Tiggly Story Maker: Build Words and Record Your Own Tales
By Mieke VanderBorght,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Harness the power of vowels to create zany stories.
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Tiggly Story Maker: Build Words and Record Your Own Tales
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What’s It About?
TIGGLY STORY MAKER: BUILD WORDS AND RECORD YOUR OWN TALES works about the same whether you play with or without the toys, but the manipulatives add a layer that really works for some kids. Tap a vowel from the top of the screen (no toy version), or place a vowel toy in the missing spot (toy version) to fill in the missing vowel between two consonants. If the vowel choice makes a real word, an animation of that word appears ("pig," "peg," "pug"). Change consonants and continue playing. As play continues, animations do different things. In the story maker, move the pictures around while recording your voice telling a story.
Is It Any Good?
Whether kids have the toys or not, they are intimately involved in exploring just how important that middle vowel is in simple consonant-vowel-consonant words. Since it can be disappointing when your vowel choice doesn’t work, the best word set is "b-g," as it is the only one for which every vowel makes a real word and produces a picture or animation. Those images nicely bring the words to life, and random interactions add a heap of silliness that's bound to delight young kids. It would be nice, however, if kids had more control over what the animations do. There's also only a small set of word groups, which limits gameplay a bit. The story option is fun but not entirely tied in to the word-building exercise. A "start recording" button would give kids more time to process their new task by giving them control over when to start recording. At the time of this review, there were some technical difficulties with the audio lining up correctly on playback. Though the game can be easily played without them, the toys do add a unique dimension of interactivity. And, in combination with the other apps that use the toys, Tiggly Story Maker: Build Words and Record Your Own Tales is a fun way to explore vowels.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the words that kids construct. Make sure they understand what each word means.
Explore other simple consonant-vowel-consonant combinations and change the vowels to see what new words you and your kids can come up with.
Invent stories with your kids using the story-record feature.
App Details
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, Nook HD
- Subjects: Language & Reading: letter or word recognition, phonics, storytelling, vocabulary
- Skills: Creativity: imagination
- Pricing structure: Paid (Box set with five vowel manipulatives plus codes for three Tiggly apps available for $29.99)
- Release date: September 24, 2015
- Category: Education
- Topics: Numbers and Letters
- Publisher: Tiggly
- Version: 1.1
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 7.0 or later; Android 4.3 and up
- Last updated: July 27, 2016
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