Friday Findings

Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventures - Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventures is an interactive journey; an exciting combination of a maze and a ‘search and find’ puzzle game that the whole family can enjoy. Your journey starts by driving a car. Find your way through the different land and cityscapes and stumble upon challenges where you might have to use planes, boats and balloons to continue in your a-MAZE-ing adventure. Along the way, search for letters, penguins, numbers, ice cream trucks, and lots of other surprises, which have been animated by sounds and lively music. Every time you play you’ll find new things. Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventures provides parents and their children hours of educational, fun time. The beautiful pages of Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventures have been created by Roxie Munro (an American author and illustrator of 35 children’s books), in conjunction with OCG Studios’ creative team, making this app a truly remarkable and amazing interactive adventure. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Price: $1.99 ~ See Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventures in the App Store

Chokko’s Adventures in Birdland, The Owl Valley - Rich in colors and full of fun, this app is an interactive illustration book specially designed for children between the ages of 3-10 years. Listen to the story while interacting with the adorable characters and objects on screen. Chokko and Latti are from the Sugary Planet. They have travelled from their home to Bird Island on Bird Planet. Chokko must try to collect the hidden feathers on Bird Island while chasing the Meerkat Trios to save his friend Latti. The story of Chokko includes five episodes. Chokko’s Adventures in Birdland, The Owl Valley features a simple user interface with auto and manual page turning options. Engaging sound effects and lively narration (in a variety of languages) combine with high resolution illustrations to make Chokko’s Adventures in Birdland, The Owl Valley an interactive delight. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Price: $2.99 ~ See Chokko’s Adventures in Birdland, The Owl Valley in the App Store

Fire Truck - Ride along on a fire truck with firemen as they drive to put out fires and rescue pets. Help the firemen hook up the hoses and spray the water. Children can even use the fire copter to drop water where needed. This app is a real treat for those little fire truck enthusiasts and a great way to encourage curiosity and interaction in all children. Your little one can touch the driver and he honks the horn, or have them touch a cloud as it passes by to see it smile and hum; the whole neighborhood is interactive. When your child touches people, animals, or objects they make sounds and perform actions. Fire Truck feels like a moving storybook. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Price: $.99 ~ See Fire Truck in the App Store

Dump Truck - Follow alongside a Dump Truck as it drives through a neighborhood. Help the dump truck pick up rocks, sand and stones using a crane, a backhoe/excavator and a bulldozer. Visit various construction sites to dump the load you just picked up. Dump truck is a great way to encourage curiosity and is especially fun if you have a construction or truck lover in your house. This interactive app is like a moving book; when your child touches people, animals, or vehicles they make sounds and come to life. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Price: $.99 ~ See Dump Truck in the App Store

BabyFirst Encyclopedia – BabyFirst Encyclopedia is an early learning app for babies and toddlers created by BabyFirst Games, a member of Moms with Apps. BabyFirst Encyclopedia features six learning categories: The Zoo, Transportation, The Farm, Underwater World, Harvest, and a Bonus Pack: Art. A voice announces what each of the 100+ colorful images is making this a great app for little learners. The controls of BabyFirst Encyclopedia have also been designed specifically for the fingers of babies and toddlers. The Bonus Art Pack features artwork by Klimt, Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and other well-known artists. Cozy fabric styled design elements add to the charm of BabyFirst Encyclopedia. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Price: FREE ~ See BabyFirst Encyclopedia in the App Store

Caboose – Learn to Recognize and Complete Patterns – Shapes, Colors, Letters and Numbers - Caboose helps your child acquire analytical and logical thinking. This app is a cognitive exercise for your child’s brain; caboose teaches children to compare concepts and recognize patterns. The process of comparing helps little ones prepare to learn how to recognize shapes, colors, numbers, etc. Your child will have the option to either drag-and-drop or tap the correct item to continue each pattern. Narration for each pattern is given and your little can either choose to have the patterns narrated with names or sounds of letters. Pattern recognition and completion represent an important developmental skill for preschool aged children. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Price: $1.99 ~ See Caboose – Learn to Recognize and Complete Patterns – Shapes, Colors, Letters and Numbers in the App Store

Kids choose words - Kids choose words, an educational game for kids, helps them to play with words and learn at the same time. Throughout 4 different modes, your kids can learn letters, words and how to spell and pronounce. Moreover, your kids will have a chance to challenge their friends to find out who is faster with words. Help your kids sharpen their minds via a game not boring lessons, but don’t be surprised if your kids begin to remember and recognize everything. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Price: $2.99 ~ See Kids choose Words in the App Store

