Felt Board is a lovely app for iPad, a charming simulated rendition of a traditional felt board.

I have fond memories of using a felt board as a child, and I was happy to share this experience with my son. Not being crafty enough to create small and intricate pieces of felt myself, I confess that I bought a set from a local craft store on sale for my boy. The felt board was a huge hit, but sadly, even after keeping all the pieces in a zippered bag, the felt board soon became a memory as somehow inexplicably all the pieces vanished even after my son promised to be careful and not lose the pieces, only to randomly find felt bits clinging to clothing and furniture where one least expected to find them.

This digital felt board does not take the place of the traditional activity and cannot replace the magic of children finding out for the first time that this soft fabric sticks to itself without glue or mess, being able to be re-arranged indefinitely. This is a wonderful application, however, for families like mine who simply can’t keep track of all the little pieces or would love to allow their children this experience when traveling or simply out and about as this app, like a classic felt board itself, is a creative and quiet way for children to spend time.

This application is intuitive to use with an abundance of elements to choose from that felt boards in real life would be hard-pressed to include. Nice selections of backgrounds are offered, both basic solid colors as well as landscapes like a beach, ocean view or mountain landscape as well as a theatre, boat, and bedroom scenes. Other backdrops included as well. Like a traditional felt board, the backgrounds are sometimes simple, abstract and effective, and I appreciate the faint soft felt texture seen throughout this app.

Body choices can be made, and as in the classic style, the character pieces are devoid of all details as these can be added later. Six colors can be chosen, including three shades that could roughly represent skin tones of found among a diverse group of people, a nice touch that I would love to see broadened in the future. Do fully explore the selection of hair, beard, mustache and face choices by scrolling through this section with the aid of a scroll bar that unfortunately becomes invisible when not in use – problematic as players may not be aware of the selection of details to choose from within each of these elements that are too numerous to see on any given page.

Parents and teachers of special education children will especially appreciate the different expressions among the face choices such as the placement or shape of the eyebrows and mouth, teaching about these emotional cues along the way.

Cute clothing for all are included, including outfit elements that one may expect for both men and women, as well as plenty of unisex clothing and a few dress-up choices representing knights, a doctor, firefighter and police as well as a Santa suit and astronaut jumpsuit, tux and traditional men’s suit.

Another section consists of all the accessories one could desire such as shoes, mittens, scarves, hats, glasses and extras such as wand, sword, baton or umbrella.

A lovely selection of animals is also included, from butterflies and other insects to traditional farm animals, fantasy creatures and ocean dwellers. Storytellers will appreciate how spider, monkey and speckled frog choices are included to aid in the re-telling of classic stories that involve these characters.

Other objects one may look for to complete their motifs are also thoughtfully included, from flowers, plants and other choices found in nature, to symbols to represent weather, such as sun, moon or rain as well as buildings and other structures which can also be found.

Lastly, letter and number sections are included, each with their own related extras such as punctuation characters, shapes and arrows, which have also been added.

To re-size these elements, pinch or spread of one’s fingers – an element that I appreciate as the fine motor skills of picking up small pieces of felt with one’s fingertips is lost as the swiping of a finger is not as much of a workout for fine motor skills, but the pinching and zooming to re-size can in fact work these same muscles. It is also nice that one can glue down these pieces, aiding in the moving and re-sizing of these characters together as a single unit. Tap the camera icon to take a photo of one’s scene. To remove a piece of felt, simply drag to the recycling bin at the bottom right corner of the page.

I recommend this app to anyone interested in art or craft applications. The selection of felt pieces is wonderful and I enjoy being able to change backgrounds under the other pieces already laid down, something that could never be accomplished with such ease on a traditional board. I can imagine not only a great activity for children, but also in aiding the storytelling for all ages. For these reasons and more, I recommend this app.

Art, By Age Range, By App Feature, Creativity, Just For Fun, Preschool, Primary School, Reviews, Shapes, Toddlers

Draw and Tell HD – by Duck Duck Moose is a creative and fun art app that allows young artists to record personal narration to their finished pieces, including a multitude of art supplies to work with. Both iPad as well as iPhone versions are available.

Children have a choice of expressing themselves by choosing a blank page to begin their art work or choosing a coloring page to work on. Another wonderful function of this app is the ability to choose a photo from the device’s camera roll to use as a background as well.

