Common Sense Media Review
By Dana Anderson
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Colorful puzzles offer challenge without frustration.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 3+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Download
Videos and Photos
Kids Preschool Puzzles
What's It About?
In KIDS PRESCHOOL PUZZLES Kids move small, colorful puzzle pieces into a grayscale shape, such as an apple or a letter of the alphabet. When complete, the shape turns into the object and kids hear an encouraging voice say "Great job!" Parents can also set the app to say the word that matches the object, show the word on the screen, and choose a category of objects. Puzzles range in difficulty to very easy to more challenging, at least for the preschool set.
Is It Any Good?
Though this is a fun app for kids to practice with puzzles, it misses opportunities for learning. Some of the aspects designed to boost learning value aren't executed all that well. For example, after solving a puzzle, kids see the word for the puzzle. But in some cases the word is just wrong: In one puzzle the audio says "gecko" while the word displayed is "lizard." The inclusion of letters and numbers could also be great for learning, but sometimes they are so distorted (into shapes resembling animals with eyes) that kids won't easily be able to transfer what they are learning to the real world. Finally, there are issues with singular/plural -- a puzzle may be an image of something requiring a plural word, but the word and audio is singular.
On the up side, the app has a good balance between ease of play and challenge. It's impressive to see an app for very young children that includes puzzles that aren't all easy to guess in advance, yet that's easy enough to solve without too much frustration. There are several categories with dozens of puzzles, so it will take players quite a few sessions of play before they complete all the puzzles.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Ask kids to guess what the object is before they begin solving the puzzle. (Parents can make funny guesses, too.)
Provide kids with preschool-appropriate real-life puzzles.
App Details
- Devices : Android , Kindle Fire
- Subjects : Language & Reading : letter or word recognition , vocabulary , Math : shapes
- Skills : Thinking & Reasoning : part-whole relationships , solving puzzles
- Pricing structure : Paid
- Release date : October 26, 2011
- Genre : Educational Games
- Publisher : Intellijoy
- Version : 2.1.0
- Minimum software requirements : Android 2.1 and up
- Last updated : November 11, 2020
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