Bottom line: An app designed for kids ages 3-5 that covers a wide range of skills from animal noises to naming planets with limited practice on each skill. The directions are clear, but the activities are too widespread for the intended age range and lack engaging and thorough content.
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Kiddy Bees by Lavanya Karthikeyan opens as a storybook. The different activities are placed on the pages of a book, and a child can go to the next activity by clicking a button to turn the page. This app is easy to navigate with a four-button navigation bar that comes down from the top of the screen. It has the options to go forward, back, home, or to restart the activity that is currently on the screen.
There are eight different activities designed for children ages 3-5 to move through. The activities each focus on a different skill, and they do not relate to each other at all. The first activity is a nature scene full of bugs. The narrator is very clear and gives concise directions that are easy to follow. The narrator asks the user to find a certain number of a specific type of bug. The child clicks on each of the bugs to highlight them. If the wrong bug is clicked, nothing happens. I appreciate there not being negative reinforcement for a wrong answer. The scene and number of each bug changes each time the user revisits this activity. I like that a child has to search for bugs in new locations and count numbers. The numbers only go up to four in this activity, and I would like to see them go to at least ten, as some five year olds can already count to 100.
Activity #2 takes the child to a farm with five different animals. The narrator plays a sound, and the child has to click on the animal that makes that sound. The animals on the screen are a horse, pig, cow, sheep, and what looks to be a duck, but I'm not sure. When the sounds are played, a chicken sound is made, but the bird on the screen definitely looks a lot more like a duck than a chicken. With only five animals and one quick activity, this part of the app does not take very much time to play at all. I would like to hear the name of the animals spoken after the child chooses the animal. I would also love to see more activities added or more information given about each animal.
When the child moves to the next pages of the book, he finds an egg hunt in a living room scene. This is the only section in which I didn't find the directions to be clear enough. The narrator asks the child to find an egg, but there are no eggs in the picture. The object of this activity is to match the patterned egg given with the living room object that has the same pattern on it. If a child clicks on the furniture with the same pattern, the egg will appear. Most children will figure this out just by clicking around, but it would be nice if the directions were clearer.
For those little ones who like to learn about outer space, the next activity introduces the planets in the solar system. The planets can be touched to hear their names, and there is an alien waiting to play peek-a-boo also. When the alien is clicked, it will hide on a planet. The narrator will tell what planet the alien is on, and the child can click on the planet to make the alien appear. The replay button has to be hit if the child wants to find the alien more than once. Some kids in the intended age range would enjoy this activity, but it could be too advanced for others. There is a hint given when the astronaut is touched. A small picture of the correct answer will show up for a child to match. Those who do enjoy learning about the planets would probably look for an app more focused on that topic, and one with a lot more educational content than is found here.
From outer space to the deep sea below, children will travel to the ocean in the next pages of the book. Five ocean animals are waiting to be found in the water. The narrator tells the child to find a certain ocean animal, and the child must click on the correct animal. The only animals in this scene are a clownfish, a pufferfish, a jellyfish, a starfish, and a stingray. There are many more animals in the ocean that could be added to this activity for extra practice.
Moving right along in the app will bring you to the underground ant tunnels (are you dizzy yet from the rapidly changing topics?). The child's job is to drag the ant to collect four different sugar lumps. The paths do change a little bit each time this activity is opened, but it is a basic maze that the user will complete quickly. If there were different levels of difficulty in the mazes, it would help to hold the attention of a variety of children.
Telling time is the next skill introduced on Kiddy Bees. There is a clock that changes times by the hour when tapped. There are doors on it that I waited for something to pop out of, but I never was able to make it happen. This would be a fun and engaging addition to the app. There is a cat that knocks a number off the clock when it is tapped. The child must replace the number into the correct space on the clock.
The final section has a map of the world. The narrator states that you can see all of the continents, but Antarctica is missing from the map. The child can move an airplane to each continent to hear its name. This activity could be more engaging by adding in an activity where the child finds the continent given, like on the planet activity.
Kiddy Bees provides a wide range of activities that kids ages 3-5 may be interested in, but there is a small chance that a child will be working on animal sounds at the same time that they are learning about planets and continents. Having a variety of activities and skills may open the app up to more age ranges, but there are not enough activities within each skill to keep a child engaged, especially if only a section or two of the app is relevant. All of the activities could be more interactive and more engaging. This app needs a smaller skill focus or many more activities for each skill presented. Kiddy Bees received two stars for its nice pictures, easy to follow narration, changing of scenes in some skills, book format, and offering a variety of skills, but lacks in focus, engagement, and interaction. Its range of skills is far too wide for a child to work on at the same time, and things like leaving out Antarctica? That's a pretty egregious error.
*****
Heather S. is debating on what dessert she will be eating to reward herself for her high level of productivity today. SmartAppsForKids.com was paid a priority review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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