Kindergarten Prep App Review
App Info
Price: $2.99 In-App Purchases
Overview
Kindergarten Prep offers skill-building activities for young children in the areas of alphabet, fruit, colors, animals, counting, and shapes. Each section includes a learning activity, a writing/drawing exercise, a guessing game, and a related play activity.
Features include:
- 6 skill areas with 4 types of activities each
- Child-centered, friendly environment
- Fun, low stress games
- Quality narration and voiced directions
- Intuitive and easy to use
Quality
Kindergarten Prep is a high quality app that will help young children practice some important skills. The developers did a good job of including scaffolded activities, i.e., activities that teach and gradually require more thought from players. Four of the skills addressed (colors, numbers, alphabet, shapes) are intricately wound into standards for kindergarten students and will directly help kids be more successful in school. The animals and fruits sections are also valuable in that they expand vocabulary and give kids a chance to use words.
One concern is that there are a number of obvious misspellings and grammar problems on the app, including the word puzzles spelled “puzzels” on the title of the game in the Animals section where kids can see it. The Alphabet game instructs, “Pop the balloon to know its alphabet” which is sort of an odd way to phrase the concept. Directions on the Fruits game say “Catch the fruits in basket” and the Counting game instructs “Catch the counting.” Errors such as these set a poor example for young children who are just beginning to sort out the finer points of grammar.
Education
This app does a good job of providing an array of skills practice for preschool children. Most of the sections offer valuable beginning practice with recognition and find motor skills such as writing letters and numbers. The Learn activities in each section introduce the various items within the group and give examples. The Draw activities provide a selection of virtual colored pencils and dotted lines to trace items such as letters and numbers. The section does not seem as related in the Colors area, as children are tracing various items of different colors, but the color names are not mentioned. It is also quite difficult in the Fruits and in the Animals areas, where the dotted figures are far too intricate for most preschoolers’ skills. The Guess section in each area provides children with an opportunity to check their skills, such as counting items 1-20 and selecting the matching numeral. The font used in this area, however, is a poor choice for young children, as the 6s and 9s in particular are very difficult to read. The Play area of each section is a simple game to apply the skills learned. Several sections use a “pop the balloons” type game where kids tap the balloons to hear what they represent. There is a simple jigsaw puzzle in the Animals section, a catching game in the Numbers section, and a drag and drop game in the Shapes section.
Entertainment
Young children will have fun playing Kindergarten Prep. The app provides a nice array of different tasks, so there is some good play value. The illustrations are generally clear, but many are designed to look like a child drew or colored them. For example, there are stray color marks outside of the shapes in the Shapes section, as though a child colored outside of the lines. It’s a matter of opinion, but I would prefer to see a bit more professionalism in the artwork.
I am concerned that children may tire of this app relatively quickly, after going through each of the sections one or two times. It would be nice to see a bit more variety in the games across the sections, or perhaps a randomly-selected game format so that users could not be certain what type of game will come up next.
Value
This app is $4.99 in the App Store, which seems a bit pricy. If the app will be used by multiple children, as in a family setting or a classroom setting, then the cost would be worthwhile. For one child, however, I don’t believe there’s enough play value to keep kids using it long enough to be worth the price.
Child Friendliness
- Protected parent area (contains external links, ratings, & social media)
- NO 3rd party ads
- NO in-app purchase
