5 fun apps for kids and families
— -- From playing with your veggies to swinging an adorable color-changing chameleon around a garden of flowers, this roundup of kid apps has something for everyone. Two of the five apps are free. Some are simple enough for preschoolers, and the rest can be enjoyed by kids (and adults) of all ages. All five are new to the iTunes app store.
FREE APPS
Squiggles!
From Lazoo Worldwide, Inc, best for age 2-5, Free for iPad.
Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)
Perfect for the toddler who is just starting to make his or her mark on the world, "Squiggles!" encourages kids to draw squiggly lines on the screen. After drawing on top of sheep or behind a car and then pushing the "Go" button, the child's squiggles come to life through animation. Children will watch their squiggly lines turn into sheep's wool or the exhaust of a moving car. There are 14 drawing pages to animate with your finger-created living ink; and you can even take your photo and "squigglify" it. This app has a huge "Wow" factor, as it encourages little ones to try new things. By drawing these squiggles that come to life, kids feel empowered. The app also includes an adorable, interactive read-aloud story about imaginatively drawing squiggles to save the day. If you have a preschooler, don't miss this one.
Awesome Eats
From Whole Kids Foundation, best for ages 6-up, Free for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad.
Rating: 3.5 stars
It's rare to find such a wholesome, clean and high quality app in the "free" part of the apps marketplace. "Awesome Eats" is a wacky sorting game that makes playing with vegetables fun. But it also teaches kids about healthy eating by introducing them to over 50 vegetables and grains, and delivering cute nuggets of information (such as flavoring drinks by adding frozen fruits) in between the puzzles. Produced by the Whole Kids Foundation (a non-profit associated with the Whole Foods Markets), the game delivers on the mission of engaging "children in making good food choices." Veggies and grains appear on multiple conveyor belts. As they zip by, kids use their fingers to grab hold of the foods so that they can transfer them onto the belt that will drop them into the correct boxes. These belts go in different directions, and some pause and change directions. Plus there are birds flying by trying to steal your food. All of the veggies have be anthropomorphized making them more fun to play with. With 32 levels, which get progressively faster and wilder to control, kids will have to stay on top of their game to sort the "Awesome Eats."
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PAID APPS
Draw and Tell HD - by Duck Duck Moose
From Duck Duck Moose, best for ages 3-10, $1.99 for iPad (iPhone/ iPod Touch version is $1.99 but lacks some of the features)
Rating: 4 stars
An intuitive drawing studio for kids, "Draw and Tell HD" let's kids create artwork that they can talk about, and then it saves both the artwork and their narration to your photo album. And if they place stickers in their painting, kids can then move them around while narrating to create animation in the drawing; and all of the movement is captured as a short video with your child's voice narrating. For the youngest artist, the coloring pages offer one-touch filling of color. Each time your toddler touches an area on the page, the color changes. For older artists, the program offers blank pages with paint brushes, colored pencils, markers, stickers and patterns which are easy to access from the bottom and side of the screen. You can even layer stencils to create artwork that looks like it has been created by the Spirograph toy. This drawing app is a marvel in design from the ease of touching the screen to create art to the wonderful way it encourages kids to become animators of their own stories.
Munch Time HD
From Gamistry, best for ages 7-up, $1.99 for iPad. (iPhone/ iPod Touch version is 99 cents)
Rating: 4 stars
Reminiscent of "Cut the Rope," "Munch Time HD" is a physics puzzler where you control the adorable chameleon Munch on his quest to find lunch. The key play mechanic is the chameleon's tongue which can latch onto colored flowers like a grappling hook. By swinging from his tongue, Munch can move around his environment to find a specific bug to eat, thereby ending the level. Before feeding Munch the desired bug, you will need to collect three stars floating in the environment. However, Munch can only stick to flowers that are the same color as his skin. To change colors, you must figure out ways to swing Munch so that he runs into fluttering colored bugs. With 63 puzzles spread over three worlds, "Munch Time HD" delivers a lot of lizard-swinging fun.
TwinGo!
From Chillingo Ltd, best for ages 8-up, $.99 for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad.
Rating: 4 stars
Great for teaching kids logical thinking, "TwinGo!" is a series of puzzles about rolling two ball-shaped characters in tandem over an irregular floating grid. The two characters are the weather twins Fuyu and Natsu, who have somehow lost the stars that grace the sky. It is up to you to help the twins retrieve the missing stars by collecting three at a time in each of 90 puzzles spread over three unique worlds. The twins always move together; so if you roll one up one space, the other will do the same. But since the puzzles are played on irregular gridded platforms floating high in the sky, you have to be careful not to roll one twin off the edge of the platform while rolling the other over the star you are trying to collect. Walled spaces provide you the means of separating the twins and keeping them from rolling into game-ending oblivion. Cleverly, the game comes with an undo button, because these puzzles will take some trial-and-error before you will roll the twins onto the colored launch pads that send them careening to the next level. "TwinGo!" is a two-time treat for the whole family.
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Gudmundsen is editor of Computing With Kids magazine ( http://www.computingwithkids.com/). Contact her at techcomments@usatoday.com.