Drive About: Number Neighborhood
© 2014 Artgig Studio
Children can drive, fly and sail around Number Neighborhood as they discover nine mini-games that effectively reinforce school readiness skills, making this an excellent "back to school" app for child headed for Kindergarten. We liked how children are free to explore in a variety of vehicles, including a rocket, submarine and boat, tapping a no-fail play pattern that uses a board-game-like map to navigate. The nine mini games are responsive, easy to use, and playfully provide skills practice. Wrong answers are simply ignored, correct answers get instant feedback. Activities include Catch-a-Sea Pickle - tap the sea pickles displaying the target number; Whale Feeding - use a slingshot to feed the whale the correct number of cabbages; Cloud Writing - trace the numbers in the sky; Construction Blocks - stack the blocks in order, to turn on the lights; See-Saw - balance the animals on the see-saw with equal sums; Space Vacuum - clean up and count shoes, donuts, marbles and more; Number Painting - color by numbers to paint a masterpiece; Cookie Bakery - play chef and decorate your cookies with matching toppings; and Snowboard Slalom - guide a snowboarding yak to touch the flags in order. The games each do an excellent job with workbook-style content, and it's easy to tell that the designers are former software creators for Sunburst and Houghton Mifflin. In other words, you get a lot of variety and content for your $3. Need to know: There is no ending to the journey, which might frustrate children. After they complete all the games, children are merely looped back to the beginning to do them again. Parents will also want to know that it is possible to control background music in the parents menu (from the main menu). This is an excellent, no-fail download.
$2.99, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch (iOS 5.1.1 or later)
Teaches: counting, ordering, matching, numbers and number writing in English, Spanish, French, Russian and Portuguese
CTR Rating: 96%