Peppy Pals Social Skills
Great pro-social learning content transfers offscreen.
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Peppy Pals Social Skills
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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 Peppy Pals Social Skills offers Peppy Pals' positive social emotional learning themed videos, stories, and games in one large collection. Animal characters with distinct personalities have different adventures and demonstrate a variety of positive social interactions. The stories have a read-aloud option, so pre-readers can listen, and older kids can read themselves. Games are very simple, but they don't always clearly show kids what to do in the game. There can be long load times and some difficulties scrolling through content. Each activity includes discussion suggestions for parent to help their kids connect the stories to their own experiences. With early childhood and psychology experts as advisors, the developer claims that all content is based on research on social and emotional intelligence. The free download includes limited content; to unlock everything, parents must pay $10.99 as an in-app purchase. Parents can set the language to English or Swedish as well as access support materials in the parents' section. 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 into four play options in PEPPY PALS SOCIAL SKILLS: stories, videos, or two game collections. All feature the five animal characters, each with a unique personality, in different adventures and misadventures. Stories and videos demonstrate how the animals help and care for each other, even when things don't go quite right. Games include choosing toys for each animal or creating facial expressions to demonstrate different emotions. Some of the games include drop-down questions for parents to ask kids, and the books offer questions at the end.
Is It Any Good?
Kids get plenty of exposure to positive social themes through sweet animal characters and relatable scenarios. Social emotional learning is not always easy to address, but these the super kid-friendly videos and stories nicely demonstrate friends who work on getting along and helping each other. There's quite a bit of content to look through, and it's not always easy to navigate through it all. Some games and activities offer more interactive features and are more interesting than others. For instance, it's not always clear how much kids can actually control a storyline. In one of the more interesting activities, kids adjust the eyes and mouth of each of the animal characters to express different emotions. However, parents will have to provide some extra scaffolding to help kids label the emotions that match each expression. To take advantage of the many suggested discussion questions, Peppy Pals Social Skills works best when parents and kids use it together. Those questions can help kids make connections between the app and their offscreen lives. It would be great to have some audio that helps kids navigate the app and understand the purpose of each feature; for example, there's a game where crabs judge the characters' dives, but little kids might not be familiar with that kind of competition so might not understand. Overall, it's a thoughtfully made app that taps into skills that are often hard to reach with tech.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the animals' feelings in Peppy Pals Social Skills stories, videos, and games. What clues can you see in their facial expression and body language that show how they're feeling? What happened that made them feel that way?
As you get to know each of the animals, ask your kid which animal do they think they are most like? Why? Maybe the answer will change in different stories.
Read the discussion suggestions and use them to enhance your kid's understanding of the positive social messages. Let them spark conversation about your family's values or learn more about who your kid is and how they experience the world.
App Details
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
- Skills: Emotional Development: empathy, identifying emotions, persevering, perspective taking, Communication: friendship building, Collaboration: cooperation
- Pricing structure: Free to try (Free download includes limited content. Unlock full app with in app purchase of $10.99)
- Release date: March 27, 2019
- Category: Education
- Topics: Cats, Dogs, and Mice, Friendship, Horses and Farm Animals
- Publisher: Peppy Pals AB
- Version: 1.01
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 8.0 or later
- Last updated: July 10, 2019
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