Recently I have made two new iPhone application purchases that my 2.5 year old son loves! The two applications are “Wheels on the Bus” and “Preschool Arcade”.

I have written in the past about some of the other applications that he likes. These new applications compliment the other applications quite well and are entertaining and easy for a young child to navigate, play with, and learn from.

Below are iTunes screen shots of the two applications. To check them out in iTunes you can either click on the “iTunes” button or on the images. If you continue reading I have provided additional screen shots along with descriptions of the interface and game play.

“Wheels on the Bus”

“Preschool Arcade”

Following the initial loading screen is a cute demo page that allows for the user, or child, to try out some of the basic gestures that are needed throughout the “scenes”. Objects and characters can be poked or pressed. The hat (in the screen shot below) requires the swiping gesture; just like the doors, wipers, and children going “up and down.” The bear, once pressed or “poked”, jumps and creates a sound.

The green and red navigational buttons, along the bottom, are easily seen and quite intuitive. My son learned in preschool that green means “go”, so he quickly was able to move onto the next screen. The music begins once the user has gone on to the bus “scene”. Not only does this application support the English version of the “Wheels on the Bus” song, it also has other languages and even instrumental versions of the song.

The bus below requires a side swiping gesture that can either make the bus go faster, slower, or even backwards. My son loves to watch auto-racing with me on Sundays so he likes to call it his “race car”.

The song will continue to loop the individual verse until you progress to the next “scene”. I like how the lyrics are displayed toward the bottom of the screen. The image below shows the doors “opening and shutting”. A back and forth swiping gesture completes the action. The little bird in the middle can be poked, which leads to a screech and jumping motion.

The “wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish” is one of my son’s favorite parts of the entire song and he loves making the wipers go back and forth in this “scene”.

I have only included a few of the screen shots of the lyrical “scenes”. The rest are highly colorful and engaging. Another scene that is one of my son’s favorites (not pictured here) are the children going “up and down”.

One of the best features of “Wheels on the Bus”, from an educator’s perspective, is the ability for my son, or another child, to hear the same song in other languages. At the top of every “scene” is a purple button with a music note inside. The screen below appears upon pressing this purple button . By default, the “English” version is selected. The song (along with French, Spanish, Italian, and German) can be played in a female voice as well as a piano version. Some, such as the Italian and German, require a little bit of time to download. This happens all from right inside the application and a progress bar appears at the side of the language choice.

Aside from selecting other languages and musical versions, the child can also record their own voice singing the lyrics of the different “scenes”. My son loves to hear his own voice played back!

The same development group (3DAL, L.L.C.) that created “Preschool Adventure” (iTunes Link—>) also created “Preschool Arcade”. Over time, whole new sections have been added to “Preschool Adventure” and it is my expectation that the same will be true for “Preschool Arcade”.

This application allows for a toddler to practice their counting, shape matching, and letter recognition. I feel that out of the three activities (“Pinball 123″, “Claw-Crane Match”, and “ABC Invasion”) the most educational activity is “ABC Invasion”.

The first screen, following the developer’s splash screen, is a display of all three activities. Below is a screen shot that displays each in order.

The screen shot below is from “Claw-Crane Match”. In the square, toward the bottom, is an outline of an object’s shape. The objective is for the toddler to choose the correct object. The crane comes over, lifts the object up, and drops it down into the prize drawer as soon as the correct object is selected. There is a black “x” in the corner that brings the toddler back to the main screen.

“ABC Invasion” has a soft voice that asks the toddler to locate specific letters. A little rocket ship flies by and drops off a little creature when the child touches the correct letter . The screen resets with a whole set of new letters as soon as all of the letters are covered.

“Pinball 123″ is similar to traditional pinball except that the actions are set in such a way that the toddler launches the ball and then clicks on a vehicle to retrieve the ball. After the ball is retrieved a large number is displayed on the screen and the narrator announces the number at the same time. My son has a lot of fun naming the different types of vehicles as they go to pick up the pinball.
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Also, I would love to hear about some of the applications that your child or grandchild loves to play with on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Please comment and share this review/article with the iPhone owning parent or grandparent in your life!

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