Bottom Line: The best of the best for educational apps, with amazing content, great graphics and engaging game play. It's great for a wide age range, too, with three levels of play for each game. Lucky's Tree of Puzzles costs more than average at $3.99, but it is more than worth it! A must-have app!
Start climbing the tree with Lucky, while having fun practicing a wide variety of educational skills. Available for iPad, iPhone and Android, for $3.99:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
I have a confession. I am very late on getting this app review posted, but it’s for a great reason! There is so much content in this app, the normal time I spend reviewing was just not enough. With 18 learning games, each with three levels, the amount of game play is incredible.
Lucky the squirrel is the star of this show, and he takes kids on a learning adventure through his tree of puzzles. This tree is fun, and the games encompass a wide age range. The app is advertised as ages 3 through 11, but while my 11-year-old son will play anything for iPad time, very little of the content is really challenging for him. I think it's great for kids from 3 to 9, with some skills for even older kids available. And many of the games were really fun for me to play, even if I know the skills quite well.
The app opens with Lucky inviting the user into his tree while setting a username. Lucky’s Tree of Puzzles allows for multiple user profiles, which is great for both families with multiple children and classroom use. However, I couldn’t find a way to delete any profiles, so teachers will have to delete and reinstall the app to set up a new classroom.
When the app is first started, only a few games are visible. New games are added as earlier games are played, which is really quite fun. It kept me playing just to see what new games would be available. For the sake of the review, I’ll ruin the surprise and spill the beans that there are 18 games in all.
The games include a wide variety of activities and skills, including math, visual perception, spelling and more. I loved the Learn Emotions game for speech-language pathology, including the hard level matching of an emotion to a scene description. My personal favorite game, though, was the Speed Test, requiring the user to tap the named picture (out of four) while the pace increases.
Even the memory game in Lucky’s Tree of Puzzles is good, and that’s saying a lot coming from me. Normally inclusion of a memory game makes me automatically decrease the star rating of an app, but this memory game is actually worth it! In the early levels, the cards are shown first before flipping over, meaning kids really are trying to use memory skills. There are also verbal hints, with Lucky commenting, “you’ve seen this card before!” I like this hint, to help kids focus memory. I also liked that the picture cards were named as they flipped over. This is a great way to increase vocabulary. Several other games require that kids have good knowledge of the names of animals, making the verbal cue very important.
Each game requires the user to start on the easy level before moving on to medium and finally hard. Stars are earned for points and accuracy on each difficult level. For the older users, earning stars is a great reward. My son was heard to exclaim “I can’t settle for less than three stars on this level,” and he kept playing until he got all three.
For younger kids, another reward system is in place—periodically, a surprise nut appears with a prompt to catch it, and when the user finally taps the frantic nut (harder than it sounds sometimes!), a new card is added to the picture card section. This is another way to reinforce the animal name vocabulary.
Achievements are also earned for various game play. I’ve earned the Responsible Cook badge, for turning off the hot plate four times before serving the food, and I’m also on my way to Star Master, with half of all the stars collected.
But really, the game play in and of itself is what will keep kids playing. And everything about the game play in this app is well done. The graphics are amazing, the content is educational and even the music is so well done that I haven’t felt the need to mute it yet (though it’s easy to mute the music, if desired).
There are so many other perks to this app, it’s hard to mention them all. It includes a great tracking system for each user profile, so I can track how much time my kids spend playing each level, and the number of stars earned, with just a quick glance in the settings.
I found many great games to play within my speech therapy sessions, both for fun reinforcement and learning. Along with the already-mentioned emotions game, I also really liked the Follow Instructions game requiring the user to identify various attributes and vocabulary concepts related to the animals. The Which Go Together game will also be useful in therapy, with kids having to practice flexible thinking to match animals by creative attributes and categories.
I also liked the extras in the app, including a drawing area with free draw capabilities and a playhouse with great 3D blocks and a toy car. This app is a must-buy for teachers and parents of kids in the target range. It’s fun to play with great educational content. Even though the cost of the app is higher than average, it contains so much content with great features. The games are fun for a wide variety of ages.
Heather has spent 24 minutes playing the picture puzzle game, and over 3 ½ hours on gameplay alone so far.
Comments