games are also well worth it, Lolly also loves Fish School (now with an iPad version), and Baa Baa Black Sheep (the latter is iPhone only).  This developer is doing some great work on children's apps, for a reasonable price.

Dora's Christmas HD:
Okay, I have some issues with this one, it's based on a "naughty" or "nice" dichotomy which I totally disagree with, and have never used with Lolly!!  But she is obsessed with Dora (and Diego) and saw an ad for this on an episode of Dora I'd recorded off Foxtel.  It's relatively pricey at $5 or so, and other than it's terrible "naughty" message, is a great little app, a simple story with interactive steps along the way that kids have to solve or do to further the plot.

It has Santa in it, and we don't "do" Santa, but I don't mind this so much as we just talk about Santa as a character, and she's used to charaters not being real.  It's the "naughty/nice" crap that drives me crazy if she plays this.

Other than this major flaw, which if I'd know about, I wouldn't have bought this!!, a nicely presented app with plenty to interest your toddler/young child.  Miles better than the terrible rainbow game app they had prior to this one!  So boring!  We recently got the new Dora colouring app, too, which is nice, but far too expensive for what is basically just another colouring app.  Lolly rarely chooses these, she's not a huge fan of colouring in.  She basically just chooses it to see Dora and Boots.

Toddler Counting for iPad:
This is the simplest app EVER, but both girls LOVE it!  Its just a nice friendly voice counting as you touch different things.  As you touch the objects (there's a huge range) they grey out and the number appears.  You can set it to below and above 10.  I also like that is often does "one" and the voice says "there is only one" - good for her learning, and also cracks up this Highlander fan :D.  The repetition must be interesting to Lolly, who has recently been mastering counting, up to ten anyway, different objects, as she chooses this app a lot.

Snail also loves it, as it's simple, responsive, and she feels she gets a result from simply pressing the screen.  She absolutely cracks up with laughter, it's VERY adorable!

A popular app round our place!

What apps are your kids choosing!?

You might like to read my previous posts on Apps - Great iPod/iPad Apps for Kids and the Montessorium Apps.

Great iPod/iPad apps for kids!

You might have noticed we got Lolly an iPod touch recently.  Dave and I also got iPads (yay!), so we've all been shopping madly in the app store and trying out applications.  I've read some decent reviews of kids apps, and thought I'd add my voice to the mix.

Here are our favourites for a 2 and a half year old (I know, we're THOSE parents).

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles!  It's all about the puzzles!  Lolly loves real puzzles, and not suprisingly loves the puzzle apps on her iPod.  If you're looking for puzzles, you can't go past tozzle - which is just great. 

Tozzle is a series of puzzles, including letters and numbers.  Lolly loves it, though my main critique is that they do need to release some new puzzles as upgrades, she's done all of them now, and doesn't choose this one as much as she's become familiar with them all.  More puzzles, please!  That said, there are 33 puzzles on there, all with sound effects and animations. All for only $2.49 (prices in Australian dollars), which is great value.

More puzzle goodness - Anything by Alexandre Minard is great - Here are My First Puzzles and My First Tantagrams.

Just gorgeous, and really engaging.  Though like all the puzzle games, they could do with releasing more puzzles rather than making new apps (yeah right :p).   These are cheap, only $2.49 a pop.

redfish is the iPad version of poissonrouge, the great kids website.

This app is amazing.  Just so creative and intuitive.  Lolly loves it, and I can see it would engage kids much older than her as well.  It's relatively pricey for the whole package, $12 from memory, but worth it!  You get a lot of games for that within the package.  There's heaps in this version, and if you do an app search for redfish there are a few to try for free as well.


Monkey Preschool Lunchbox - this application is just adorable, and when we first got it for her, Lolly spent AGES playing it.  It still gets in regular rotation here, too, so it has staying power, which a lot of these apps don't really have.  It's a mix-em-up game, with counting, sorting, matching, puzzles, letters and colours.  Well worth it.  It's a little praisey, but hey, most of them are (sigh).

Lolly is also really enjoying this Interactive Alphabet game - it has little animations for each letter.  She seems to really like it.

Some others worth checking out - Tickle Tap apps - these are really sweet!

The toddler pack has five games and has been worth it.  They have a second collection, toddler pack 2, coming soon which I will probably buy for Lolly.

The is the biggest problem with kids apps all round, is that there are a limited palette of options inside the game, and kids gets to know them and get tired of them fast.  It's not a product of the technology, at least not in my experience, Lolly has the same thing with "real" wooden puzzles, for example.  She's engaged while it's a challenge, or if it becomes new and interesting.  Otherwise she moves on to the next challenge.

This is something game designers need to account for in updates, especially for kids games in this area.  When your app is limited to the alphabet letters, or to 12 puzzles, it's only going to engage a toddler for a certain amount of time.  Games for older kids have more choices, they are often playing  an actual game, rather than just interacting more simply with the device.  There needs to be more thought to these apps for kids in the 2-4 range.


I'm going to review the Montessorium apps separately soon!

Which apps does your toddler/young one enjoy!?