My daughter, who is now two and a half, has been using a tablet for almost one year now. Initially I bought her a throw away android powered tablet (http://www.ishantalks.com/2011/08/android-powered-tablet-for-less-than.html ) which she outgrew in a few months as the selection of interesting games available for the Android platform was not that extensive. Then I decided to buy myself a new iPad (http://www.ishantalks.com/2011/08/apple-vs-android-how-tide-is-changing.html) which gave myself and my daughter a whole new platform to interact on. However, I dare not call it “my iPad” now as she has claimed exclusive access to it when I’m at home. So I thought I’d try and make the best out of this new platform by downloading some interesting and interactive games which we can play together. Win-Win!
After spending countless hours in the App store looking for educational games for toddlers and after downloading around fifty or so trial versions, I’ve finally managed to identify a few games which are both fun and interactive enough for both of us to play together. Although I paid small amounts of money (always less than $2.00) to get the full versions for most, I did also mange to find some free ones which are absolutely fantastic. One good thing about all of these games is that they come as a “Free Trial” where you can install them for free and try them out with your kid before making the purchase.
Shapes
This was one of the first games we played on the iPad. It is a superb game which taught her numbers, letters of the alphabet, shapes and colors. There is a teacher’s voice in the background giving the child instructions on what to do. It even rewards them with a sticker. But, by far the coolest thing about this game is that it keeps track of your child’s learning activities. As such you as a parent can check where your kid is strong and where he/she is weak. For example, I found that my daughter is scoring 100% in shapes, letters and numbers but is scoring around 40-60% in colors. So we now put in extra effort to teach her how to distinguish between colors. There are many other packages available such as animals, vehicles, fruits, vegetables etc. for download as well. You can download more and more packages as your kid progresses. The only downside is that some of the packages are more suitable for countries in North America. For example the “animals” package only has animals from North America. This becomes a bit tricky for kids from other parts of the world. Having said that, this is a great game!
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
This game is awesome and has become my daughter’s favorite. It has a sing song section as well as great activities such as matching pairs to test memory skills, puzzles, problem solving activities and activities to enhance motor skills (or finger skills in using the iPad).
Kids Song Collection
This one is the most fun for both of us. It is a karaoke type game where you and your child can sing along popular nursery rhymes with the game. There are also interactive animations which the child can touch such as the farm animals in “Old McDonald” where the dogs bark and the cows moo. My daughter sings along for hours at a time in her sweet little voice.
Jake’s Pirate School
If your kid is "hooked" (get it!) on the Disney Junior channel then there are two cartoons that he/she will love. One is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the other is Jake and the Never Land Pirates. The good news is that there are two excellent games available for the iPad for both these cartoons.
The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse game is a high definition game which is very interactive. However, it is quite large and eats up most of your resources. The Jake’s Pirate School on the other hand is relatively light and provides great levels of interactivity. Looking at it closely, it is a great game for your child to practice dexterity in using the iPad by tilting it to move the ship Bucky, play musical instruments in the band class, move the spy glass in the map and spy glass class; and fly around in the pixie dust class. At the end of each section, your child will love collecting the gold doubloons.
Drawing Book and Coloring Book
These games are exactly what they say on the tin without the mess of drawing paper, coloring books and crayons being left behind. The Drawing Book game allows your child to select colors, patterns, different paper etc. and draw right on the digital iPad canvas. Another neat thing about it is that you are able to save the masterpiece or e-mail it directly to loved ones so that they may consider using it as a desktop wallpaper.
The Coloring Book provides a neat color palette to choose from and quite a few pictures to color. Again, the masterpieces can be saved or e-mailed out. This is one of the activities my daughter loves doing with mommy; and mommy loves the fact that she doesn’t have to clean up afterwards.
Piano School
This application provides a simple keyboard for the child to play piano. The child can play free style or follow the simple chord chart to play great nursery rhymes. My daughter has an actual keyboard as well; However, she somehow prefers to play keyboard on the iPad.
Build a Word
If you have gotten into the habit of watching cartoons with your kid, then you would know about Word World where everything and everyone are made up of actual letters forming words. It also trains kids to use phonics for forming complicated words. The Build a Word application does exactly the same but allows kids to form words by picking letters. Then the letters are strung together to form a word such as “Dog” which comes alive if it’s spelled correctly. It’s amazing how my daughter, who can’t write words yet, can form words correctly on the iPad.
All of these games and more are available through the Apple App store. You just need to spend some time and money finding them, trying them and buying them. Once you get the right games and apps installed, you and your child will have a lot of learning fun on this amazing device. You can figure out how to get them to stop later on!
