MarcoPolo Ocean
Preschoolers build, explore, and play in colorful ocean app.
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MarcoPolo Ocean
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this app.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that MarcoPolo Ocean is a beautiful free-play and puzzle app that includes five fun activities. It's colorfully animated and narrated to help kids of preschool age and up form an overall concept of what undersea environments look like and what animals live in them. Kids can explore a coral reef in shallow areas of the ocean, or take a dive to see what lives in the dark depths of the ocean. They can assemble pictures of marine animals and learn their names and body parts and then make the animals swim through the water with realistic motion. MarcoPolo Ocean also invites kids to build a ship and a submarine, puzzle-style, to explore human-made transportation above and below the water. Throughout play a narrator gives kids brief facts about more than 30 species of fish and marine mammals as well as some marine-vessel vocabulary, too. Read the developer's privacy policy for details on how your (or your kids') information is collected, used, and shared and any choices you may have in the matter, and note that privacy policies and terms of service frequently change.
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What’s It About?
Tap Play and enter the main screen, which includes a shoreline and an ocean. Swipe the fish icon to view all the types of fish you can add to the scene. Tap the puzzle icon to hear information about ocean life and access a puzzle, which will highlight an activity such as reef building. As kids fill in the puzzle, the narrator speaks related vocabulary words. Tap on the wave icon to return to the main screen and play in other ocean landscapes for more exploring, facts, and puzzles. There's just enough of a dip into ocean knowledge within the waves of kid-friendly interactivity on MARCOPOLO OCEAN.
Is It Any Good?
Diving into the wonders of the ocean is easy with MarcoPolo Ocean, as kids simply tap, drag, and swipe to explore. The friendly narrator keeps facts brief, indicating only the term for many of the puzzle pieces ("Fluke," she says as kids place the orca's tail into the puzzle) and a slightly longer explanation for other environments or animals. If kids can't find where a puzzle piece fits, it flashes to give them a clue. There are a few tidbits that aren't totally in line with real ocean life. For example, in the section about marine mammals, there's a manatee pictured in the same environment as a polar bear, which may make it seem as if those animals live in the same area of the ocean. Also, sometimes kids will need to practice trial and error to find out how certain parts of the free play work. The kid-protected parent section includes explanation of the app's activities and settings, as well as extension ideas for parents.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Read through the kid-protected parent section to find extension ideas, such as a fun sink-or-float activity, to continue learning.
Check out websites that include images of different boats and submarines so kids can view actual photos of parts of those vessels that they've learned to identify on the animated versions they pieced together on MarcoPolo Ocean.
If you have a public aquarium nearby, take a family field trip and visit it to see the real thing. Or watch a documentary-based movie featuring oceans such as Disney's Oceans.
App Details
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
- Subjects: Language & Reading: following directions, vocabulary, Science: animals, engineering, ecosystems and the environment
- Skills: Thinking & Reasoning: part-whole relationships, solving puzzles
- Pricing structure: Free
- Release date: January 30, 2014
- Category: Education
- Topics: Ocean Creatures, Science and Nature
- Publisher: MarcoPolo Learning
- Version: 3.0.9
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 7.0 or later
- Last updated: December 1, 2021
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