The iPhone Mom

This app, 55 Free Baby Samples, features a list of companies that you can contact regarding free baby product samples and coupons. The developers have included the contact information that you’ll need and the app also lets you add in offers that you’ve heard of. Your job is to browse through the list and then tap on the contact button for the offer you’re interested in. The app will then call the number directly.  (The app does provide a few website addresses but they appeared to be for more general baby websites. The majority of the contacts were phone numbers.) The list had a quite a few offers for formula samples, diaper rash ointment, baby food and even coupons for Orajel. Blessed Orajel! Overall, it looks like there’s some good stuff out there.  Unfortunately, I tried out the app in the evening when companies were closed so I wasn’t able to actually request anything.

This is a free app and it’s nice to have the contact information for all of the companies that are currently offering samples.I’m not one to spend hours on the phone requesting coupons but if I see an offer for something that I use all the time I will pick up the phone. Personally, I won’t be using 55 Free Baby Samples every day but it is something I’ll check out every once in awhile.

55 Free Baby Samples will also link you to the website babytobee.com for more free offers.

Price when Reviewed: FREE

Seller: Total Ecommerce LLC

Kid’z Maze is a labyrinth style game that has been developed for young children. It’s not intended for adults although honestly, these mazes are more my speed than the adult versions. The app has labyrinths without any holes so there’s no way to lose the ball and have to start over.  To navigate the mazes you hold the iPhone in landscape mode and tilt it in the direction you’d like the ball to roll. Guide the ball through the maze, when you reach the end you can move on to a new one. The app features 100 different mazes.  As you navigate through the labyrinths your ball will run into balloons that have the numbers 1-10 on them. Pop a balloon and the number is said aloud. So as you travel through the maze you get some practice counting numbers.

Kid’z Maze features four different labyrinth sizes – Small, Medium, Large or Extra Large. As the size increases so does the difficulty. You also have the ability to change the color of your ball, the color of the maze’s background and the colors of the tiles.

I think Kid’z Maze is a great app for preschoolers (and probably younger children). It gives them the feel of a big kid game without the frustration that can come from trying to play one. The fact that it teaches numbers is an added bonus.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Omer Vinik

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

In honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday Oceanhouse Media has dropped the prices of all their Dr. Seuss apps to $.99. The apps are terrific and since they’re normally $2.99-$3.99 the sale is good news indeed!

The available apps are:

The Cat in the Hat~Dr. Seuss ABC~How the Grinch Stole Christmas~Dr. Seuss Camera–Cat in the Hat Edition~Dr. Seuss Camera–The Grinch Edition~Grinchmas!

When I say that this app is the iPhone version of a safety pin on a nursing mother’s bra all of you out there who’ve nursed a child will have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. I’ve probably just thoroughly confused any male readers out there so go ahead and move along. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Ok, my husband would really love that line but he probably saw the post’s title and skedaddled. Hopefully someone else out there appreciated my attempt at Star Wars humor.

The app named Breastfeeding tracks which side you last nursed your baby on. Back in the day I was once told to put a safety pin on my bra marking this very same thing. I can’t remember if I ever did it or not. Breastfeeding lets you mark your spot, so to speak, with the tap of a button. The app displays a bra on the screen. Tap the “i” button and you can add in your baby’s name (or babies, the app can handle more than one). When you’re done the name will show up on a tag that hangs off the bra. If you’re feeding multiple babies they’ll each have their own bra and you can switch between them by swiping across the screen. To track which side you’ve nursed on you’ll tap on the bow that’s on either the left or right side of the bra. When you’ve done this the bow gets bigger and shows either an “L” or “R”. The next time you open up the app you can see where you left off and off you go!

Currently Breastfeeding features a brown color scheme. It’d be nice to see a little more color, maybe being able to choose between blue or pink bras or backgrounds. I think the bows could also stand out a little more. Perhaps they could be the part of the app that’s done in color so they pop off the screen. All in all Breastfeeding is a very simple app and it tracks what it’s supposed to track. Plus I must say the idea of using an app instead of a safety pin appeals to me.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Lars Bergelt

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Lutin is intended for all the expecting parents out there who are trying to come up with THE perfect name for their baby. It’s an agonizing decision and I think it gets worse the more children you have. At least it did for me. At the time of my review Lutin contained 12,663 different first names. Surely there must be some inspiration in there somewhere!

An ABC button pulls up an alphabetical list of every name in the app. Luckily you don’t have to scroll through the entire list all at once, you can tap on a specific letter and then view the names that begin with it. The names will have the female or male sign next to them. Isn’t there a name for those signs? It seems like there is but that’s a bit of knowledge I’ve lost somewhere along the way. I’m not going to Google it either, that search just cries out “trouble!” The point is you can quickly glance at the list and see if a name is intended for a girl or boy or both. (At the top of the screen is a button that will let you sort out the names by gender if you like.) When you come upon an interesting name you can tap it to see it’s origin and the languages it’s found in. Some names will also have their phonetic spelling.  If you like the name then tap on the star button and add it to a favorites list. Lutin also allows you to search the app by using a search bar feature.

