Apps picked by a 4 year old: Summing up the rest

I sort of dropped the ball on this and I’m just not going to have time to get him to do mini-video interviews for the rest of the titles, but in case you’re curious about the other apps that the Happy Little Dude plays all the time, here’s the list with a few notes (or caveats) by me:

#10–Monster at the end of this book: we both love this one.  Great book-to-app adaptation.

#9–Toca Lab: We also both love this one. You get to experiment with different “elements” which are named the same thing as real elements and sit on a periodic table in the same position as the real elements and sort of “say their own name” with their odd little mumblings and cheeps, but they don’t always behave like the real elements. Lots of fun bits to discover, totally worth the investment.

#8–Toca Robot Lab: build your own robot, then send him through a maze, collecting stars.  Simple, but gets a surprising amount of play.

#7 — Disco Fingers: I don’t really think he loves this one as much as he says he does (i pretty much never see him play it) but it was new when we were picking the top 12 and he likes the one “finger” that looks like a robo-cop and talks with an autotuned voice.

#6–Sago Mini Space Explorer: we both love everything by sago mini.  it’s designed for younger children, but he still giggles out loud a lot while playing this one.

#5–Piiig Labs: more science experiment fun, without the mess!

#4– Kapu Blocks: build mix or match towers with silly blocks then watch the animations that occur when your tower is complete. Or just knock it down with the wrecking ball. Fun to pretend to be a crane operator!

#3–Inventioneers: you can read my raving review about this awesome app here.

#2–Mr. Potato Head: by the same developer as the Endless Apps (which he also loves, but which didn’t make it to this list for some reason?). I’ve been hesitant to recommend this one, but i’m not sure why…. the commercial tie-in, perhaps? It is one he’s spent tons of time playing. first, you get to put together a mr. potato head doll with whatever bits you want and then choose a scene for that doll to interact with. there are usually several very silly animations that go along with each scene and there is very frequent giggling and “hey mom, you gotta see this!” conversations when this app is in use.

#1–Disney’s Cars “AppMATes”: we bought this app to go along with a toy car made specifically for this app that one of his grandma’s gave him for his birthday. the toy car is lost, but you can still play by just holding your fingers on the screen as though they were holding a car. he likes it because of the movie tie-in, but also because (siiiiiigh) he can earn things like rocket launchers for his car and he can use it to shoot cacti. and then he earns “hubcaps” (the local currency in radiator springs, apparently) which he can then use to buy more gadgets for the car. there are many things i don’t really like about this app (see… pretty much everything above), but i will say that there is a strong and nicely developed map-reading element to the app that i can really appreciate.

so there you have it.  maybe your kid will love some of these too? and maybe the negative bits i mentioned won’t bother you so much? what are the favorites at your house?