This app for the iPad is currently $1.99 but I downloaded it on a FREE day 🙂 Geared for preschoolers to first graders, this app has two activities: Word Box and Puzzle Box. There are 30 animal pictures which are used for both activities. Additional themed sets can be purchased for $.99. Kids earn stars as the progress through the levels of this program. Those stars can be used to purchase things to decorate their rooms. I think little ones would love this feature. The program also allows you to have 4 different players.

Puzzle Box has 3 different levels with 4 to 24 piece puzzles.

Word Box has three levels that teach letter sounds and letter names. In level one, letter sounds are given as the child moves upper case letters into place to form an animal name. Letter hints are shown. Level two also works with letter sounds but this time it uses lower case letters with only color hints are given. Neither of these levels actually names the letter. At level three, kids are expected to spell the word with the letter tiles – no hints. Letters are named  – no letter sounds are given. The phonics used in this program is not perfect. Some of the letter combinations in this app are incorrectly “chunked.” Word chunks are letters that go together to make one sound  – combinations such ch, th, ck, ay, er, or, oo, ou, ow, etc. I was particularly bothered that “le” was chunked at the end of whale and “ke” was chunked at the end of snake. The most important letter relationships in both of those words is between the a & e. I wish the app would have focused on that important relationship. There was also some inconsistency of letter sounds. Since our 26 letters combine in so many ways to make 40+ sounds, it would be especially challenging to write a phonics app. I am interested to see what other phonics apps offer.

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 🙂