How Are Things Made?

This clever approach to teaching kids where things come from is marred by a lack of overall guidance, support, and structure as they navigate the experience. How Are Things Made? answers the sort of questions kids are always asking. It's interesting to see, and even virtually participate in, the various steps. Unfortunately, there's no overarching story on the screen or introduction to the process as kids get started. The "paper" stage expects kids to know that they need to start some in-home recycling before they can do anything else. But there's no prompt encouraging them to do so. Each of the buildings has at least one triangle "play" button, but you can't press them until you meet certain criteria. The app never tells you what the criteria is, though, so it's possible to be stuck tapping everything on the screen as you try to figure out what you're missing. Much of this could be resolved by a quick voice over that explains the steps in order so kids know where to begin. The other challenge is that kids can tap on the name of each building for more in-depth info on that part of the process, but this isn't prompted, nor is it obvious. Kids could miss that information entirely. There's some cool info here and it's fun to design your own t-shirt and "bake" your own bread, but the few flaws have a negative impact on the learning and the fun.