I do have a couple of issues with Lutin. The first is that it’s missing the meanings of the names. I know this would probably be a ton of work to put together for over 12,000 names but it seems like a key feature in an app that’s called a name dictionary.  Next, if you visit the information screen for Lutin it explains the origin of the app’s name and also has an audio recording of how the name is pronounced. There were many names in this app that I’d never heard about. I think it would be a nice feature if some of the more uncommon names featured an audio recording too. Finally, the app’s price seems very high at $5.99. Again, I know the app contains an incredible number of names  but (and I hate saying this) I don’t think I’d buy it at that price without the name definitions.   That being said I was impressed by the sheer volume of names that are available in this app. Also, it was easy to navigate whether I used the alphabetized list or the search feature.

Price when Reviewed: $5.99

Seller: Lars Begelt

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Pregnancy App wants to help you track the development of your baby throughout your pregnancy. Begin by entering in the first day of your last period and your normal menstrual cycle length. This will allow the app to calculate your due date. Now the app will display your due date, your progress (how many weeks along you are), the week of pregnancy that you’re in, the number of days until your due date and some basic information about your developing baby. If you tap on your due date you’ll also see two additional dates. These are the dates two weeks before and two weeks after your due date when your baby could be born. Probably not a good idea to focus on the thought of two weeks after. If you turn your iPhone on it’s side, into landscape mode, additional information is displayed and you’ll be able to read more details about what’s going on with your baby. While your phone is on it’s side you can tap on the picture of the fetus and add in a picture of your own. You can also enter in your own notes about your pregnancy. Whether you are in regular or landscape mode you can move forward in the weeks so you can read ahead if you like.

The Pregnancy App is cleanly designed and full of good, basic information. I did sometimes have trouble getting it to switch into landscape mode but this could be my phone’s fault. (It’s been dropped a few times.) My only issue with the app is that the price seems a bit high.

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: Lars Bergelt

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Nursery Rhymes are a subject where I’ve shortchanged  my children. They’re just not something that I read much of when my kids were little. I know that they’ve learned a few in school but I’d be surprised if they knew about Old King Cole and they’d be shocked to learn about poor Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’s wife.  Well here’s an app that  can help out any other nursery rhyme deficient mothers out there. The Mother Goose Classics app currently features nine classic nursery rhymes. They are Humpty Dumpty, Jack Be Nimble, Jack & Jill, Hickory Dickory Dock, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Hey Diddle Diddle, This Little Piggy and Pat a Cake. There is also a free version that features three rhymes.

The characters from the nursery rhymes appear on your screen and you tap on the one that you’d like to hear more about. (Only three characters show up on the screen at a time so you’ll need to scroll to the left and right.) Each nursery rhyme is presented over several screens. Tap on the text to hear it read aloud. Each rhyme has some animation to it and if you tap on the screen you can watch more things happen.

If you’re looking for a good introduction to Nursery Rhymes this isn’t a bad way to go and the animations are humorous. Personally, $1.99 for only nine rhymes feels a little high to me. Hopefully more rhymes will be added in future updates.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Raizlabs Corp.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Flash Bee is a flashcard app that features both math and word flashcards. It will allow you to create different “student” profiles so you can use the app with more than one child and I’m always a big fan of this type of feature.

There are several buttons on the bottom of the screen that will help you navigate through the app. “Words” will take you to the word flashcard section.  Choose your student’s profile and then tap on the button that says “word list”. Here you can choose the grade level for the words that will show up on the flashcards.  The grades go from Pre-K to Fifth Grade and each grade has beginner, intermediate and advanced lists. (Many of them will also have more than one list per difficulty level.) In the options you can get specific about which grades and lists you want to work with.  There are a few additional options that you can choose from including setting a limit on the number of flashcards shown, determining when a “helper phrase” for the word will appear, randomizing the words, repeating the list and some sound options. When you’ve figured all that out it’s just a matter of tapping “start” and you’re off. A word is displayed on the screen and when you’ve read it correctly you tap the “next” button and you’re on to the next flashcard. At the end of the flashcard set you’ll see a summary of how you did overall. You can always view this information on the “history” section for your student (found by tapping the “Students” button). The history will tell you what list your child worked on, how many cards they reviewed and how long it took them to finish. One last thing about the word section – I really like the font that the developers chose for the word flashcards.

