apple iphone magazine: 8 iPhone Apps to Get when Traveling with Preschool Age Kids

Friday, February 13, 2009

8 iPhone Apps to Get when Traveling with Preschool Age Kids

Article provided by iPhoneAndKids.com

Traveling with young kids can be very difficult. Many of us parents know that the more entertainment you have for them is better. Especially if you are in for a long plane or a car ride, loading up your iPhone or iPod Touch with your preschooler's favorite movies is a must. If you are going to hand your precious iPhone to your kid, you may consider getting a good case with a stand, which I list few of them here. It is also smart to download some entertaining and educational apps for your kids. Here I list a few of them. Most of these are my kid's favorites, I also included few coloring apps as well. Let me know if you have additional suggestions!

Create A Cartoon Face Cost: $1.99 Age: 2 years and up This app lets you generate cartoon sketches by selecting a face type, hair style, eyes, mouth, nose, etc. Without any skill, you can create quite entertaining cartoon faces. My son loves this app, he giggles constantly when playing with it. You can get the app and view the other reviews here.
Dotty Shapes Cost: $0.99 Age: 2 years and up This app displays numbers and you can connect them in order and create shapes. Connecting dots is a popular drawing game for young kids, so it is nice to see one such app for iPhone. However, it would have been nice if the app also supported drawing letters, numbers via connecting dots. To get the application from iTunes app store and see other's reviews click here.
Koi Pond Cost: $0.99 Age: 2 years and up This is one of the most unique apps on the iTunes store. The app shows a fish pond and when you touch the screen the fish swim away from your finger. You can hold your finger on the screen and fish will come and nibble on your finger. The app is entertaining but the attention span of a young kid playing with this app is not very high. View additional reviews and get the app here.
Peekaboo Barn Lite Cost: Free Age: 1.5 years and up Kids love animals. This app shows a barn and plays an animal sound. Then the user tries to guess the animal and taps on the barn to see what the animal actually is. The graphics are very nice, kid friendly. You can download Peekaboo Barn Lite here.
Animal Farm Lite Cost: free Age: 1.5 years and up This app shows pictures of 3 animals, plays an animal sound and asks user to find the animal who makes that sound. The quality of audio recordings can be improved. Nevertheless my kid enjoyed this app very much. Get the app and see other reviews here.
Coloring Book Cost: 0.99 Age: 2 years and up When I got my kid an iPod Touch, I tried to find good coloring apps. They were not any at the time but now parents have at least several options. Graphics are nice in this app but user interface, color selection, etc, are not very intuitive, especially for a young kid. You can download the Coloring Book app and view additional reviews here.
Color Me Cost: 0.99 Age: 2 years and up This coloring application lets you do free drawing (instead of filling regions) over the drawings. I really like the color selection method with crayons but I do not like the fact that the initial screen for the 'drawing selection' contains only titles, not the image thumbnails. You can download this app here.
Memory Match Kids Cost: $1.99 Age: 3 years and upMemory match game for kids. While this is better than having bunch of memory match cards lying around, it had too many cards for young kids to start matching successfully. It is even challenging for me. A better version could be where you can set the number of cards and make it less or more challenging based on age. Graphics and animations are quite pleasing. Click here for download and other users' reviews.
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