Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo is a pleasant and fun app that will help young children have fun while learning language skills and following directions.
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Overview
Chatter Zoo is an interactive early learning app designed for young children. It focuses on language skills, fine motor skills and routines for children from eighteen to forty-two months of age.
Features include:
- Four cute baby animals to care for
- Focus on daily routines of playtime, bath time, mealtime and bedtime
- Two interactive stories
- Interactive games
- Friendly, descriptive narration
- Clear directions
Quality
Chatter Zoo is a fun app that will intrigue toddlers and preschoolers. It has a focus on familiar routines and language associated with them. Young children will enjoy the feelings of control and power associated with “helping” the characters through their day. Activities such as waking the animals by tickling them, cleaning them by spraying water and rubbing them with soap in the bath, and choosing the correct color of bottle for feeding time will be very satisfying for the young audience.
Young children love repetition and this app offers plenty. In much the same way that children will request favorite stories be read again and again, they will want to return to these simple games over and over due to the feelings of power and control they will have over the characters. Toddlers and preschoolers also benefit from predictable routines and the activities in this app will be reassuringly predictable.
Users are guided to respond by touching the correct items by a flashing outline around the character or item to be chosen. This activates after a few seconds of no response, so kids will have a chance to do the activity on their own, then have appropriate and non-intrusive guidance to accomplish the given task. Other pictures are inactive while the app waits for the correct response, so no correction is needed. It’s all a very positive experience.
Education
Chatter Zoo is focused on language development. For each scene and activity, the narrator clearly describes the action and the routine. Directions are clear and easy to follow. A wide variety of descriptive words will broaden most young children’s vocabulary or provide a positive context for practice.
Entertainment
Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo will be a lot of fun for most young children. The baby animals use a range of language skills, from infant cooing to baby talk to telegraphic speech. Most kids will find an animal baby to relate to, according to their own stage of development.
The interactive activities (bath time and meal time) are really exercises in following directions. At bath time, kids will have a ball squirting water and soaping up the characters. The meal time game offers an array of foods to be moved from the refrigerator to the baby to eat. The babies are happy to get most of the foods, but their reaction to the lemons are amusing.
Value
This app is a good value at $1.99. It will provide lots of positive, repetitive play for young children. The app nurtures many important skills, including language development, prediction, following directions, and more.
Child Friendliness
This app contains no outside advertising. The Parents Zone has links to social media, an email support form and information/purchasing links for other apps from the same developer. It is protected by a screen that requires users to hold down a section of screen for five seconds, which should prevent unauthorized access. It’s always great to know that young children can safely play with an app without the risk of accidentally finding their way onto the open internet or into social media.
Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo is a pleasant and fun app that will help young children have fun while learning language skills and following directions.