Injini Child Development Game Suite
© 2011 Project Injini
Nine carefully crafted, multi-level learning games are designed for young children with special needs. But they could be used in regular ECE settings as well. In other words, ECE teachers, take note of this app. Designed to be early intervention tools, this $50 app is designed to "reinforce fine motor and language skills, understanding of cause and effect, spatial awareness, memory and visual processing." Content consists of 100 puzzles of varying difficulty; more than 50 hand-painted tracing game illustrations; eight farm-themed mini-games; scaffolding methodology to support successful game playing and subtle level changes to support different stages of development. There are also short tutorials that model how to play each game. A subtle pause and exit button make it possible to stop a game at any point and return to the main menu. You have the option of showing children where these buttons are. Activities include: Balloons - pop balloons of varying colors and shapes and hear their shape labeled, Farm - eight games on a farm (one per animal) designed to let children explore as they sheer sheep, wash pigs, or plant flowers; Find It - follow instructions and distinguish between everyday objects to help the girl find the items she asks for; Frog - draw a path for a frog's tongue to catch as many bugs as possible; Matching - find and tap the matching picture card to make a pair; Pattern - find what comes next in a pattern of shapes and colors; Puzzle - complete simple jigsaw puzzles; Squares - a memory game where you tap squares in the order that they were highlighted; and Tracing - practice fine motor skills by moving the ball along the path and see the picture that magically appears. There is no record keeping, and progress is not saved, even though there is a progress meter for many of the games. Options let you change the voice of the narrator (male or female), adjust the menu design for more or less options, toggle a "pause" button, or toggle a count down feature. The music at the main menu can be distracting. Children are given a wide range of activities for each game. The publisher plans on creating future game additions as part of the price through app updates, making it a lifetime membership and avoiding the need for in-app purchases. Created by NCSoft for Project Injini. Available for iPad and iPad 2, requires iOS 4.3.
$50, iPad
Teaches: special needs, logic, language, cause and effect, spatial relations, memory
CTR Rating: 92%