I am an illustrator and designer and ever since the first iPhone and then iPad/tablets came out I was very excited about all the new possibilities with interactivity. The touchscreen suddenly opened up a completely new way to use illustration and design and it still feels very like the beginnings of a new art form.
I was so keen to design an app and curious to see what was getting made so I got myself an iPad very soon after it came out and downloaded dozens and dozens of apps. Actually, I was pretty disappointed, publishers were publishing books that are known and loved as books but just with a few added interactions and sounds. The apps actually felt distracting from the book, similarly, many well known animation characters were ported to apps – but often cheaply with a lower quality of animation and without much thought about the interactions and games.
However, within the thousands of apps for children there are some real gems that are clever, funny, beautiful and thoughtfully made. So these are my top 10 apps for young children.
This is like a simplified google earth for the human body. You can zoom into the different systems of the body, the heart and circulatory system has a beating heart that you can view inside and out and watch the blood cells travel around. When you click on the little jogging legs to do some exercise you can see the heart beating faster. Theres the skeleton you can piece together, the lungs, nervous system with the senses. A stomach that you can watch digesting the food you fed it through the mouth. Nice. They also have one about plants, and homes around the world too.
2. Nighty Night
In Nighty Night all the farmyard animals want to go asleep. When you touch the cow it moos or the chicken clucks and lays an egg, when you turn off the light they close their eyes and gently go asleep. This is part of the the going to bed ritual of a number of friend’s children alongside storytime. A hugely popular app with downloads in the millions, it’s beautifully illustrated and animated by Heidi Wittlinger. They have since updated it with a circus version with giggley circus fleas and a juggling snake.
Nosy Crow are one of the UK’s best known app makers, with lots of well made apps. This is perhaps my favourite of theirs. This is part of their “rounds” series which each follow the lifecycle of animals, it follows the lifecycle of a frog, we watch the frogspawn grow and turn into tadpoles who avoid getting eaten and feed and grow legs and grow into a frog. Theres also one about a penguin. Very nice simple graphics, smooth satisfying interaction and very educational. As with all Nosy Crow apps the text lights up as it is being read aloud to aid reading, a great feature.
4. Toca Band
Toca Boca make some really great apps, I think this one is my favourite of theirs. Each instrument is personified as a little dancing character who adds to the tune when you drag them onto the stage they add their sound to the tune. If you drag them all the way up to the star main stage you can play them like an instrument. Lovely characters, funny dances and an understanding of how music is made. They have more than 25 apps now and all are of a very good quality, Toca builders is also particularly good.
5. Petting Zoo
Christoph Niemann is one of my favourite illustrators. I highly recommend his comic/blog “abstract sunday” in the New York Times. Christoph taught himself code and animated everything to make this very surreal “petting zoo”. Stroke animals down or up or side to side and they react in surreal and unexpected ways. They then morph into something else. A lion gets his mane blow dried in every direction and two chimpanzees playing football keep getting hit in the face with the ball, no matter which direction you throw it. Also take a look at his entertaining blogpost about how he made the app.
Fly around a beautifully illustrated world with a little bird. Pop balloons, meet other animals, eat cupcakes and play hide and seek. There are two versions, one in summer with a summer picnic, the winter one you can give wooly hats to friends and turn on christmas lights. It is simple and quite short but beautifully made and illustrated with simple toys and activities to explore that toddlers will enjoy and want to do again and again. There are around a dozen other Sago Sago titles.
7. Miximal
An animated version of the well known book that is cut into three sections where you can swap heads and bodies and legs of different animals. In this version you can tap each image for nicely made animations and sounds.They have also chosen animals with three syllable names so each combination has its own name. A kan-ga-phant has a the head and body of a kangaroo but with the legs of a elephant. When you touch its tummy a little joey appears. Also check out their fun drawing app Drawnimal
8. Montessorium: intro to maths
This series of apps are digital versions of many of Maria Montessori’s methods and toys. Her philosophy that learning is led better by each child through play rather than by a teacher setting lessons. This series of playful exercises goes from simple building blocks to recognising the numbers and tracing them out. Unlike their non-digital toys these also have audio visual sounds of the numbers’ names and instructions to the child on how to play.
9. Sneak
Sneak is a very clever idea. Players leave bait out to lure “beasties” into the frame and you need to hide behind the sofa and wait, quietly sneak up on them and very very carefully take a picture. If you make a noise the beastie runs away. A really innovative game that uses the interactivity of the device to its best. A great way to get the whole family sneaking and clambering over the furniture in the sitting room.
10. Endless ABC
A simple but very clever app to teach letters, phonics and spelling all in one. The letters of a word are shuffled by a mob of unruly monsters and need to be re-assembled, as you lift each letter it says its name A says “a-a-a-a-a” as it is lifted into place. When the word is reassembled all the letters rejoice and the word is explained in a short, entertaining animation. ALARM has a monster being woken up from sleep only to right back to sleep again. BELLOW has a monster shouting at another monster. It makes learning letters and words fun and utilises the audio-visual possibilites of apps in the best possible ways. Language apps which can use interaction and crucially audio in this way have such a huge advantage over traditional language textbooks.