“Magnetic Alphabet for iPad” is an Ipad app designed like the toy every kid enjoyed playing with – the magnetic board with letters and numbers magnets. This toy has been updated for the iPad to include both lower and upper case letters, numbers, various shapes and even grammar magnetics so now you can write full sentences out correctly. There are also six different colors to choose from. You can also save your work to your iPad or share it on Facebook.

I am pleased that you can use all the characters over and over again because to spell out my son’s full name, we need multiples of some letters, and this is difficult with the original toy. My son, 2.5 years, really enjoys spreading out the different pieces on the board as we work on phonics and has taken my lead, now choosing “m’s” for mom and “d’s”  for dad, telling me he is spelling these words.

It is nice that there are apps like this for parents who prefer their kids to play with traditional, battery-free toys while still embracing the new technology of the iPad. Plus, there are no pieces to lose or pick up off the floor!

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“Interactive Alphabet for iPad – ABC Flash Cards” is a new app that teaches letters, words and cause and effect for even the youngest players. It is highly interactive and in a word: Awesome.

This app opens up with a page of letters, bright and bold. After choosing a letter, you move to the interactive page. You hear the name of letter and the corresponding word being illustrated, and you can tap on these words to repeat. Each page has lots of discoveries to make, both with sounds and moving images. The navigation of this app is also very intuitive, and you can either move back and forth among the letters or go back to the main alphabet to choose your favorites. Having three music choices to choose from is also a nice touch, each of them being upbeat and fun, buy you can also turn off the music if you desire.

With so much to tap on, my 2 1/2 year old son just loves exploring this app, and it holds his attention like no other that he plays with. From finding and opening letters left in a mailbox for “mail” to playing a xylophone for “x,” the developers really have an understanding for what interests my son. I love this app myself; even the youngest kids will appreciate the cause and effects from all that tapping.

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“Meritum Paint Pro” is a creative art application that can turn the most basic scribbles into swirling psychedelic works of art. The use of the app is simple: just draw on the blank background and watch your design begin to morph, swirl, change color, and begin to fan out all over the screen. There are many options to choose from to control how the patterns develop and what colors to use. You can also change the background to a photo of your choice.

My son (2.5 years old) really loves to paint using this app. He will scream, “I made this for you … I made this for you,” every time the color changes, watching as his work takes on a life of its own. He loves to shake my iPhone, saving a copy of the current screen to the camera roll. The sound of a shutter clicking and the feel of vibrations are very satisfying to him, leaving me having to delete hundreds of photos from my camera roll.

I think this app would be a hit with anyone creative. Adults will appreciate the multitude of options there are to control every aspect of how their designs are created. Kids will simply love the ease of use and the beauty that they can create at the flick of a finger.

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“Colortoons” is a nice coloring book app for young children. Consisting of four different themes and now twenty four animals to choose from, kids can either use “paint brush” to paint with their finger much like a traditional coloring book or with the “paint bucket” mode where they can fill in shapes with the tap of a finger. There is also a blank page for kids to draw on free-hand. You are able to save the finished page to your photos, but parents can also disable this if they desire.

My son is not a “keep inside the lines” kind of kid, but at 2.5 years, his fine motor skills are still being developed, and sometimes his fingers don’t do what he wants them to do, so for now he mainly chooses the “paint bucket” setting to color in the animals. I do wish there was an “erase” button because sometimes my son will ask me to remove a mistake if he switches over to “paint brush” mode. When I am not able to, he can get frustrated and lose interest. I do like that both the “paint brush” and “paint bucket” features are available, as well as a blank page for him to draw on.

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The app merges two or more faces to create a hybrid face based on the features of the input photos, which can be taken from within the app or selected from the iphone library. Up to six input photos can be selected. Resulting photos can be saved and shared via MMS or email. Faces are divided into six components: eyes, nose, eyebrows, mouth, chin and hair. Mix mode allows the user to shuffle through features or arrange them at will. Play mode will show the user a face and challenge him to rebuild it based on the available features, challenging the player to utilize facial recognition skills.

This all is a great concept, but achieving good results is very difficult in practice. Pictures must have exactly the same lighting and scale to merge effectively. Getting kids to sit still long enough for an unblurred front face shot was more challenging than I had imagined.

Pretty fun, with the caveats mentioned above, I recommend.

