Preschool Learning Games Kids is a totally child friendly compendium of 10 engaging educational and 2 creative activities to prepare toddlers for kindergarten. Previously called “Abby’s Basic Skills”, the program has been rigorously beta-tested and updated accordingly to provide the best possible interactive learning experience in one all encompassing collection.
Featuring the obligatory big, bold graphics and music, an excited animated monkey guides children through the whole game, from the simple child-friendly interface to the activities themselves. After each round, the child is rewarded with a chance to either change the design of the monkey’s train or collect virtual stickers as proof of their accomplishments.
Although there are only 2 creative activities–“Shadows” and “Patterns”–in the Lite version of this app, the Full version is now being offered as a free trial with a 66% discount on its price. Thus, kids can now play through all the Full version’s activities albeit with some unobtrusive in-game ads until their parents decide to purchase it.
The Preschool Learning Games include “Letters” which is great way to teach children how the position of letters work in words. Once they understand the basic principles, they can match the name of the letter to how it is written. “Counting” is a related game in which children tap to count the numbers of toys while a voice helps them relate to the way the numerals look and the order that they come in.
Additional activities such as “Sizes” develop logical thinking. “Sizes” is a very simple game of comparing big, small, and same size objects. The child simply taps the correct answer to each question and is rewarded when correct. “Puzzles” also allows the child to develop their motor skills by fixing a broken toy through sliding the parts around on screen.
To encourage recognition and memory, “Shadows” consists of dragging an object to its corresponding silhouette, and “Matching” does much the same thing with a selection of toys. “Colors” then goes on to teach a child how to recognize toys in a specific color.
A traditional lesson comes in the form of “Shapes” which rewards the child for identifying the correct shape such as a square, circle, rectangle, or triangle. This is ideal for very young toddlers especially.
While “Patterns” gives practice in recognizing a series of common patterns, “Same and Different” is the most fun game. In this game, the child taps to select the different toy from among several similar ones or has to find the same toy as the displayed one. Although a real “Spot the Difference” style game where two almost identical pictures are displayed and the child has to tap on thethe minor differences would have been better, there are plenty of those available as a kids app already.
Overall, these Preschool Learning Games are a nice collection to have on a larger Android tablet rather than a phone, and will repeatedly hold the interest of toddlers for quite some time.
