One of the newest kids iPhone apps, “Feed Me! Numbers, Colors & Shapes!” is an endless buffet of educational fun. It features fantastic animations of a hungry purple monster who is constantly day dreaming about something — a color, a shape, a number, a pattern – you name it, and this magic little guy can dream it up. The focus of the app is on selecting the appropriate object that matches what the purple monster is dreaming of. Sounds a little complicated, perhaps – but when you see the app, it all makes sense:

Feed Me! Screenshot

When you’ve identified the appropriate object, you drag it over to the monster. If you get it right, the monster eats it, smiles and it’s on to the next day dream. If you need help, you can touch any of the objects to hear an audio description. If you get it wrong, the monster gets a bit of a stomach ache and you have to select again. On and on it goes with a wide variety of objects and concepts. The app keeps track of performance over time on different types of questions, and awards a treasure chest when certain milestones are reached.

Some of the things awards are given out for:
- Answering 6 color questions correctly
- Answering 10 shape questions correctly
- Answering 10 math questions correctly
- Answering “time” questions correctly
- Answering 50 questions correctly

This approach succeeds because kids are consistently rewarded for their learning, while additional milestones remain on the horizon. This helps keep the learning experience fresh over time and provides ongoing motivation to continue to play – and learn.

Another aspect of this app that’s great is the fact that it’s been produced in eight languages with native speakers giving voice to the dreams of the little purple monster on every version. This language crossover makes it perfect for kids that are learning their first, second, or third language. No matter what language the kids speak, it’s easy to love the possibilities that this app opens up for all early language learners.

One feature request for any updated versions – it would be nice if an additional “mode” existed that allowed kids (or parents) to select a specific type of question. The random mode is great, but for my toddler some of the pattern-based questions are a little more than she’s ready to handle, and it would be nice to be able to focus in on the shape, color and number questions which are a better match for her development level. Likely many kids could benefit from this ability to focus on specific subject matter or difficulty level.

One other note – part of the fun of watching my daughter play with these apps is getting to see what happens when she rapidly touches everything on the screen in an effort to understand the dynamics of the interface of a particular app. In the English version of this app, rapid fire touching on some of the objects in the pattern questions leads to several longer audio files all playing at the same time and a bunch of gibberish playing. Not the end of the world, and definitely not a reason to skip this app — but something that should probably be cleaned up in future versions.

Those two notes aside, this app is highly recommended. It’s a great educational experience that will engage kids over time and hold their interest while they learn. If you want to see it in action, you can check out a video demo of the app here.

If you’d just like to get it in the store, it’s available for $1.99.

Related posts:

1. App Review: Teach Me Toddler
2. Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps
3. iPad App Review: My Numbers

It’s easy to love the App Store, but I do have one frustration – it lumps in kids learning apps with all educational apps, including those aimed at goals such as teaching Korean to businessmen and logic to prospective lawyers. In my mind, this makes it harder for developers to share their kid-specific content, and harder for parents to find quality apps. Someday, we hope, Apple will find a way to display kids educational apps in their own category within the app store. Until then, we’ll keep you updated on great options when looking for learning apps just for the kids.

Top Kids iPhone Apps in the App Store

Wheels On Bus

1. Wheels On The Bus
Price: $0.99
Description: Created by parents, Wheels on the Bus is a fun, interactive musical book, based on the popular children’s song. Come aboard the bus to spin the wheels, open and close the doors, swish the wipers, pop some bubbles, make a dog bark, and much more!
Read a Review
Get It From The Store

Cute Math

2. Cute Math
Price: $1.99
Description: Your little one can count baby penguins, pick the right amount of apples to put in a basket, move some happy birds around to solve addition problems, and drop apples off a tree to solve subtraction problems.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Toddler Flashcards

3. Toddler Flashcards
Price: $0.99
Description: Toddler Flashcards has cards to teach children the names of animals, foods, things – as well as advanced stuff like the alphabet or numbers. Over 200 images, text in English, French and Spanish.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Voice Toddler Cards

4. Voice Toddler Cards
Price: $0.99
Description: A collection of talking flashcards. Cards speak in English and Spanish. You can also add your own voice to any flashcard.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Preschool Adventure

5. Preschool Adventure
Price: $0.99
Description: Contains simple activities parents can do with their toddlers: ocean colors, space shapes, monkey body, farm sounds, animal matching, dot-to-to numbers.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Word Magic

6. Word Magic
Price: $0.99
Description: A picture is shown and and kids select the missing letter for the word shown in the picture.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Five Little Monkeys

7. Five Little Monkeys
Price: $0.99
Description: Little Monkeys jump on the bed to music — kids can build counting and math skills by taking the monkeys on and off the bed. Interactive objects teach concepts like on/off, open/close and more.
Read a Review
Get It From The Store