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Monster Scribbles is a charming little storybook app about a little boy named Duncan who is obsessed with monsters. He draws them in his sketch book and hopes to dream of them as he falls asleep. One night, Duncan woke up in the middle of the night to see a monster right in his room! The monster, named Monster Scribbles, proceeds to leaf through Duncan’s monster sketch book and magically makes Duncan’s sketch book monsters come alive. He then teaches Duncan to do the same by focusing the power of his imagination on the monsters.

The narration is clear and crisp male voice. Settings include narration on/off, English or Spanish languages, page turn delay, auto-turn, resume at cover or on page left, and sound effect volume. A table of contents in the form of story panels appears at the bottom of the screen when the center of the screen is tapped.

The story is short and paced well enough to capture my the attention of my four-year old, who has taken to drawing monsters in the hopes that he can imagine them into existence so they will visit him in his room!

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“Let’s Bead Friends” is an application that lets you design your own friendship bracelets and email them to friends, post to Facebook, or add them to your jewelry box.  This app is intuitive and easy to use. There are five basic shapes as well as a multitude of colors and designs to choose from.  When you are done beading, you can add a message charm such as “miss you” or customize your own and then send the bracelet on its way. 

I did not know if my 2.5 year old son’s attention would hold, but he really enjoys this app.  After taking a moment to show him how everything works, he took over designing his own beads and the stringing of his bracelet. “Mom, I’m good as this,” my son said, smiling.  It’s really fun to see what shapes, colors, and designs he likes to choose, and he enjoys the sound effects and sparkles that play when your bracelet is done. There is also a button to tap to add more “fairy dust,” and he taps this button often, saying “it’s pretty.” I would recommend this app to any child who is into crafts but also to crafty adults.

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This is a very simple and unadorned but quality little child’s xylophone app. A xylophone is pictured floating above a landscape of green grass and blue sky. When touched, the keys darken briefly and the phone emits a tinny note. The keys are very responsive, and multiple notes can be blended. For all of its simplicity, my four-year old became quite engaged with it; it occupied him quite nicely during a forty minute car ride, and he even composed a short little piece while trying to figure out how to play the theme from “Superman”, his latest obsession..

I don’t believe these types of apps should be substituted for actual musical instruments, but as an introductory tool and to whet the appetite of children for musical education, I believe they can provide a useful “value-added” role. Just make sure you follow up with a real Xylophone.

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This interactive coloring book allows the child to select among five coloring themes (outer space, cars, garden, sea life, and education). Each theme has 4-5 coloring pages from which to choose, such as letters, rocketship, firetruck, or flowers. The child can select the page for a grade or no grade. Higher grades are given to pictures that use a variety of colors, are completely colored, and use stickers. The rocketship my four-year old colored received a B+ (points off for missing colors and only a few stickers, I guess.) The child can also choose a frame to enclose the picture. The photo can then be saved to the photo gallery. A plus sign in the upper right corner allows the child to zoom in and out, better enabling the coloring of small spaces. Coloring itself consists of touching a color from the color palette to select the color, then touching a space within the picture, which is then filled with the selected color. An spot-eraser and a one-touch full page eraser are also available.

I prefer coloring books that allow the child to move his finger back and forth, but overall this is a good coloring game with enough flexibility and depth to hold a child’s attention and keep him coming back.

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Most “educational” apps I come across build skills for predominately left-brained thinkers. In my experience, most of the lessons culture systematic, analytical, and logical thinking, and there isn’t much available for those looking to exercise their imaginative and creative, right-brained thinking skills. “Faces iMake…” is a unique application that offers an opportunity for both children and adults to explore their artistic side by making a face collage art using a variety of different materials. To play, you can choose from 20 different face shapes, 150 objects, and you can layer and rotate objects. I found the collage object choices to be quite satisfying and they were easy to navigate on the iPhone screen. My initial pieces of artwork weren’t so great, but as I played, I gained confidence and started to create faces I was proud to save in my photo gallery. The app also offers the option to assign faces to contacts, or to share via Facebook or email. The only negative about his application is that it appears (based on iTunes feedback) to be plagued by a bug that crashes the users idevice during use. Fortunately, I didn’t experience this problem, but it’s something to be aware of and is the reason for many poor user feedback scores.

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