A nice simple app for learning animal names and sounds, with voice recording options.
The interaction with this app is simple – touch the barn door, and it opens. An animal appears, makes the appropriate animal sounds and then the name of the animal is printed on the screen and spoken aloud.
Alone, it’s going to be engaging for the toddler in your life, but you can also easily record your own voice, or that of a friend or family member for each of the animals. This is a great opportunity for older siblings, or relatives to have some involvement in your toddlers’ screen time activities. One of the twins recorded a full set, and our toddler loves to listen to it when the twins aren’t with us – next time my family visit from Europe, I’ll be getting them set up for a recording session too!
And there are 10 language options beyond English offered – although only US English is offered in both adult and child voices (the rest are all adult) – making it more accessible to non-English speaking children, and a way to introduce animal names in different languages to your child.
As an app goes, the length of its use has surprised me. It was one of the early ones we introduced (I’ve used it for years in my class on early childhood and technology), and now at over 2 years, she still selects it and will quite happily play for five to ten minutes.
The only annoyance, which I’m sure is also a feature, is you have to finish the whole set of animals to restart the game. This has been frustrating in moments (although a hard shutdown of the app does allow you to restart it, of course).
The website [http://www.peekaboobarn.com/products] provides the opportunity to buy additional games, board books and plush toys if that’s your thing. And there are other apps available.
Recommendation: great, versatile, surprisingly good value for a simple app.
Tags: for toddlers, languages, farm animals
App details
Available on: iOS (Apple); android (google); amazon apps
Price: $1.99
Ads: no
App ages rating: 4+
My age rating: 1+
Category: Farm animal sounds; toddler
Publisher: Night & Day Studios https://nightanddaystudio.com/
