Hot Dots Jr.

Hot Dots Jr. was created by Educational Insights and aims to teach kids colors, letters, shapes, numbers, and patterns. It includes Ace the Talking, Teaching Dog. I like the idea of have a virtual "teacher" so let's see if Ace delivers. Price: $0.99

Device Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.0 or later

Developmental Requirements: In general, the activities assess appropriate skills for preschoolers and kindergartners. The app basically just takes kids through rounds of multiple-choice questions like, "Match the uppercase and lowercase letters" or "Which completes the sequence?" (By the way, using the words completes the sequence is too hard! Many little kids do not know the word sequence or even pattern. Many assessments use the phrase, "What comes next?" instead.) The difficulty in each round ranges, especially with letters, but there's no setting to select specific tasks. Some will be too easy and some will be too hard, but it goes fast enough where it's maybe ok. But it would be nice if parents and kids could select specific tasks to work on, or at least instead of a total score, it actually broke down scores by task. The activities remind me of actual assessments, but with less information.

Where I've set myself up for disappointment is with this whole Ace the Talking, Teaching Dog. To me, that means that Ace provides good instruction and feedback to help kids understand their answers - correct or incorrect. However, Ace does not offer anymore feedback than most apps, giving approval when correct, and maybe a bark when wrong. A "bow wow" tells me nothing. Rating: 3/5 (aim for around 4 years).

Balance: The tasks are very straightforward. The voiceover is clear and repeats the question. Sometimes, especially in the case of "which completes the sequence," kids who are unfamiliar with the tasks may need the prompt repeated, but also rephrased. Rating: 4/5

Sustainability: There doesn't seem to be a goal here, you get a score at the end of each round, but nothing else to really keep kids going, unless they just like answering questions. Rating: 3/5

Parental Involvement: Given the structure of the tasks, this is where I think it needs the most improvement. While its good to just have kids practice, there also needs to be instruction involved for them to improve and there is none within the tasks themselves. So what it needs is to provide parents with the knowledge of what and how to help their kids. Rating: 3/5

Total: 13 out of 20 - 3 stars

Disclosure - I received this app for free for review purposes

Learning Games for Preschool to Kindergarten

Learning Games for Preschool to Kindergarten was created by Agnitus and includes a variety of basic learning games tapping into color, numbers, letters, shapes, memory, and sorting. Seems to cover a lot and for free! Price: Free

Device Requirements: Compatible with iPad.Requires iOS 5.0 or later.

Developmental Appropriateness: I think the most important thing for an app that aims to cover an age range, especially 2-5 is progression. So much happens in these years that it really take a lot of consideration to design an app that adequately addresses the needs of kids at each age. While the games here do progress in difficulty, it does so very gradually. Overall, it's more fit for kids at the younger spectrum. It starts off with a lot of matching - even for colors and letters where it's not really recognition, but just matching, which does not do much for me. While it gradually takes away some of the cues to make it more of a recognition task, I still think these games are too easy for the older spectrum. Most kindergartens know their colors, letters, and numbers (which does not go up very high). Also, there is no setting, so a 5 year-old would have to go through over 200 rounds to get to their skill level. Trust me, I went through that many activities! I will say that the activities are cute and fast-paced though. But overall, I think this app is in desperate need of a difficulty setting, a progression that's more adaptive to each child's performance and more challenging levels. Rating: 3/5 (aim for 3 years).

Balance: The features are cute yet not distracting and offer basic feedback for correct and incorrect. It could go further in probably more instructional feedback. One annoying thing I will point out that I hope is a glitch is on the search game, if you are stuck, it continuously says, "One more..." over and over. Shush and let me concentrate! Rating: 4/5

Sustainability: While the game offers a bonus sticker world and a shower game (not sure how engaging this one is), the very slow progression could still get very boring. Rating: 3.5/5

Parental Involvement: There's a nice "report card" for parents that shows the skills covered, total time, age progression and some overall progress. It also shows what curriculum themes have been covered, but the app itself does not address all the themes shown. Parents can share their child's progress on facebook. This is a nice start to getting parents involved. Rating: 4/5

Total: 14.5 out of 20: 3 stars.

Disclosure: I received this app for free for review purposes.

Alien Buddies

Alien Buddies was created by Artgig Studio and consists of matching, connect the dots, and puzzle games for preschool and kindergarteners. Aliens help your child to learn to match letters, numbers, colors, and shapes. Price: $1.99

Device Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.2 or later

Developmental Appropriateness: Ok, let's start with the matching games. Here, you have to put the alien who is a specific letter, number, color, or shape to the matching alien ship. The aliens are funny, and they give appropriate feedback. Is it a successful matching game? Yes. Although it does not actually say that this is a game about learning numbers, letters, shapes, or colors, one would assume that that is the intent. Is this an effective game for learning this material? Probably not. There are two stages - one where you see the target, let's stick with number, on the ship and the numbers on the aliens. You can then tap on the ship and aliens, and they will say the corresponding number. So you both see and hear the number on both what you have to choose and where you have to put it. In the second stage, they take the visual cue off the ship, so now you can hear the target number, and then see AND hear the numbers on the aliens. A little harder, but still, you don't have to actually know your numbers to play this game - you can still match them by hearing it. Sure, I think maybe this game might help kids who are already learning this material and this is just making it all more familiar, but I don't think this game can stand alone. Plus, I would hope that a kindergartener, and even older preschooler would be able to match in this way, making this app too easy for them. Why not go the extra step? The next level could simply be that you hear the number on the ship, and see the numbers on the aliens - only. That would be ""identification," a very real and frequently used task in preschools. 

With the connect the dots game, the numbers are always in order. Given that you can choose the difficulty with many aspects of this app, why not have a level where the numbers are mixed, to truly challenge a child to learn the sequence of numbers? As is, you're really just going in a circle.


The puzzles are regular jigsaw puzzles. The aliens characters are cute, making these puzzles appealing. Finally, the stickers activity, is not really a task or anything - it's where you get all your sticker rewards from the other activities and make pictures with them. Yes, you can get a little creative, but "creative free play", "fine motor skills" and "builds learning confidence" is overselling it a bit, isn't it? Rating: 2/5 (aim for around 3 years)


Balance: I think the aliens provide a good balance of silliness and appropriate feedback without being distracting. The connect the dots game has small numbers, thus may require "fine motor skills" so the younger kids may need a little help. Rating: 4/5


Sustainability: Again, I like the aliens and I think kids will too. However, at least the matching and connect the dot activities are too easy for the target age group so I don't think they will keep coming back for long once they've gotten a enough stickers. Rating: 3/5


Parental Involvement: There's not much for parents to do here. What more prompting could they possibly provide that the game hasn't already? Rating: 2.5/5


Total: 11.5 out of 20: 2 stars




Disclosure: I received this app for free for review purposes.