Top 5 FREE Toddler iPad apps

Since letting Leon play on the iPad I went on a bit of a downloading frenzy choosing from the array of free apps out there for tiny tots. His favourites are as follows:

First Words : Animals
This is actually my favourite as it makes me believe Leon can spell. Letter tiles are scattered around an image and the tot has to drag them to the correct place to spell out a word. The iPad says letter, and tot often repeats after him which is exciting! Free version includes the words cat, bird, keys, cake all of which were some of his first words. Rather simple but cute graphics and has 5 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese) plus English phonics. Try Japanese characters for a laugh. Cat is pronounced "Ne-Ko". Like this one so much will probs upgrade.


Kids Can Match - Animals
Very noisy memory card game with animal sounds and photos. 2 levels on free version. Can get tedious if toddler is determined but rubbish (and animal sounds go on for ages...) but Leon soon got hang of it and played over and over. This is one of the first he goes to if we bring out the iPad. Not sure why really- it does my head in...


Toddler Shapes
Virtual shape sorter with plenty of encouraging "Woohoo!" and "yay!"s along the way to Bizet's Habanera as a backing track.


Talking Tom
Irritating cat that receives a good beating or drinks milk when prodded. Repeats what toddler says to screen resulting in much laughter.


Seek and Find
Refreshingly hand drawn farm scene with a mixture of exciting and rather mundane actions resulting when toddler touches part of the scene. Donkey kicking tree to make apples fall down, pig farting in lamb's face etc! Good for exploring and although it doesn't do much Leon liked it a lot and I suppose it's like an extended lift the flap book and I like it for its simplicity compared to a lot of other apps that are more in your face. Full version is £1.69 and gives 2 extra scenes and other features.

I must admit that I've been hiding the iPad from Leon and don't really use it when I'm wih him as he's now discovered YouTube which equates to endless Fireman Sam, Teletubbies and irritating nursery rhyme videos.

Halloween! y Dia de Los Muertos

Yes, Halloween was a while ago now but I'm finding it tough to keep up with posting!

For me, Halloween has always been fun and about dressing up and visiting neighbours, rather than the 'begging' aspect that a lot of people get annoyed with. I find it sad that there are fewer and fewer homes opening their pathways to trick or treaters. Living in a commercial road with no front door of my own, we couldn't join in and prepare a basket of goodies for the local ghouls. So I took Leon to my childhood home and paraded along the street, happily crossing other little monsters.

My little pumpkin enjoyed visitng the first few homes and proudly announced his presence with a loud but cute "RAAAARR!!" (they should make some effort to scare!) and delighted in seeing all the other young children in their getup. Of course, he demanded I open his sweets straight away, but I helped him understand that you need to wait until the end. I relented after the 2nd house and let him munch on a Milky Way.

Scary Pumpkins go RAAAARR!

By the fifth house; he'd become wary and didn't want to make his way up a very well decorated, spooky entrance with spiderwebs and candlesticks - but I sort of forced him... he glared questioningly at the lady and didn't like a grown-up opening the door... After that, he was reluctant to visit more houses, especially the one with a hand peeping through the door... so we called it a night. Content with the booty, we had a hot chocolate and went home.

The upside of taking a toddler trick or treating? I got to eat all his sweets ;)

Leon was lucky to have the opportunity to dress up twice! Once for his morning Halloween party then trick or treating in the evening, but we were also invited to Mindshape's launch of Casper's Scare School: Costume Closet, a new iPad and iPhone app (£1.99) mixing and matching different dress up outfits with the aim of increasing object recognition and memory recognition. He certainly picked up the craze of mixing up outfits with his pirate/copper costume!

Mixed Up Dressing Up

Fun times aside, I also celebrated the Mexican Day of the Dead. A time for remembering your loved ones who've died. In Mexico, people make shrines with offerings of their dead's favourite dish, or may cook their favourite meal in their honour with an empty seat for them at the table.