I enjoy the various backgrounds offered, including brightly colored pages to work on, as well as some fun pattern choices such as colorful stripes and dots as well as classic standard rule of notebook paper and graph paper. I really appreciate the textures found within the single colored background, reminiscent of hand-made decorative paper as well as backgrounds with a marbled watercolor look that I am drawn to.

A vast selection of tools is included, such as a wonderful assortment of stickers including animals and vehicles, letters, numbers and speech bubbles plus more. Personal favorites include the foods and silverware fit for a tea party as well as the hats, mustaches and other details one can add to style members of personal photos being used. It is terrific how easily one can resize these stickers, but my son would also like to be able to flip these stickers, making it possible for these illustrated characters to face each other while talking or even embracing.

A paint brush, pencil and crayon points are included each with 27 shades to choose from, including a rainbow and an interestingly textured glow-in-the-dark choice. I like the inclusion of both pencil-sized eraser as well as a bigger classic pink eraser to remove parts of one’s artwork, and I also enjoy the fun and bright pattern choices one can choose to paint, draw or crayon with, creating these patterns and colors with the swipe of a finger. It would be nice if a few more paint brush sizes could be added in the future as well.

iPad users will have a series of stencils to choose from that can be moved around the page and re-sized. My son really has a lot of fun painting over these stencils, allowing him to create these shapes without having to rely on his free-hand drawing skills – something he still lacks at the age of four. Being able to re-size these stencils is nice and simple even for little hands, but being able to flip these stencils to work with a mirror image would be nice as well.

The selection of coloring book pages is also very nice, including 18 images to choose from. I appreciate the use of “Paint Bucket” mode, allowing one to fill in the spaces found within these pages with the tap of a finger – my go-to mode for working with coloring books, but the lack of “Paint Brush” mode, using a finger to paint with, may disappoint others.

All the same tools can be used to decorate these coloring pages, making an especially nice use of the pattern tool that can be used to fill in the shapes found within these coloring pages for a very nice effect. I was not a huge fan, however, of certain editorial choices having been made for players in terms of color grouping, as more than one area may be colored in at once, such as both tires on a tractor being filled in with a single tap, making it impossible to create different color wheels as well as minimizing the number of areas one can fill in.

Another issue that I found was that certain details such as the eyes, teeth and other details on the included animals remain white and are unable to take color, as does other areas of other objects included in the scenes.

The choices is made for the player to follow a certain logic and maybe some children may find his helpful, but I would love an option to be able to color in all sections of this app individually, allowing animals to not only have colored eyes, but different colored eyes as well if my son wants to be creative this way.

Even with these minor limitations, I really enjoy all the virtual art supplies offered, especially the stickers and stencils, allowing children to have a lot of fun with this app without having a lot of drawing or painting ability.

My son has really enjoyed decorating photos from our iPad both with animal stickers and stencils, creating scenes reminiscent of Mary Poppins or Snow White, allowing him to create images of him interacting with cartoon characters. It is a treat that characters from other Duck Duck Moose apps are available, as are an abundance of other sticker choices.

Saving one’s work is easy, and it is nice that children can return to their pictures to continue on adding more creative details as well. A go-back button is also included – a nice touch users may find helpful as did I.

A very special component of this app is the ability to record narration to finished art projects, emailing them to loved ones or simply saving to preserve a moment in time of one’s children at a specific age. The ability to create personalized parts or letters for friends and family with the inclusion of personalized voice-over is wonderful for children and their adults alike, and it is super-cute how the stickers can be moved around the page as narration is being recorded, possibly as one is telling a story to a distant loved one.

It is also a nice inclusion that if one drags a finger around the image or photo in use, a blue highlight can be seen during the recording and playback of the narration, allowing one to motion to a specific area of the image while telling a story about the picture in question.

It would also have been great, however, if the process of painting or coloring, stenciling and the like could have been recorded, as seeing details appear on the screen could be quite captivating to look at, making wondrous Harold and the Purple Crayons moments possible, allowing children to watch illustrations appear on the page as a story is told.

This is a lovely application that will be of interest to a wide range of ages through grade school and beyond. The possibilities are endless for the creative and artistic projects one can create with this app. Parents and other adults will surely cherish these pieces of art, especially with included narration of little voices captured as precious keepsakes.

I only wish that the process of these creative activities could be captured, as the process may be more important to children than the finished piece, especially if one could record the banter of a parent and child simply enjoying this app together, recording their give-and-take while experiencing all the artistic elements found within this application.

