Mister Rogers Make a Journal [discontinued]
© 2009 PBS Kids
11/30/2015 Note that this app has been discontinued. Mister Rogers was known to be a bit of a geek, and he would've undoubtedly been thrilled to know that he finally has a bit of his neighborhood captured as an app. Despite being limited in content, it's hard to find too many faults with this first effort. Designed to be a crutch for helping children describe feelings, this fill-in-the-blank story maker comes with five pre-packaged themes (pretending, playtime, books, at school and when I get mad) plus a well-designed open-ended drawing activity. This later choice makes it easy and fun to finger paint with a selection of markers, watercolors, crayons or stamps; and then save your work to your device's photo library. So yes, you could theoretically print out your child's picture and hang it on your refrigerator. Narrated by Daniel (one of Mr. Roger's original child puppets), children first touch a theme to get started. From this point, your child's accidental success is the only option. The only fault is more pedagogical than design related, and it has to do with applying a didactic template -- with pre-drawn pictures -- to a child's emotions. Sometimes things just don't fit. For example, the story says "Sometimes, I play with my ____" and offers five choices, represented as "some other child's" crayon drawings. If you touch the picture of the cat and dog, the computer says "pet" omitting an option for a child who has just a dog or a cat. That's a big deal for a preschooler. The same holds true for the parents. There's only an option for playing with mom and dad, not one or the other. Because this is an app about feelings, it is important to note these details. Fortunately, you can always skip to the well designed drawing space, where a quiet white screen is waiting for any possibility, as long as you don't mind the finger-sized resolution. This app should be in the pocket of every preschool teacher or child psychologist, to serve as a handy crutch. We liked how the app goes an extra effort to protect email generation (e.g., "Parents, tap the upper right corner five times in order to send this app to a friend." Created by Touch Screen Preschool Games (www.touchscreenpreschoolgames.com, aka Darren Murtha Design) for PBS Kids (pbskids.org/mobile).
$1.99, iPhone
Teaches: creativity, expressing emotions, language, art
CTR Rating: 90%