Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App

Don't Let The Pigeon Run This App is on sale for $2.99! Whoo hoo!

I've wanted this app forever (yes, me! My kids love the pigeon, but didn't know about the app until today). Mo Willems is a family favorite. When we lived in Brooklyn, Chris and I used to frequent the very laundromat where Trixie lost her Knuffle Bunny. Our kids now love the Knuffle Bunny books, the Elephant and Piggie series, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs... but they especially enjoy the Pigeon books.

So ever since I heard that there was a Pigeon app, with Mo Willems' voice/creative involvement, I've been interested. But the app is normally priced at $5.99! And basically, it's just a big game of Mad Libs. The bus driver asks you a series of questions -- what's something you like? the name of someone you know?, what's your favorite number?, what's something smelly? -- then a story starring the pigeon is generated. This is the same basic pigeon story we know and love: he wants something (whatever you named) that he can't have, so he tries begging (the person you named would give it to him...!), making deals, getting angry, etc.

Of course he can't have whatever it is, and the fun is in watching the very expressive pigeon learn to deal with his frustration. There are three levels to the "Mad Libs" fun: on Egg, you don't contribute any answers at all, just shake the iPad and the story changes. On Chick, you make some choices. But Big Pigeon is where you get to record your own voice in the story. My 6-year-old was easily able to figure out how to work the app herself. You can save 6 different versions of the Pigeon story in your Favorite Stories vault, but there is no way to export the stories (due to copyright concerns, I imagine).

After going through the story two or three times with the girls I got pretty bored. The story is essentially the same each time. On the other hand, they showed no signs of boredom; they were very amused with themselves for thinking of "poop" as a smelly thing, and "Marcy Zipke" as the name of someone they know. What saved the app for me was the Draw the Pigeon extra. In this section Mo Willems gives a video tutorial on how to draw the pigeon, with step-by-step line assistance that fades away after you draw your lines. He is hilarious in his instructions, making helpful suggestions such as when you make the two lines down for the neck, it really helps to say "Nnnnnneeeeeeerrrrr, nnnnnneeeeerrrrrrr." And it really works. Below is Brooklyn's (my 6-year-old's) pigeon!:

In sum, this is a pretty fun app. There's no way it's worth $5.99. But if you get it this weekend, while it's on sale...? Well, Autumn actually let me TURN OFF Frozen so that she could play this with us for a while. I'd say that is worth a few bucks.

Sago Mini Bug Builder

I thought I was downloading this app for my little one, but as it turns out, both girls absolutely love the Sago Mini Bug Builder. Part of its appeal is its simplicity. Open the app and a cute pink bug lays a multi-colored egg that hatches with the tap of a finger. A geometric shape appears (Autumn says in delight, every time, “What is THAT?!”) that you decorate with the swipe of a finger to a color palette.  Stripes, polka dots, swirls… anything goes. Click the checkmark when you’ve finished your masterpiece, and watch your bug come to life.

Choose a hat to add to your bug, feed it some snacks, wipe the crumbs off its face, then snap a picture of your creation before she lays another egg to start the process all over again.

So what is it that my kids love so much about this app? Well, they both love to color, and this app certainly fulfills their creative yearning. They’re delighted with the way every bug comes out. And they’re just as delighted to begin a new one.

As for me, it would be hard not to be charmed by the bugs’ silly smiles and rainbow hues. I’ve also heard myself introducing some novel vocabulary words as the girls have asked my opinion on which hat to put on their bug (“The fez, definitely!”) or if I think the stripes look better this way or that way (“Why not draw some horizontal stripes and some vertical ones?”) So the Bug Builder may not be the most educational app around, but it’s far from the worst. I’m not sure how much longer this app will be free, but for now it feels like a great deal.

Dr. Panda

Are the Dr. Panda games new, or am I just late to the party? It seems that every time I turn around, one has gone free. And there was a time not so long ago when my youngest was obsessed with watching the San Diego zoo’s live panda cam (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/), so I still get excited for her whenever I see anything panda-related. At this point, we’ve got Dr. Panda’s Handyman, Dr. Panda’s Beauty Salon, Dr. Panda’s Restaurant, and Dr. Panda’s Hospital.

Of course, it turns out the panda in these apps is purely gratuitous. He pops up to congratulate you for a successful repair in Dr. Panda’s Handyman, or to greet customers in the beauty salon. But there is no real need for a panda, per se, in any of these games. But that’s okay—all of the characters are adorable in a big-eyed simply-drawn sort of way, and my girls love them.

