Playtime in Appelsin Town for Kids 2-5 Years

4.7
Where to Buy

Playtime in Appelsin Town for Kids 2-5 Years App Review

App Info

Price: $2.99

Overview

Playtime in Appelsin Town is a low-key, gentle fun app designed for the very young. Kids can explore interactive activities that include enjoying a picnic, decorating cupcakes, getting the “mail,” and growing carrots in the garden.

Features include:

  • Play without using data or internet connection
  • Cute, engaging characters
  • Simple, child-friendly interface
  • Soothing sound effects

Quality

Playtime in Appelsin Town is a high quality app that has been designed with young children in mind. Each of the three activity screens is intuitive to use and invites exploration. Many of the pictures are interactive, which will encourage youngsters to explore. The app is responsive, and includes sound effects, such as a doorbell ringing, that can be triggered by a touch. Developers might consider including a parents’ area that explains the benefits of the various features of the app. As a teacher, I can pick them out easily, but some parents might appreciate a more thorough run-down of the skills being nurtured and how to interact with their child as they play to make the most of the learning opportunities.

Education

This app has a lot of features that will build foundational readiness and learning skills with very young children. Like all good toddler and young preschool apps, it builds experiences with cause and effect, which is foundational to all learning. Kids can touch many of the illustrations and produce the same effect over and over again. This lends itself to predictability, and will allow parents to dig a bit deeper by asking their child what will happen if they touch the door to the house (the doorbell rings), and so forth.

Much of the app uses an easy drag-and-drop interface, encouraging such actions as decorating cupcakes and watering the garden to grow carrots. Interestingly, kids can also learn some basic concepts such as rain coming from gray clouds and making vegetables grow, and mailmen bringing fun packages.

The picnic with Juno the Lamb is also particularly engaging; young kids can set out plates, cups and goodies to share with the friends. The app allows for creativity in placement of the items, which is very nice.

Entertainment

Playtime in Appelsin Town is an entertaining app that hits the nail squarely on the head for its intended young audience. The app is predictable enough to help children learn, and has enough variation to provide the occasional surprise as children play. Young kids are likely to stay engaged for quite a while, which will give this app quite a bit of play value.

Value

This app costs $1.99 in the App Store, which is a good value, especially if you have more than one young child who will use it. It’s engaging and fun for the toddler and early preschool crowd, and offers many opportunities for nurturing important cognitive skills.

Child Friendliness

This app is child friendly, and features an effective parent gate protecting the “more apps,” but these are visible to all children on the initial screen. The pictures have locks on them, but many young users may not realize what that means and might be sad when they can’t explore those sections in the same way that they explore other parts of the app. Developers might want to consider placing the references to the additional apps behind the parent gate so that youngsters don’t see them.

  • NO external links
  • NO social media
  • NO 3rd party ads
  • NO in-app purchase
  • YES “more apps” (protected, but visible)
Playtime in Appelsin Town for Kids 2-5 Years
Playtime in Appelsin Town for Kids 2-5 Years
Playtime in Appelsin Town for Kids 2-5 is a fun app for the very young, appropriate for toddlers and young preschoolers, and children who are not very experienced with mobile devices. It teaches and nurtures a number of readiness and preacademic skills, and will be fun for quite a while.
Quality
Education
Entertainment
Value
Child Friendly
4.7
Where to Buy