What we love…
Hand crafted feel with the characters and scenery looking like they are a paper puppet theatre. Works on learning to play, sing and trace the letters and words of ABC song, and works on learning letter order. Breaks it down into small mangeable steps.
What we’d love to see…
Option to choose upper or lowercase letters.
Summary
Overall, a nice app for working on ABC’s, letter order and learning the ABC song.
Our Rating
ABC Theatre by IQURIO is an iPad only app that delivers a new take on the classic ABC song. It contains 3 different sections, and is made to look like a paper puppet theatre. The first section is the “learn song” where the child learns to read, write and sing the letters, then “sing-a-long” where they sing the alphabet song and “play-a-long” where they learn to play it on the xylophone.
The learning section is broken down into six segments: A-G, H-P, Q-V, W-Z, NOW.. and NEXT… In the letter sections the child traces each letter in turn and this trigers an animation related to the letter e.g. for A an aeroplane flies past and for E an elephant appears. The child traces the letter by rolling a ball along following flashing shapes that tell them which stroke to do. Once they have completed all the letters in that section they complete a puzzle to reinforce putting the letters in the right order, and they are rewarded by a short animation and that section of the song playing. The NOW and NEXT sections are similar but the child traces the words instead of letters from “now I know my ABC”, and “next time won’t you sing with me”. They have to do a puzzle too to get the words in the right order.
In the sing-a-long section the ABC song is sung and highlighted as it is sung, there is light animation as various characters from the paper puppet theatre appear during the song.
In the play-a-long section the child learns to play the song on a xylophone. A bubble appears over the right bar on the xylophone and in it is the letter or word being sung. When the child touches it the note plays, the letter is sung and the bubble pops, then a new bubble appears with the next letter.
This app has a cute hand crafted feel with the characters and scenery looking like they are a paper puppet theatre. It gives a great inspiration for extension activities as you could easily make your own puppets from paper and popsicle sticks and re-create the puppet theatre with your child. I like that it reinforces the learning by teaching the song in 3 different ways. Breaking the song down into smaller chunks in the first section makes it easier for the child to absorb, and I like the addition of the puzzle section to reinforce the letter order. It can be helpful to use the sing-a-long as a reward after doing a section of the “work” in the learning part. The letter tracing is good practice for learning the shape of the letters and the order of the strokes,and for beginning practice of writing letters. However, if you really want to work on handwriting I would get a specialist handwriting app . All the letters in the app are in uppercase, it would be nice to have an option to use lowercase instead once the child has learned their uppercase letters. I really like how the xylophone play-a-long section is done – it is easy for the child to do it correctly, and they can do it at their own pace they don’t have to keep up with a song as the music and voice only play when they touch the bubble.
Overall, a nice app for working on ABC’s, letter order and learning the ABC song.
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ABC Theater: The Alphabet Songby IQURIO LTDCategory: Education, Games, Educational, Kids Requirements: Compatible with iPadFourthGen, iPad 2 3G, iPadMini, iPadThirdGen4G, iPadThirdGen, iPadFourthGen4G, iPadMini4G, iPad 2 WiFI Size: 121.15 MB |
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Screenshots for iPad
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**This app is regularly $2.99 and has just gone FREE**
NOTE: A fee was received to expedite this review to the top of our waiting list but this payment has not influenced the objectivity of the review and all opinions have been offered honestly.
Mary
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Alison, Amanda, Grace and Mary are four mothers from different parts of the world dedicated to educating parents about the best digital stories, educational apps, fun games and technology products available for their children. We also offer the latest news in apps for kids, interesting articles, developer interviews, free apps and regular giveaways!
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