All of the Dr. Panda apps are role-playing games in which you pretend to be a handyman, beautician, chef, or doctor. The handyman app is particularly charming: in the giraffe family home, you get to use a jackhammer to break up the remaining tile in a broken floor, then spread glue, re-tile, and clean up the mess with a vacuum cleaner. The polar bear family has a leaky shower—lower in a new tub, with the use of a pulley system, then fix the broken pipes in the wall by fitting the pieces into the puzzle. My favorite might be the fish tank that needs assembling, populating, feeding, and then cleaning.

I like the problem-solving nature of Handyman. And there is an element of creativity behind every Dr. Panda app—you get to make lots of choices in how you handle situations, what color you paint the door, or which wig you put on the pig, etc. Plus there are lots of nice little extras. In between scenes in Handyman, you can visit the attic, where a friendly ghost and bat live, and play a quick little sorting game to separate the screws, nuts, and bolts on an assembly line. Sorting properly earns you stickers toward a scene full of power tools. In sum, the apps are fun and don't seem to be a total waste of time... especially considering the price I paid.

Princess Fairy Tale Maker

Duck Duck Moose may well be our second-favorite app creator (after Toca Boca!). For a long time, Autumn’s favorite app was Duck Duck Moose's Itsy Bitsy Spider. Just lately though, Brooklyn has taken to fiddling with the Duck Duck Moose Princess Fairy Tale Maker. Whenever I hear classical music blasting from the backseat of the van, I know she's creating a new scene. In fact, she told me that the classical music score that accompanies the app is one of her favorite things about it; she finds the music soothing.

There are three options on opening the Princess Fairy Tale Maker: “fairy tales,” “coloring,” or “my drawings.” This is a bit misleading, as the first two are options for you to create--in Fairy Tales, you use stickers or a paint tool to draw on a scene, then have the option to record a voiceover narration. Coloring is a similar scene on which you can use your finger to fill in color, sparkles, or patterns. Any of the resulting scenes or coloring pages end up saved in My Drawings and can then be rearranged in any order to result in a story.

As always, when I purchased the app, I envisioned Brooklyn creating whole stories with it. I thought she would meticulously create each scene to build upon one another and then narrate a brilliantly-held together tale to go with it. And maybe she would if I worked on the bestselling hypothetical stories with her. But we don’t have the time. So I’ve had to adjust my expectations some. Instead of stories she creates individual scenes. Each one is new and creative. Sometimes she tells me stories to go along with the scenes; she has yet to figure out how to record these stories, but that’s okay, since they rarely make a whole lot of sense. A built-in writing prompt or two from Duck Duck Moose might have helped point her in the right direction. But hey--at least she enjoys the soothing music. 

Storybook Maker

Storybook Maker is basically a desktop publishing app for children (or should I just call it a publishing app? There is no desktop computer involved—everything is created right on the iPad… is there a name for this type of program yet?). At any rate, you create books with as many or as few pages as you like and the result is a multi-media book to read on the iPad or to save/email/print as a pdf.

Here is a short demonstration that explains better than I ever could: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms3lKtdIJxA

Mastering this app took a little more effort on my behalf. I tried just installing it on our iPad and waiting to see if my 5-year-old would figure it out for us, but she ignored it. In the past, Brooklyn and I have had moments of collaborative brilliance making up bedtime stories together ("Princess Stinkyfeet"), so I had a vision of us collaborating on a multimedia project in which she dictated while I typed, she illustrated and I helped arrange, etc. But first I had to figure out how to use the app. And, in the end, it really was very intuitive, but there are just so darn many options to wade through first!

When I finally did sit down with the iPad, it was following a long weekend in NH with the grandparents. I used the app to create a souvenir photo book in which I included photos and stories about the places we went and the things we saw. The app really was ridiculously easy to use, but I didn’t actually use many of the options available to me: I didn’t change the font size or color, I didn’t use the stickers or physics objects, and I didn’t draw free hand.

Here is a page from my initial attempt at using the app:

When I showed Brooklyn what I had done, she was as excited as I was by the app. One thing that was interesting though, was that she immediately wanted to do everything I hadn’t even thought to do the first time around. She took the iPad from me and made her own book with free-form drawings and stickers that same day. After that, we explored a bit more together and we were both excited to find the backgrounds and borders to jazz up our creations. Later, I realized I could have included even more cool extras in my NH scrapbook, like sound effects, including the boom of fireworks to go along with my Fourth of July photos.

