Common Sense Media Review
By Mieke VanderBorght
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Graphics make fun, short-lived animations; lots of ads.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 3+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Download
Videos and Photos
Be-be-bears: Painting for Kids
What's It About?
Choose from three ways to draw and color in BE-BE-BEARS: PAINTING FOR KIDS. Fill simple line drawings with color and use the finished drawings as stickers in the "free draw" area. Or try the animated sequences to color simple drawings and watch them move in short animated sequences. Finished drawings are displayed in the in-app gallery. Drawing options include a full color palette, three paintbrush thicknesses, and an eraser.
Is It Any Good?
Kids get a nice color palette and cute line drawings to decorate and animate with this pretty basic drawing tool. The most exciting part about Be-be-bears: Painting for Kids are the pre-set animation sequences: Kids get to color in simple but appealing line drawings and tap their way through to watch a short animation. Kids have no input in creating the animations, and beyond those brief moments of excitement, everything else is pretty ho-hum. There's a "color in the drawings" option, and a blank canvas gives kids free creative rein. Everything they create is automatically saved in the gallery or placed in the sticker tray with no way to delete or edit. The three brush options are thick, thicker, and even thicker, so there's not much opportunity for fine detail. Though the free version gives a good sense of what Be-be-bears: Painting for Kids has to offer, it's so riddled with ads and pushes to buy the full version that it's not usable beyond the initial test run.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about what kids create in Be-be-bears: Painting for Kids. Ask them to tell stories about the animations they see. What do the drawings bring to mind?
Give kids lots of art materials to draw and create offscreen: paper, crayons, markers, stamps, scraps, glitter, and glue. Provide whatever supplies you can get your hands on and watch the magic happen.
Talk to your kids about the differences between creating art on a screen versus off. How do they feel different? Do they prefer one medium over the other? What can they do on a digital device that they can't do without one, and vice versa?
App Details
- Devices : iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad
- Subjects : Arts : drawing
- Skills : Creativity : making new creations , Tech Skills : digital creation
- Pricing structure : Free to try (purchase full app for $2.99)
- Release date : December 19, 2017
- Genre : Education
- Topics : Arts
- Publisher : Interactive Studio, OOO
- Version : 1.0.0.1
- Minimum software requirements : iOS 8.0 or later
- Last updated : September 30, 2025
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