As a parent, you can transform your iPhone into a powerful resource for your children simply by downloading a few great apps to have handy for those situations at the grocery store, restaurant, or doctor’s office when a picture book or a stuffed animal just can’t keep your toddler’s attention as well as you would like.
A great way to turn these situations into an opportunity for learning and speech development as well as entertain your child is to have a store of educational apps such as Bumblebee Touchbook.
Part interactive story book, part short movie, part learning adventure, this app is known for holding on to young kids’ attention and not letting go.
Cute, friendly and fun bumblebees whiz around the pages of this interactive story book while the story is read aloud by a narrator bee. Your toddler can then touch any word of the story to see it acted out by these fuzzy bee friends. In doing this, your child reinforces the connection between the sound of language, the written word, and the actions the words represent. This is a crucial component of your toddler’s language development and comprehension. In addition, the story itself includes activities like counting and word recognition, which help your child develop his skills and increase his vocabulary.
In addition to the interactive story book, the app also includes a short movie for your kids featuring the very same bees. In reviews on iTunes, parents rave about the sophisticated quality of the animation and praise the app’s ability to engage their children in fun and stimulating learning on-the-go. Overall, the app is rated 4+ stars.
Like many apps for children, Bumblebee Touchbook features music by classical composers. This exposes your child at an early age to classical masters, familiarizing them with a broader cultural experience as they engage with fun bumblebee friends. Bubmlebee Touchbook’s soundtrack includes music by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov performed by a live symphony orchestra.
While the interactive storybook can stand alone as an engaging learning tool for your little one, it also has many opportunities for you as the parent to take an active role in participating in the experience. In addition to the counting games and word recognition exercises built into the story, parents can incorporate their own games of identification and repetition based on the colorful animated scenes. To stimulate your child’s imagination and help develop her verbal abilities, you can use the same storybook images to tell your own version of the story and to encourage your child to do the same.
This app is beloved by parents for its ability to deeply engage and entertain a child while also offering a quality learning experience. The beautiful animation and delightful bee characters make learning fun and stimulating for your child both at home and out and about. Reviews on both iTunes and several respected app-reviewing websites show that parents and their children just can’t seem to get enough of this great app!
