App Review: ShapeBuilder

ShapeBuilder teaches an important lesson – sometimes there’s nothing more important in life than putting all of the pieces together. Granted, this probably isn’t what my daughter is thinking about while dragging puzzle pieces around – but it’s occurred to me more than once as we play with the app together. Like most successful kids apps, there’s a simple concept at the core of ShapeBuilder: put together a jigsaw puzzle by dragging the shapes around and then watch as they magically transform into a nicely animated image.

An empty puzzle

Puzzle In Progress

One great thing about this app – there’s an almost endless series of puzzles so it stays fresh over time. My two year-old daughter does struggle at times trying to drag the pieces into place — but that may just be because she’s a little young for this one. It requires fairly developed fine motor skills to get the pieces into place, as well as more advanced concepts of geometry to identify exactly where the pieces should go. There is a nice pay-off when things do fall into place — nicely animated images appear and you get audio congratulations for your success.

It’s no different, really, than a real-world puzzle – but for younger kids it’s probably important to be actively helping them thru this one because they can get frustrated if left to their own devices. All in all, this app is a great one to have around because I know my daughter will continue to learn from it as she grows.

Interested in checking it out? You can get it here.

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