It's Not Water, It's Words!

$3.99, iPad

Teaches: reading, language experience

CTR Rating: 82%

CTR Review

Here's a short, beautifully illustrated language experience in either French or English by Marc Solal and Marie-Paule Prot. The six screen short story is based around the question, "what if it rained words?"In the nicely narrated story, the words fall from black rain clouds. The app lets children play with the ribbons of phrases, pushing them into the rain gutter, or making them fly. After the story, two games include a hangman-like word guessing game and word/picture matching game; neither very well designed. There is no scaffolding, and it's not possible to jump around between scenes. While the interactive design is less than elegant, the illustrations are playful and beautiful, and the entire app could make a nice whole group language experience, as long as you remember to turn off the narration in the main menu.