The “Math” button takes you to the main math flashcards screen. First thing you’ll want to do is choose between addition, subtraction, multiplication or division problems. Choosing  what you want is as easy as sliding a button on the screen from on to off. There are also options about the number of problems in your flashcard set, the number range for the problems and a time limit for the review. Again, when you’ve completed the flashcards you’ll have a summary of results and you can view those in history too.

I also found that if you tap the button “Word List” at the bottom of the screen you can see all of the word lists available for use with the flashcards. Here’s the part I was surprised about – you can also add your own words to the lists. Great concept! From what I can tell you can’t create new lists, just add in your own words to the existing ones.  It would be nice to be able to create new lists for weekly spelling words.

I like how Flash Bee combines the words plus the math facts. It’s nice to have a combination in one app. I also like how you can choose what math facts to practice and which words you’d like to review. It’s great being able to set up student profiles for each of my children and their different ability levels.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: BizzyTime, Inc.

Where did February go? Just a reminder that with the end of the month it’s just almost time for the end of TickleTap Apps iPod Touch contest.

I’ve seen coloring book apps that are good and coloring books that are, well, bad. Ones that are so complicated you’d need to be a rocket scientist to color a picture of a rocket (ok, exaggeration) and some that are so simple your kids will be bored from the get go. 123 Color is different. Here, different is good. Very good. It’s filled with fun pictures to color but it also teaches number and letter recognition at the same time. Your children will be learning while they are coloring.

The concept behind 123 Color is to match letters/numbers in the picture with letters/numbers that correspond to different colors. It’s like the color by numbers that I used to do when I was in school.  Just to be clear that’s Elementary school, not college. You can choose to color in uppercase letters, lowercase letters or numbers. There is also a “creative expression” option. Each of these options is assigned a button on the main screen. Tap a button and you’ll have a coloring page that has letters/numbers scattered around it. Now, at the bottom of the screen you’ll see a painter’s palette. Tap here to see your colors. This is important – swipe to the left and the colors will scroll along the bottom. There are more available colors than the ones which show up on the screen. (Unless you’ve selected 7 colors, more about that in a minute.) Now you tap on a color and then tap it’s matching letter/number on the page. If you need some help, tap on the coloring page first and the colors at the bottom will adjust to show you the set that contains the letter/number you’re looking for.  As a grand finale when your picture is fully colored you’ll hear a familiar children’s song.

123 Color was developed by Steve Glinberg who is behind KidCalc. Like KidCalc, this app has some great customization abilities. Within each activity you can adjust the settings. There is no need to visit a separate settings section. You can change the learning activity (lowercase letters, numbers, etc.) no matter what button you selected in the beginning. You can choose to hear things said aloud in English by a man or woman or Spanish. Or you can opt for silence from the app. One of the features that I really like is the ability to adjust the complexity of the coloring pages. This means you can choose between 7 and 30 different colors. If you choose 7 then you will only work with 7 letters/numbers which is great for the younger kids. The last adjustment that I appreciated involved the songs. I’m all for a song but not necessarily every time my child finishes a coloring page. So for those days when there’s just not room for music in my heart I can turn off the songs. Or if I’m having a day where “The Muffin Man” is just right but “Yankee Doodle” is all wrong I can turn on or off certain songs.

Very briefly, here are a few other things to note about the app. You can save finished pictures to the camera roll or email them out. There is a “do over” button. The main page has a link to a demo video that can walk you through using the app. Finally, “creative expression” lets you color the pictures however you want. You don’t do this by coloring with your finger on the screen. Tap a color and then tap on an area on the page. The colors are filled in by blocks. This is my favorite way to do it for the younger kids because who can stay in the lines when you’re coloring with a finger anyway? I know that I can’t.

123 Color is a fantastic coloring app. My only suggestion concerns how you change to a new coloring page. Right now when you want a new picture you tap a frame icon at the bottom of the screen. My first instinct was to shake my iPhone and it took me a minute to realize what I was supposed to do. Kids might get it right away but I’m not sure. That is my only quibble with the app and it’s so very small and it certainly doesn’t affect how much I like it.  Currently there are 32 different coloring pages. Based on what I’ve seen Steve do with KidCalc I think it’s a good guess that he’ll add more in the future.

If you are looking for a coloring app and you want it to have a purpose (in addition to entertainment) then you really need to grab this one. It’s very well executed, runs smoothly, is fun for the kids and you’ll know that they’ll be practicing key preschool skills.

**I just got word that I’ve got two promo codes for 123 Color to give away. This app is absolutely worth you leaving a comment.  But that’s not all, I’ve got three codes for KidCalc. Again, another app that’s worth a comment. So here’s how we’ll do it. Leave me a comment that says “123Color” or “KidCalc”. (You can write more if you want but don’t have to.) If you want to enter for both then please leave two comments, that way I don’t have to go through and separate things out. I’ll leave it open through Monday and then randomly choose some lucky winners that evening. Good luck!

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Steve Glinberg

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.