ShapeBuilder

8. Shapebuilder
Price: $0.99
Description: Shape Builder educates & entertains your little one with easy to move shapes that snap into place on top of silhouette puzzles. Real images are revealed when the puzzle is complete.
Read a Review
Get It From The Store

Letter Tracer

9. Letter Tracer
Price: $0.99
Description: LetterTracer is an educational tool that helps preschoolers and other pre-reading children trace and paint letters and number shapes. The exposure to letters and numbers helps prepare children for reading and writing.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Pick A Letter

10. Teach Me Toddler
Editor’s Choice
Price: $0.99
Description: Teach Me Toddler helps toddlers learn letter names, letter phonics, numbers, shapes and colors.
Read A Review
Get It From The Store

Suzy Dress Up

11. Suzy Dress Up
Price: $0.99
Description:Create and customize Suzy’s wardrobe and accessories with options including: hat, shoes, jewelry, purses, pets, glasses, hairstyle, eyes, mouth, skin color, wings, costumers and more.
Read A Review
Get It From The Store

PopMath Basic Math

Animal Memory Match

Best of Eye Spy

Flash for Kids

Letters A to Z

Coloring Book

abc PocketPhonics

Math Flash Cards

Lady Bug Tree

Let us know — we’ll be putting together a few other Top 20 lists in the coming weeks, but next time not based on sales.

Do share your favorites.

[Editor's Note: Descriptions listed in this article are adapted from the info provided by developers on iTunes. Our take on the apps can be found in the relevant reviews -- linked from above as available]

Related posts:

1. App Review: Teach Me Toddler
2. App Review: ABC Animals – Talking Alphabet Cards for Kids
3. APP REVIEW: Chinese4Kids

The tale of a kid asking their parent for a trinket is an age-old story, but lately I’ve found myself living the digital version of it — my daughter Emma is two, and she has recently taken to grabbing my iPhone, navigating to the app store and handing it to me with an expectant declaration of “NEW!”

I cringe less when she asks for a new app than when she wants a glass of Coke, a bit of chocolate or some other indulgence. Many of the apps help her learn, challenge her, and occupy her. A new one is much cheaper than a trip to Toys R Us or Target. And as a parent desperate for a moment of sanity, the apps are a godsend for me. They are always around, whether you’re at the doctor’s office, in the car, or at home.

Some of them she loves, some of them bore her quickly, and some are just too demanding for a two year-old. But by and large they are an entertaining and educational part of her rhythm.

As for me, it’s fascinating to watch her shape her concepts about how to interface with a machine and what you can do with one. It’s a computer – wait – it’s a phone – wait – it’s a camera, it’s a stereo, it’s a map – and on it goes… When I was a kid, music came on vinyl, stories happened in books, and code lived inside of my Commodore-64. She has more flexible ideas about where content comes from and how you can play with it.

I do believe that acquiring this digital fluency early will prepare her for the world she will live in, and yet still will admit to the occasional concern regarding the amount of screen time she gets at such a young age.

But my bottom line is that as long as she’s learning, having fun and it’s part of a balanced life, then it’s a good thing.

Check it….

And if you happen to be looking for a new app, you can get the one Emma is playing with here..

Related posts:

1. App Review: Teach Me Toddler
2. Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps
3. Emma’s Favorite Apps

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.

Related posts:

1. Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps
2. App Review: FirstWords: At Home
3. App Review: Teach Me Toddler

Teach Me Toddler is definitely one of my daughter’s current favorite apps.  The app is pretty straightforward – there’s a talking mouse that asks kids to identify a letter, number, shape, or color from among a few options.  After the initial set-up (parental supervision required ) you get a screen like this when you open the app:

Pick A Letter

Pick A Number

The interface is easy and intuitive for a two-year old to grasp and the talking mouse is always at the ready in case the kiddies need a bit of help remembering what they’re supposed to be looking for.  For kids, it’s a fun game to find the right answer.  Moreover, the app provides immediate audio and visual feedback that lets them know if they found the right choice.  Emma typically punctuates her successes by showing me the phone and exclaiming, “YAY!!”, when she gets a correct answer.  Like I said, she loves it.  

For my part, I love the fact that the app keeps track of her performance over time, allowing me to to view at a glance what she’s doing well with and what she might need more help on.  

Maybe we need to work on colors?

Pretty good with numbers...

The stats are pretty detailed — providing letter-by-letter, number-by-number, and shape-by-shape results on her performance.  



Another cool part about the app is that it has a fun little interlude that rewards kids with stickers for correct answers.  

Great Job! Pick a sticker....

Stickers On The Beach

After answering three questions correctly, the mouse awards a sticker of the child’s choice, which can be dragged around and placed on a rather pleasant looking beach scene.  

The combination of great learning activities, fun rewards, and performance tracking make this app a great choice for any parent looking to add another kid-friendly app to their phone. You can get it here.

Related posts:

1. Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps
2. APP REVIEW: Chinese4Kids
3. APP Review: Letters A to Z