Here is a page from one of Brooklyn’s independent creations:

If this sounds like a lot of work, I suppose it is, but it’s also fun. And it’s certainly a powerful literacy tool as well. Over the past few days Brooklyn and I have finally begun to commit our Princess Stinkyfeet ideas to the screen. We’ve been working slowly, in the quiet moments when her sister is napping. Brooklyn talks, and I edit as I type. I knew that she was creative, but one unexpected delight is how much care Brooklyn is also putting into the language. Our basic plot is that Princess Stinkyfeet has horrifically smelly feet and so she tries many things to solve the problem, but the smell keeps coming back. Today, after a page about the princess going on vacation and the townspeople being able to breathe easier while she was away, Brooklyn instructed me to include the sentence, “Wherever she goes, the stink goes.” I was impressed with the turn of phrase, and told her so. That is the type of thoughtful interaction that the iPad can be a powerful tool in facilitating, if you are willing to put in the time and energy. Happily, that’s all it takes though—it’s not expensive at $3.99. And there are no in-app purchases. 

 This is an app I can enthusiastically recommend to everyone, but I envision it being used most in upper elementary classrooms. So teacher-friends, take note!

Toca Boca

          By far the most popular app designer in our house is the Swedish company Toca Boca.  The girls love the stylish and silly characters in all of the games. They also enjoy how simple all of the games are—there are no menus or rules or settings to fix. Kids of all ages can just open the app and play. Somehow we have acquired the following 8-10 different Toca Boca apps over the years on our various iOS devices (Toca Boca is generous about periodically releasing a specific app for free, or gifting a holiday version of an app—over time, they collect on the machine): 

Toca Tailor and Toca Tailor Fairy Tales

Toca Band

Toca Hair Salon and Toca Hair Salon Christmas Gift

Toca Tea Party

Toca Monsters

Toca Doctor

Toca Store

Toca House

           I am honestly such a fan of all of these games that I am having a hard time deciding which to write about, but in the interest of being specific, I will just choose two to describe. 

Toca Tailor

           Toca Tailor is the sort of thing the iPad was made for. It is a design tool I can imagine being useful in real life, as well as to a 5-year-old’s imagination. Open the app, choose a model to dress, then change everything about the outfits with a swipe of the finger. Shorten and lengthen hems and sleeves, choose styles and patterns… you can even use the iPad camera to add to the selection of patterns. For example, check out this sweet dress I made with a photo of my cat:

              Unlike other dress-up apps, there are no short skirts or exposed belly buttons in Toca Tailor. The focus is squarely on the clothes—the patterns, textures, and outfits—rather than the sex appeal. And because of that, the app feels like it is appropriate for boys and girls of all ages. In fact, although other reviewers have said this is an app for little girls, I know more than one dad who has spent more than his fair share of time playing Toca Tailor.
 

Toca Tea Party

            Yes, she could just have a tea party on the floor with her stuffed animals. And she does do that. But one tea party does not preclude the other. This app can be used in conjunction with the blanket and the stuffed animals. It just adds a bit of color and flair. It also had the advantage of being portable: tea parties are now something that happen on long car rides or in doctor’s waiting rooms as well as on my living room floor. 
            Set the scene by choosing the tableware and refreshments, lighting the candles, and tuning the radio. Then eat and drink from all three settings until someone spills and needs a clean up. Practice saying things like, “Excuse me!” and “Please pass the delicious carrot cake,” and “Could you turn the radio down, please? I can’t hear what Pooh Bear is saying.” Surprisingly, it isn’t my youngest who likes this app the most. As simple as it is, my five-year-old is charmed by it. 

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Most of the Toca Boca apps call for creativity. In Toca Hair Salon she can cut, style, color, and grow people and monsters’ hair. Toca Band allows her to combine cartoon characters who are playing different parts in a band: percussion, vocals, or bass, to name a few. The result is surprisingly catchy and not at all irritating. When she rearranges the characters, the music changes to reflect the emphasis she chose.

Another bonus to the Toca Boca apps are the social skills learned. As mentioned previously, there is no way to play Toca Tea Party without practicing social niceties like “Please,” and “Thank you,” and, “Could I try some more?” (In fact, this app is often mentioned as a favorite amongst parents of children with autism, due to the fact that many children with autism love electronics and also need encouragement to communicate verbally.) When my 5-year-old plays Toca Store she flips through the catalogs looking for things to “buy” for each of her friends and family members: “Ooooh, Mommy loves carrots. And Daddy just said he needs new shirts! Zoe’s always wanted a cat…” Then she practices her math and counting skills by paying for each item individually.

The Toca Boca website lists six philosophies that guide the development of their products. Number 6 is “You will like our products, but your kids will love them.” They may have missed the mark with that one—I love these apps at least as much as my kids do!