Art, By Age Range, By App Feature, Creativity, Just For Fun, Preschool, Primary School, Reviews, Social, Toddlers

Bartleby’s Book of Buttons Vol. 2 The Button at the Bottom of the Sea is an interesting sequel to the highly thought of app, Bartleby’s Book of Buttons Vol. 1: The Far Away Island, starring Bartleby, button collector and world traveler, who goes on epic adventures as he looks for more buttons to add to his collection.

In this volume, Bartleby’s adventure is an oceanic one as he has been given a tip that strange and exotic buttons may be able to be found on the bottom of the sea.

It is hard to describe this app, but the storyline about this epic adventure is just right for a book primarily made up of a series of mini-games that include pitch-perfect narration.

These puzzles are part reading comprehension as clues needed to be successful are expressed in the text and narration offered on each page. From the buttons to press, to the knobs to turn – even tilting one’s device and more – these puzzles are wonderfully interactive, with a great style and use of color, both in the detailed illustrations as well as in the mechanical elements themselves, really bringing these elements to life.

Seventeen pages are included, and I enjoy how involved some of these interactions are, as well of at times difficult to figure out, needing the use of both hands for some, good for dexterity in general. Some of these puzzles are simple, others make me contemplate looking to see if there were any Game FAQs about this app that I could find online, yet ultimately I was able to solve all of these puzzles myself without too much frustration.

Given that the amount of time spent with this app has a lot to do with how quickly one can solve these puzzles, it is a subjective question as to whether or not this app has enough content to justify the price of this application when not on sale, but the quality here is undeniable, the illustrations are terrific, the story interesting and interactions dynamic and fun. It is worth noting as well that this second volume took me longer to complete than Vol. 1.

Collectable stickers can also be found throughout that can also be printed using AirPrint, as well as Twitted if one so desires, and there are some other bells and whistles such as using iCloud to sinc the progress one makes within this app to multiple devices, as well as being able to connect this app to an HDTV with the use of airplay and Apple TV if one is using an iPad 2.

What I did not like about this app is that this book, Vol. 2, ends with a cliffhanger and a “To Be Continued” note at the last page, something I was not expecting and was disappointed by. I really wish developers would let the public know if one needs to buy installments of an app to finish the story.

I did find, however, that within this app, the included interactions can be enjoyed with their own merits, yet the storyline of this app cannot and it is a shame that people who have spent their time with this book will have to presumably wait for Vol. 3 to be released to get the conclusion of this storybook, assuming that there is not book 4 and so on as well – not an issue with the original Bartleby Book of Buttons.

Having said this, I have enjoyed the interactions within these pages and do look forward to the next volume of this series. It is nice that this app will be of interest to grade school children alone or younger children with the aid of a parent. Readers will need to decide for themselves how much the lack of an ending within Vol. 2 will disappoint their children.

By Age Range, By App Feature, Creativity, Just For Fun, Preschool, Primary School, Puzzle, Reading, Reviews, Stories

The Bravest of Us All is a lovely storybook based on a previously published picture book of the same name.

Told in the first person, this story opens up with younger sister Ruby Jane going into great detail about the bravest sibling she has – older sister Velma Jean, who possesses the confidence to do just about anything, making Ruby Jean feel somewhat ordinary. Things change, however, when their family farm is hit by a tornado and Velma Jean is afraid to go into the basement until Ruby Jane, facing strong winds, comes to Velma Jean’s aid and coaxes her to safety, proving that she is in fact pretty brave herself.

I really enjoy this storybook, appreciating the tall tales told about Velma Jane, making her larger than life then in turn making her all the more human and relatable when her secret is revealed.

Everyone has secrets or foibles that can sabotage them in some ways and I appreciate this this story for developing a complex character who has a secret as well as the tender way that even in the face of danger, sister Ruby Jane demonstrated a strong sisterly bond.

My son is now very much into super-heroes and firemen. I would never begrudge him these interests, but I admire this story for sharing with him a story of an ordinary girl being brave in her own way, as this can also be the start of open-ended conversations about being there for others when help is needed.

The illustrations found within are wonderfully hand-painted and include a vintage style adults will enjoy. The text is written in a country vernacular that children may find cumbersome, especially if reading this book to themselves, but the story makes this children’s book application worth reading.

Nice, simple ambient sound effects are included and I always appreciate an app that is universal, but I did find that within the iPhone version, the text size may be difficult to read because of its scaled down size. I would love to be able to enlarge the words in some way in the future. Narration is included as well, making the small font size less of an issue.

