4.8
Where to Buy

Shape Gurus App Review

App Info

Price: $2.99

Overview

Shape Gurus is an engaging and interactive set of shape and color puzzles designed for toddlers and preschoolers.  Each game encourages children to sort, match and classify while they interact with the artwork.

Features include:

  • 27 puzzles
  • 4 shapes and 9 colors
  • Size matching
  • Intuitive interface
  • 12 languages

Quality

This high-quality app will engage young children in valuable and productive problem-solving and thinking skills practice.  The artwork is brightly-colored and done in a shape-composite style that highlights how everyday objects are made of simpler shapes placed just so.  The audio identification of the shapes and colors is clear and crisp. It is also possible to place shapes quickly enough for the sound files to overlap, making them very difficult to understand.

Education

This simple app will give young children a thorough workout with basic shapes, colors and even sizes.  Each of the increasingly difficult puzzles requires children to match, sort, or classify the shapes and drag them to the correct spot on the screen to complete the picture.  A few puzzles even require players to recognize inner and outer shapes and use visual closure to complete shapes.

Educators know that learning to name, match and classify items such as these is important, but they also understand that puzzles like the ones in Shape Gurus build foundational thinking skills as well.  Learning to recognize and name squares and triangles, and to notice when one is blue and the other is orange are great skills, but the more challenging thinking skills, such as figuring out which of the differently-sized similar shapes will fit into the target area and understanding that the small blue square fits into the empty spot in the larger blue square are as valuable if not more so.

Entertainment

Shape Gurus is an engaging app for the audience.  Each page shows brightly-colored objects made with basic shapes, such as flowers built from triangular petals and circular centers. The pages lead nicely one into the other, such as the first circle that turns out to be an egg that hatches a bird that flies to a nest, and so on.  The content ranges from the bird nest down to the ground and beneath it to find an ant community, some dinosaur bones, and even a mole having a somewhat private moment in his bathroom!  Flowers grow, hot air balloons take off, and rockets jet to other planets, and each scene leads nicely into the next.

Value

Shape Gurus is likely to achieve “favorite app” status with your young users, so it’s a great value at $1.99.  Kids will play again and again and will enjoy predicting the next scene as they complete each puzzle.  And the game doesn’t “end,” but simply circles around to start the puzzles over again when the planet in outer space turns into the egg at the beginning of the sequence.  Best of all, the play is very productive and will help them master skills important for later academic and life-long success.

Child Friendliness

Shape Gurus is child friendly.  Determined children could access the language selection and mechanism to reset the app, but all links and other adult utilities are safely tucked away behind an effective parent gate that requires reading ability.

  • Protected parent area (contains external links & social media)
  • NO social media
  • NO in-app purchase
  • NO 3rd party ads
  • YES “more apps” (protected, but visible)
Shape Gurus
Shape Gurus
Shape Gurus is a delightful romp through shapes and colors that toddlers and preschoolers will enjoy again and again while they learn to recognize green circles, red squares and purple triangles.
Quality
Education
Entertainment
Value
Child Friendly
4.8
Where to Buy