Elmer�s Photo Patchwork

$1.99, iPad, iPhone

Teaches: creativity, photography, spatial relations

CTR Rating: 80%

CTR Review

This innovative creativity experience lets you fill in the small patches of an elephant with images you capture with your camera. Children and librarians who like the "Elmer the Patchwork Elephant" book series, by Anderson Press, will find this app ideal for extending the characters beyond the page. For example, you could create an elephant out of each child's nose (or shoe), and then share the photo with the entire group. So why not a higher rating? Despite having 11 different elephants, each with four pattern options and some different backgrounds, there's not much variety from elephant to elephant. In some cases there are so many spaces to fill that the process can start to feel random and tedious. Testers wanted to be able to draw their own patterns or to quickly reduce the number of patches, to match a particular set of photos. They also didn't know when (or if) their elephant was "finished." Despite the narrow focus, the app succeeds in extending the ideas in the book beyond the page, by asking children to visualize how colors and shapes can be part of an elephant. We've seen the technique used well in Toca Tailor, for example, for fabric patterns. Don't worry -- all the camera activity doesn't fill up your photo library. The only photo that's saved is the completed elephant.