To the Farm!
© 2012 Sanoen
Here's a slow-paced spelling app from Spain with beautiful needlepoint-like graphics, clear narration, and some nice adult-management features that include the ability to quickly change languages or levels. In the app, children spell the names of 16 farm animals, letter-by-letter. There are two spelling modes: Easy Spelling (you can see the outline of the letters and drag them into place) and Spelling (with no outlines). There's also a sentence reading mode. There are a lot of on-the-fly features. You can toggle an autoplay mode on/off. You can also easily change between upper/lower case, and adjust the level so that children are presented with "easy spelling" (drag individual letters to their space, in a word like "sheep") or "reading sentences" in which a descriptive story ties things together. This app features original illustrations of farm animals, and speech in six languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Catalan and Chinese. A parent guide contains some pedagogical tips from Hamelin International Laie School, who provided pedagogical advice. There are some localization issues that should be noted. When used in the English setting, some of the letters appear to be unconventional (the S in particular). Also, in one of the screens, the male chicken is called "cock" instead of "rooster."
$1.99, iPad
Teaches: Reading, spelling, word recognition, English, Spanish, French, German, Catalan and Chinese
CTR Rating: 82%