My Playhome Hospital

$2.99, iPad, iPhone

Teaches: creativity, language, the hospital, health

CTR Rating: 94%

CTR Review

Turn your iPad's screen into a realistic 12 room hospital, where just about anything can be moved around and re-arranged. The result is an quiet, open-ended play experience with no wrong answers and real hospital sounds. You start in the lobby where you can make a phone call, move plants around or add one of 26 diverse, paper doll-like characters to the scene. There are many more characters than the first "My Playhome" app we reviewed back in 2011. Other rooms are nicely depicted - there's an elevator, x-ray room, and cafeteria. The app has some nice touches - you can buy a balloon in the gift shop and take it into the elevator, to another floor, and leave it in a patient's room. The characters fit into wheel chairs and can be moved around, and the clock shows the actual time. Because this is an open ended play experience, just about anything can happen. There is no worrisome content, in-app sales or external links. All in all, this is a well designed, open ended play experience that is less playful than Toca Town. It could be used to help a child get used to what they might experience in a real hospital. This app is integrated with the original "My PlayHome", "My PlayHome Stores" & "My PlayHome School" apps, so characters and objects in one app can show up in another. Note: show children how to reset the hospital using the "Tidy the hospital" icon.