Bottom line: Lately Lily: Paris for a Day! is a lovely interactive story app that follows Lily the Traveling Girl on a quick jaunt to Paris to visit her friend Audrey and see a concert.
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Lately Lily: Paris for a Day! is a lovely little interactive story app from Lately Lily LLC, which is actually a clothing brand. It follows Lily the Traveling Girl on a trip to Paris to visit a friend, accompanied on her
journey by her faithful friend Zeb (a stuffed zebra named Zeborah). The story takes us through four chapters, each featuring a different activity.
Chapter One: A Sunny Yellow Suitcase
Your little ones get to help Lily pack up her bright yellow suitcase for her trip to Paris. They get to choose outfits and accessories along with other necessary items for traveling. For some reason when my princess does this, Lily ends up with pink outfits from head to toe. Most importantly, don’t forget to pack Zeb!
Chapter Two: The Baggage Claim to Fame
In this game, the player must navigate all of the baggage carousels to get Zeb to the plane to meet Lily. Zeb rides on the sunny yellow suitcase with your child helping him leap from belt to belt, jumping over other suitcases and sets of golf clubs. Don’t fall to the bottom belt, though, because it is going in the wrong direction! Once the user gets Zeb safely through the baggage area, Zeb sneaks up and joins Lily in the cabin of the plane.
Chapter Three: Out the Window
As the plane flies over France, Lily and Zeb must look out the window and find five objects through the
viewfinder of their camera, snapping a picture when the correct image comes into focus. The user must be thorough as they go, because there is no going back if you miss one. At the end of this activity, Lily and Zeb have created a little scrapbook of their findings.
Chapter Four: A Welcome Reunion
Lily and Zeb are to meet up with Audrey in a quaint little Parisian courtyard. As your child navigates this courtyard, he or she can tap on individual objects to see and hear the French and English translation of each word. Once they reach Audrey, she greets Lily with a lively “bonjour!”
We leave Lily and Audrey sitting together watching the band play.
I found the graphics and colors in this app to be very charming. Something about them brought to mind paper dolls that I played with as a child. Knowing that Lately Lily is a brand of kids' clothing makes me want to hunt up some of their stuff for my daughter. Unlike some apps based on products, this one doesn't come across as a marketing gimmick, but rather an actual story that kids can appreciate on its own merits, whether they're aware of the Lately Lily brand or not.
The activities themselves, for the most part, were very kid-friendly. My little one, who is not quite four, has been playing this unassisted repeatedly. She does have a little more difficulty with the Baggage Claim game, but this is also by far the most intense of the activities.
I would like to see the developer add more vocabulary to the limited amount that is provided. It really is an area that could and should be expanded on. I would also like to see a couple more chapters added in future updates. There are so many things that Lily could be doing in Paris — going to the Louvre, visiting the Eiffel Tower, eating at a café. There is a lot of room for growth in this app. By adding more vocabulary as well as a few geography and social studies lessons on Paris landmarks, the app could truly cross over several genres.
That being said, my little one has played this app often over the last two weeks with no sign of letting
up. But as I am not even remotely bothered by the background music in this one (and we all know that is a problem for me), I am content to let her play this lovely little app to her heart’s content.
I’m going with four stars on this app because it is lovely and my little one loves it. It does have some room to grow, though, and I’d love to see the developer add in some content to push it on into being a five star app.
I look forward to seeing more adventures from Lily the Traveling Girl.
***
Kelli is now on the lookout for some real, old-fashioned paper dolls for her little princess. SmartAppsForKids.com was paid a priority review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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