Counting with the Very Hungry Caterpillar

$2.99, iPhone

Teaches: math, counting (1 to 10)

CTR Rating: 40%

CTR Review

The traditional print edition of Eric Carle's classic book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is an effective way to let children informally discover quantity, as they help a caterpillar count/eat his way through the pages of the book. This app takes a different approach, using the food items cut from the book illustrations and turning them into a highly directive, self-correcting worksheet that deals specifically with numbers 1 to 10. The pedagogy could've come straight from the playbook of Edward Thorndike. You start by choosing one of five levels, from easy to more difficult. These range from "please eat the strawberry",which is limited to touching an object to hear it counted, to a timed race where you must count specific food items from a set to earn points. Wrong answers result in an an "oops, you ate the wrong food" along with a red X. High points disappear after each round, and you're asked to play again. This type of multiple-choice-style presentation can work, as long as reinforcements are skillfully applied and are a context for the task, e.g., to climb a hill, post a leaderboard or collect stickers. This app is missing any of these essential elements. To accompany the tedious task is tedious music --- a looping sixteen bars of Mozart already made famous by Baby Einstein. Fortunately, the music can be muted in an options menu, where you can also find an option to toggle off the repetitive directions and reinforcements. There are already hundreds of counting apps, and a few as pretty as this one. Does the world need another?