App of the Week: Toddler Toy Factory

If you get into iPad, iPhone, computer or smartphone apps for your kid, you’ll eventually find yourself playing games. While most geeks love video games, I can’t stand them (mostly). But even I can appreciate the value of some video games for teaching skills and concept that are important for young children to understand early on. So today’s app of the week is Toddler Toy Factory.

Toddler Toy Factory

This is one of the first apps I downloaded for my son last year and he only just last night was able to really play it. The reason it took so long is that to play the game kids have to get the touch, drag and drop concept of the iPad user interface. The app has three games Find, Ship and Make.

Ship Toys

The shipping game lines up toys in either one (easy) or two (medium) rows and counts them off as you drag them to a barrel and drop them for shipping. If you don’t get them in the barrel they bounce back with a spring sound that my son actually likes. It’s like the little spring door stop that he loved to boing endlessly…

At first I just held his hand and played the game while he sat passively (and mostly uninterested). Eventually I did one or two to show him and he tried to to the rest. The initial problem was that if I demonstrated with one in the corner, he would copy the motion and miss the barrel since his toy was in a different place. As you can see in the video below, he now understands that he has to bring the toy down, and then over to drop it in the barrel.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPU_6ENK2MA&feature=context&context=C360923fADOEgsToPDskKWmSaTqJUlHMWsJ_FiW-Xj[/youtube]

He got a little frustrated in the end as he got impatient and started getting his other hand on the screen, or let another finger touch the screen and spoiled the touch. It was cute, he reacted the same way I react when a g@#% da@#%$# f@#$$%ing thing won’t do what I want…

Find Toys

Find toys is a simple memory game. Toys are hidden behind crates. When you touch one a toy appears. As you match up the toys, they fall down below. Once you have found them all you can drag the toys to a chute and they disappear and make a funny noise. My son likes this more than finding them.

At 20 months he can play this, but he doesn’t have a strong enough sense of object permanence to remember where he last saw the robot. He gets through the game by random. I’m working with him to get him to open particular boxes, rather than just random ones, but he’s not there yet.

Make Toys

The Make game is a simple word and spelling game. You drag the letters to spell out the different toys based on a prompt to a chute in a neat looking toy machine. It reads off the letters as you go and says the word when you’re done. While my son does have the ability to remember shapes and objects and identify and select them, he doesn’t really have the ability to generate associations on the fly yet, so this game is a little over his head for now. But I’ll keep trying.

Free and Paid Versions

I have the free version of this app which has limited toy options and limited levels of difficulty. The paid version has harder ability levels for all the games and more toy options. For now, the free version is just fine. Once he gets a better grasp of the games, and needs more of a challenge, I’ll get the paid version, which is only $0.99.

Toddler Toy Factory Video

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFC3lKLO16E[/youtube]

-Mike