While we didn't do this as well as we should have, I visited a beautiful communal shrine at Hackney City Farm (better outlined here) where my sister and I could write a note to our dad and enjoy the beauty of the candles bouncing off the colourful decorations of mexican papel picado, autumnal harvest, flowers, personal photos, messages and offerings.

Dia de Los Muertos shrine at Hackney City Farm

I'm hoping to see more Day of the Dead exhibitions and shrines when we're in Mexico next week! It's so vivid and crazy I love it. Death is celebrated so differently there.

Bilingual animal madness! Lingo zoo iPad App review

Lingo Zoo £1.49 from iTunes app store (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)
Mindshapes bring us another Super kids' app- this one is an animal puzzle app with a twist. Once completed, each puzzle delights the tot in howling, screeching or yapping the animal sound followed by the spoken name in both English and Spanish. This is perfect for Leon as we're teaching him Spanish and I think that he will benefit in time for our move to Madrid next year.

Designed for 3-5 year olds to improve concentration, attention and spatial skills, I'm impressed that Leon is very able at completing the puzzles. He's ploughed through the 7 levels from the farm, via the woodland and all the way to the jungle. At times he got frustrated if the piece didn't fit into place straight away, and I'd help him a little bit to encourage him that he was correct in choosing where to put the piece- he just needed to drag it a bit slower or with a touch more precision.

Once the levels are completed, the animals react with more animals sounds if touched, and the puzzles can be reset to play again and again without losing access to further levels.



*I received an access code to review this app- but all opinions are mine. It's a fab app and I even bought a download to use at my mum's place!

Mindshapes launch: Hickory Dickory Dock iPad app review

A few months ago, I disliked the idea of letting Leon play with my iPhone- dismissing it as bad for his little brain and worried that he'd call/text/email someone he shouldn't, or delete a precious app. And my recently-won iPad? I'd hide it from him worried he'd toddler-bash it like my long-gone MacBook Air. But now, at 21 months, he's grown up so much and I trust him to be careful and well, he's become a little master of the touch-screen gadgets. I also saw the array of toddler-friendly apps and decided this would be the ultimate distraction for an upcoming long-haul flight. Truth be told, there were so many to choose from, I was a bit lost. Leon is familiar with many of the silly (though entertaining) talking cats or animal noises apps but I wasn't sure which ones would actually help him learn something.
Thankfully I was recently invited to the Mindshapes launch event showcasing some top-notch educational apps making learning fun from a very young age. Held at the fantastic Maggie & Rose children's club in Kensington, Leon and I were shown the range of fabulous apps from the developers and it was clear that they were expertly put together with fantastic illustrations and engaging content.

Hickory Dickory Dock £1.99 from iTunes app store (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)
Designed to help little ones learn to tell the time, this brilliantly illustrated app holds a different mini-game for every number on the clock that the player can explore. See what the big purple fluffy mouse gets up to at each number on the clock: from cleaning the dusty clock, lining up the correct weights to retrieve a chunk of cheese, get fed a load of fruit or sing and dance! The animation is really fabulous and it's not surprising when reading that Mindshapes' team members' hail from noted video game developers including EA, Atari, Sega and Eidos Interactive.

I'd recommend it for slightly older children as the objective is to learn numbers and the concept of the clock. However, as you can see, Leon certainly enjoyed discovering the different levels of the app with a concentration span of 10 mins on average.



It looked brilliant on the iPad, but I can imagine that the smaller screen of the iPhone or iPod touch would make it slightly fiddly.

The Mindshapes education expert explained to me how the apps were created with the national curriculum in mind so that they could potentially be used in classrooms across the country- wow! This may be more relevant to the apps aimed for older children such as the arcade-style game Meteor Math (6yrs+) but it's comforting to know there is a deep educational foundation to each app that Mindshare develops. Each one created using their 5 i's: Imaginative, Immersive, Intelligent, Interactive and Intuitive. And while I wasn't sure Leon would 'get' the app he was trying, I was reassured that at this young age, it's all about discovery. Since then, I've been downloading a lot more!