Sago Mini Puppy Preschool

5
Where to Buy

Sago Mini Puppy Preschool App Review

App Info

Price: $3.99

Overview

Sago Mini Puppy Preschool is a fun general learning app for preschoolers and young children. It’s themed around playful puppies, and offers opportunities to learn about colors, numbers, music, and shapes through simple, intuitive activities. The app promotes free play and exploration, and has enough variety to occupy youngsters for quite a while.

Features include:

  • Four open-ended games starring ten adorable puppies
  • Shape, color, and number recognition practice
  • Does not require wi-fi or internet
  • Creative illustrations, animations, and sound effects
  • Multiple languages available for counting

Quality

Sago Mini Puppy Preschool is a high quality app that has been thoughtfully and carefully designed for the very young. The games are completely intuitive to play, and the artwork and sound effects are delightful. Children will love the playful puppies, each with its own “personality,” and they won’t be able to resist giggling when a puppy burps or makes other semi-inappropriate noises, shakes water from its fur or laughs.  Developers also did a fine job of giving parents control of the app’s appearance and operation in the Settings section of your device. They included a parents area, as well, with suggestions to extend the app’s value through conversations with your little one as you play together.

Education

Sago Mini Puppy Preschool has a lot to offer young children. The four games are all open-ended, with no stressful time limits or competitive features.  Children are free to relax, learn, and have fun. It’s easy for kids to choose the game they want-each game is represented by a different puppy on the home screen, including a wet dog for the bath game and a dog with a musical instrument for the puppy piano.

Kids can practice shapes in a game that shows the shape of toy that the dog wants above its head. The game begins with one shape that matches the one toy offered, and when the child gives it to the dog, he plays in typical doggy fashion for a few seconds. After a few rounds with matching a single toy to its shape, the game becomes more complex, adding additional toys that are not the one the dog wants. An incorrect guess prompts the dog to shake his head “no” ever so slightly until the correct toy is chosen.

The colors game shows two dogs with different colored food bowls, and the task is to put the food of matching color into the correct bowl.  The game becomes more complex by adding additional pieces of food. Again, correction is gentle-put the wrong color into the wrong bowl, and the dog just refuses the food.

The music game features a doggie piano with a one octave scale. Touch the keys and the dog will bark, more or less on key.  Hold the note and the dog will howl!  Children can easily play simple songs and even add in a few other instruments by touching them at the bottom of the screen.

The bath game shows a large bathtub, and kids can put the dogs into it one at a time, take them out, and even hose them down.  A running counter at the top of the screen shows the number of dogs in the tub and voices the number each time it changes.

Entertainment

This app is highly entertaining and will delight almost any child in the target age group. The puppies are animated and happy, just as puppies ought to be, and they each have their own “personality.” Developers did a fine job of creating appropriate sound effects and actions-the dogs realistically chew and shake their squeaky toys, scrunch up their faces when they get wet, bark and yap, and more. For just one example of the fun animations, in the bath time activity, kids are sure to notice a hose hanging from the sky. When they grab it, they will find they can spray water on the dogs in the tub, and each of the dogs responds in a different way.

Value

This app costs $2.99 in the App Store. It’s a good value. I love the free play style of all of the games, and wish there were a couple more similar options. Playing with the pups will be highly motivating for most youngsters, and it would be great to include a couple more skills such as letter matching or size discrimination.

Child Friendliness

This app is very child-friendly. When you first purchase it, it does have a “more apps” section on the front page, but the actual link to the App Store is protected by a parent gate. Best of all, in the information section, parents are instructed that this can be “turned off” in the settings section of the device.  It’s great that developers gave parents a choice about showing the “more apps” link to their kids. Kudos!

  • Parent area 
  • NO external links
  • NO social media
  • NO 3rd party ads
  • NO in-app purchase
  • YES “more apps” (protected, but visible unless turned off in settings)
Sago Mini Puppy Preschool
Sago Mini Puppy Preschool
Sago Mini Puppy Preschool is an outstanding app that will entertain and amuse toddlers and preschoolers as they play with the puppies to learn about counting, shapes, colors, numbers and more.
Quality
Education
Entertainment
Value
Child Friendly
5
Where to Buy