Puzzles ‘N Coloring – Sea Life - Jump into the water and explore the world of Puzzles N’ Coloring – Sea Life. A smiling crab, a wandering fish, a jumping dolphin and more await your child in this puzzle that doubles as a coloring book. Choose from 16 themed puzzles and select the appropriate level; “easy” divides the puzzle into 6 pieces, “medium” creates 12 pieces, and “hard” gives your child 20 pieces to play with to reconstruct the image. Choose from 12 coloring pages and from over 60 different colors to paint the pages. Make them realistic or have fun creating wacky color combinations and silly scenes. Puzzles ‘N Coloring – Sea Life also features upbeat instrumental music that is easy to turn on/off from main screen. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Price: $1.99 ~ See Puzzles ‘N Coloring – Sea Life in the App Store

Super Spelling - Super Spelling, a fun learning game for kids aged 4 years and up, plays like an arcade game. It has levels, achievements, and playing a game unlocks the next one. The aim of the app is to recognize the image and spell the corresponding word with the letters of the alphabet. Super Spelling has 4 levels of 15 games and each game has 3 words. Unlock as many games as possible and receive the highest possible score by spelling the most words correctly. Super Spelling lets children learn and play at the same time. Super Spelling is intuitive and easy to use. Super Spelling features different levels of difficulty. Younger players can play the game by recognizing the images and match colored letters with the corresponding words. Older players can learn to recognize letters and read words easier and faster. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Price: $1.99 ~ See Super Spelling in the App Store

PlaceBox – Local Info in the world, Photo, Note, Travel Diary - PlaceBox is a location-based app that allows you to search places anywhere in the world using 100 different categories. You can check out details, reviews and directions about the places, save points of interest, and check up on them after your visit. PlaceBox is also helpful in leaving and sharing memories with photos, notes and travel journals. This app also allows you to search for places in advance in a more accurate way by setting the search center point through a simple address search. PlaceBox is recommended for travelers who use the location-based app, and the worldwide information available in it to search out destinations. Dating couples also frequently use PlaceBox to help them decide where to go for their dates. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Price: $.99 ~ See PlaceBox in the App Store

Kids Vids – Have you ever wanted to let your kids watch certain educational videos on YouTube without giving them access to everything on available? Kids Vids is a continuous YouTube video playback app. With Kids Vids you can choose to only play the videos that you have selected for your child without advertisements or YouTube comments. Kids Vids lets you play videos that you have added to playlists in your YouTube account. “Related Videos” will not be offered when video playback has completed. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Price: $.99 ~ See Kids Vids in the App Store

Meet the Orchestra - Music is one of the main disciplines for finding out a child’s potential. It has always been known intuitively, and recently proven scientifically, that early exposure to music is extremely useful for any child’s development. With Meet the Orchestra your child is exposed to some of the best examples of classical music, such as Bach and Chopin. Musicians of one of the European national symphonic orchestras recorded all of the music featured in Meet the Orchestra in a professional studio. The application is organized into two parts: learning and quizzes. The learning part is designed to introduce your child to the orchestra and instruments, and the quizzes part develops skills in recognizing instruments by look and by sound. The quiz’s difficulty increases with quiz type and level, offering engaging and varying experience as the learning process progresses. Meet the Orchestra is interesting and educational, simple and effective. *Meet the Orchestra is currently only available on the iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Price: $1.99 ~ See Meet the Orchestra in the App Store

Ellison the Elephant - Little Ellison just wants to sound like everyone else. He tries to make a big trumpet sound like his friends and his sister, but all he gets is a little toot. With encouragement from Mom and provocation from his imaginary friend, Weasel, Ellison discovers his very own voice — a jazzy sound that charms and entertains all within earshot. Ellison’s proud mom reminds us all that it’s ok to be unusual. In fact, “All the greatest elephants in history were unusual — that’s what made them great!” To promote reading in young children, individual words are highlighted as the story is read. By combining the original text and artwork of the book with features that entertain and promote reading, this omBook appeals to readers of all ages. Ellison the Elephant can be read in three ways: “Read to Me”, “Read it Myself”, and “Auto Play”. Each page features custom background audio and professional narration. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Price: $1.99 ~ See Ellison the Elephant in the App Store

