Alien Buddies
By Amanda Bindel,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Prereading games fun for young kids, but not challenging.
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Alien Buddies
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What’s It About?
Adorable little aliens take kids on a pre-reading journey through space. Kids choose from four games -- match, puzzle, dot-to-dot, or stickers. In match, kids can load aliens onto the right space craft by matching the color, shape, number, or letter. Matches can be made visually, by matching letter to letter, or by listening to the item named and then visually finding the match. In the puzzle game, kids put together pictures of aliens, choosing four-, six-, or eight-piece puzzles. In dot-to-dot, kids form pictures by connecting numbers in order. The sticker game gives kids the chance to create scenes using stickers they've earned in each of the other games.
Is It Any Good?
These educational activities are pretty fun, and kids will enjoy the aliens' antics as they move around and make funny noises -- like "Oh no!" when one is moved incorrectly or "All right! Whee!" when they are placed correctly. Mastering all of the levels may not take kids very long, though, as there isn't much of a challenge involved and toddlers could even stumble into the correct answers by dragging and dropping indiscriminately.
The matching game has eight short rounds. The puzzle game and dot-to-dot games includes 18 activities each. And kids can choose from eight sticker scenes to embellish. Kids can vary their challenge with the alphabet and numbers, choosing either lowercase or uppercase letters or matching the lowercase letter to the uppercase letter for letter match and choosing numbers 1 to 10, 1 to 20, or 1 to 50 for number match.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Look for shapes, colors, numbers, and letters that you encounter in your daily routine and point them out to kids.
To further develop fine motor skills, encourage kids to color with crayons, play with play dough, and string beads. Developing fine motor skills will help with writing skills.
App Details
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
- Subjects: Language & Reading: letter or word recognition, Math: counting, numbers, shapes
- Pricing structure: Paid
- Release date: December 9, 2012
- Category: Education
- Topics: Space and Aliens
- Publisher: Artgig Studio
- Version: 1.2.2
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 4.3 or later
- Last updated: February 10, 2020
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