This application contains no interactions – something I sometimes gravitate towards when looking to create a relaxed and calming experience for my son. My son really enjoys this story but I think slightly older children of grade school age and their adults will get a lot out of this story as well, with a nice re-readability factor as once children understand Velma Jean’s secret, the story can be enjoyed from a different point of view – a nice touch that makes this tale worth being purchased by parents as well as teachers.

Art, By Age Range, By App Feature, Language, Preschool, Primary School, Reading, Reviews, Social, Stories

No Dogs Allowed is a charming storybook about a mystical creature, the No-Dog, seen only by children much like Sesame Street’s Mr. Snuffleupagus before he was revealed to adults. Children get to learn a lot about these creatures, creating a nice, memorable fable that kids will enjoy, especially as it re-enforces imaginary friendships children are known for.

No Dogs Allowed is written in rhyme and beautifully illustrated with a lovely use of lush, bright colors and an almost child-like yet elegant use of style.

Although mild interactions are present, No Dogs Allowed is primarily a storybook that children and their adults will enjoy. Part cautionary tale, it is interesting how this No-Dog is children’s best friend, yet not completely unconditional, as the No-Dog’s smell is good when children are being good yet smells like dead fish if children are naughty. As with other moments, the relationship No-Dog has with children is dependent on the children’s behavior.

From the first time reading this cute story, it will be fun to point to “No Dogs Allowed” signs in public to children familiar with this book, taking on a new meaning involving these fantastical creatures.

Two coloring pages are available, as is the ability to add one’s own photo to this application, interweaving it into a few places within this app, creating a nice effect.

Do experiment with the narrator choices, as both American as well as British accents are represented, as is Dutch.

It is also nice that one can choose to highlight words when spoken as well as raise or lower the volume of music found throughout this application, but I wish the same were true for the sound effects as well, as the buzzing of flies – even the giggling of the No-Dog himself – can be distracting in the relaxing, peaceful story.

All in all, this is a charming story that creates mythology children and adults will appreciate, with a lovely visual style.

Art, By Age Range, By App Feature, Just For Fun, Language, Preschool, Primary School, Reading, Reviews, Stories, Toddlers

Safari Party, developed by PIXOWL, Inc., is a universal puzzle/arcade app featuring cartoon animals and people drawn by a well-known French cartoonist and blogger, Laurel. To clear each level, players must move the animal icons around the screen to make groups of four. Once groups of four are formed, players may tap the groups to make them break up and disappear (think Bejewled Blitz). A certain number of animal groups must be cleared in the time allotted to pass each level, getting more difficult as players progress. There are several modes of gameplay: Arcade, Speed, Expert, Zen, and Multiplayer (recently added).

Despite the cute, cartoonish animals and their colorful habitats, the gameplay of Safari Party is actually quite challenging. My son (age seven) had no problem clearing the first five or so levels, but it took multiple attempts for him to go any higher. Because each level is timed, this app is fast-paced and exciting but may be a little stressful for some, too. Players can keep track of how many animal groups they have collected by looking at the tally at the top right of the screen and can also watch the timer scroll as it is visible along the bottom of the screen. Animals start to shake when the time is close to running out, however, as long as new groups of four are still being formed, extra time will be added to the clock. It is also possible to earn special achievements and “cheats,” which will help players to clear each level. Players can also shake their devices to scramble the order of the animals on the screen, so that more matches can be located in time.

Safari Party is one of the few apps that not only attracted the attention of my two kids and myself, but also caught the interest of my husband, who finds the app to be quite addictive. As both of us are former fans of Bejewled Blitz on Facebook, it is no surprise that we also like Safari Party. My husband and I take turns playing, competing with one another to progress to a higher level. I also play the app in a cooperative way with my son, as we help each other identify and group the animals. He particularly likes the look of the animals and their habitats.

The only criticism that I have of Safari Party is that when each level is cleared, a cartoon of a woman shows up on the screen to congratulate players, and I find them to be somewhat stereotypical in appearance. These women are wearing outfits meant to go along with each animal habitat, ie: Jungle-wear, Mermaid-wear, etc, and while each of them is pretty and appealing, one is drawn with cleavage showing, which I feel could have been avoided, as this is a children’s game. All in all, Safari Party is a charming and challenging app for ages 6 and up.

Animals, By Age Range, By App Feature, For Parents, High School +, Just For Fun,