LumiKids Beach
© 2015 Lumosity
This is the second app in the LumiKids series, and it's another winner. The design is clean and the leveled activities gently pose unique problem solving challenges that gradually get harder. As you explore a beach, you meet characters who have lost their toys. It takes matching patterns to help them. A coloring activity introduces fine-motor coordination and planning skills to color increasingly complex scenes of fish and water creatures and a sand castle game makes you practice "response inhibition" (you have to wait to avoid water balloons). The best game asks you to match singing beach turtles, using pitch to do the sorting. The bottom line? Download this app -- you can't argue with the price. So what's the catch? You are required to create an account to use the app, which gives Lumosity your email information. Sunita Mohanty of LumiKids has assured us that "this information is used for things like product updates and not marketing, and parents can opt out." Current LumiKids apps are free, but "we have plans to begin charging as more features and capabilities are released as part of a full core skills curriculum that will be released later."
iPad, Android
Teaches: logic, math, auditory patterns, matching, timing (temporal relations), visual discrimination, fine motor coordination
CTR Rating: 96%