The wild wild wind – The wild wild wind is a high quality audio picture book for children ages 3 years and up. Far away there is a city with streets and houses that are all very pretty and the people there lived peacefully until one day. One fall day the wild wild wind arrives in town bringing chaos and adventure. This app has an intuitive user interface with clear symbols designed for children’s use. You or your child can read the story aloud or choose to have it narrated by Randall Rose. The book also includes an interactive game to help your child improve coordination and logic skills. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Price: $1.99 ~ See The wild wild wind in the App Store

Eat Right – Eat Right is a fun game for kids and adults that helps teach us all how to eat right and live well. The objective of the game is to navigate the penguin to eat fruits, vegetables, grains, protein and dairy related products and avoid the fatty, greasy and sugary products. There are currently 5 levels in the game and more will be added soon. Scoring 200 points in each level will move you to the next one. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later. Price: $.99 ~ See Eat Right in the App Store

Little Ace and Ten Commandments - Little Ace and the Ten Commandments, an easy-to-read children’s book with beautiful hand-drawn artwork, is based on the Ten Commandments from the Bible. This book is an ideal interactive tool for parents to help them easily and amusingly introduce biblical principles to their children. The hero of the book, Little Ace, is a newly hatched chick who has adventures in the farm and forest. Little Ace meets different friendly animals on his journey; every animal teaches him one of the Ten Commandments. There are three ways to read Little Ace and Ten Commandments: “Read it to Me”, “Read it Myself”, and “Auto Play. Parents also have the ability to narrate the story of Little Ace with their own voice. Numerous hidden touch-activated surprises, animations and sounds on over a hundred wonderfully illustrated pages help to make this book an enjoyable interactive experience. Little Ace and Ten Commandments is designed for children ages 2-10. *Little Ace and Ten Commandments is currently only available on the iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Price: $2.99 ~ See Little Ace and Ten Commandments in the App Store

FindMe(Autism) - Find Me is an app designed to help young children with autism practice simple social skills. It is suitable for children with an ability level equivalent to 18 months or over, and doesn’t require any language or reading. In FindMe, the aim of the game is to find the person in the scene and tap on them. As the levels increase, it becomes harder to spot the person as more and more distracting things (plants, animals, toys) appear in the scene. FindMe was developed by a group of researchers, computer programmers and artists at the University of Edinburgh and published by Interface3 Limited. This app is part of the output for the Click East Project (www.clickeast.co.uk), which is investigating the possibilities of using Computer Games to teach Social Attention Skills to children with autism. *FindMe(Autism) is currently only available on the iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Price: FREE ~ See FindMe(Autism) in the App Store

StoneFace - Hold Still and Turn Yourself to Stone! Make a face and try to hold it as long as you can. Grasp the handlebars on the screen edges with your thumbs and the Artificial Intelligence feature locks on your face instead of your surroundings. The Ai monitors your face for twitches, blinking, and other movements. The longer you hold still, the more your image turns to stone. The Ai adjusts each level of the game to get harder or easier as you play. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi and iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G.Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Price: FREE ~ See StoneFace in the App Store

MoPho: Prints and Products - MoPho is a free photo kiosk in your pocket. It let’s you create and view any photo product and have it instantly shipped right to your door. Mom’s can now put their children’s photos on ton’s of items, have them shipped to the Grandparents, and do it from their iPhone instead of a pharmacy. MoPho has the largest Photo Product line out there including: Mouse Pad, Mug, Key Chain, Beverage Coasters, Frosted Glass Stein, HD Aluminum Art, Re-Stick-Able Poster, T-Shirt, coming soon, an iPhone case. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Price: FREE ~ See MoPho: Prints and Products in the App Store

Ann Can’t Sleep - Ann Can’t Sleep is an animated book about companionship, friends, and a little girl who just can’t fall asleep. Which of her toys will help her get to slumber land? Have fun reading this book no matter if it is playtime or bedtime. Tap on the sentences to hear them read out loud, and then enjoy the colorful and funny animations. This app has been carefully designed, so that children of all ages can easily navigate through it and have a great experience on both iPhone and iPad. Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Price: $2.99 ~ See Ann Can’t Sleep in the App Store

Friday Findings Disclosure – Disclosure: I have not personally tried any of these apps. These descriptions come from the developers with some minor editing (and perhaps commentary) by myself.