This is another FREE app for the iPad & iPhone from TabTale LTD, the creators of Friendly Shapes (see previous review). It is designed to teach opposites to very young children by using cute drawings of dogs. Although it is named Dog Story, there really isn’t a story per se. Instead, the book introduces kids to the concept of antonyms. It also has fun animations and/or puzzles on each page. The app has three modes: auto-play, read-it-to-myself, and read-to-me but there is very little difference between auto-play and read-to-me. There is also an option to record your own voice as you read. There were two sets of antonyms that I didn’t feel were quite accurate: angry/glad and brave/shy. I would think that a more appropriate antonym for angry would be calm and a more appropriate antonym for brave would be cowardly. The other 11 antonyms in the book were more geared towards a young audience: wet/dry, cold/hot, young/old, etc.

Just like Friendly Shapes, this app has ads placed at the bottom of each page between the backward and the forward arrows. But, for $.99 you can remove them so little fingers won’t end up hitting links to things like the Hotels.com app, the Gilt app, Fairway Solitaire, and other products not necessarily geared towards kids.

I am not sure that there is enough content in this app to pay $.99 for the non-ad version but you might want to try for free 🙂

Rocket Speller is a FREE spelling app for the iPad and iPhone geared towards 3 – 7 year olds. Kids join Zip the alien on an adventure to build a new rocket. As the child successfully progresses through the levels he/she helps Zip choose the rocket pieces that he needs. Once Zip has collected everything, the rocket can be launched from the space pad. There are 4 levels. Level 1 allows you to match & place the letters in any order. In level 2, letters must be matched/placed in the correct order. Level 3 is spelling of simple words and level 4 is more complex words. This app promotes letter recognition, left to right order, awareness of how letters combine to make words, and vocabulary.

It’s cute, fun and you get the whole version for FREE.

Recommended!

FREE for a limited time. Funny Alphabet is an easy to use, interactive app for toddlers which teaches the alphabet. Each letter has its own page showing the upper and lower case letter as well as four objects that begin with that letter. When you touch the arrow next to each item on the page, the object is named. The animations in this app are very cute – most objects have an interactive sound or movement. Also included in this app is a soap-bubble game that feels like the electronic equivalent to playing with bubble wrap 🙂

Please note that at the beginning and the end of the app have links to the FB page for the app – easy for your child to click on and end up in Facebook.

9/18/12: This app was updated on September 3 and a quiz was added as an in-app purchase.