Warren Buckleitner

News flash: this is the first Dr. Panda app with multi-player, co-operative play features, so you can run your own candy factory, together with up to three other friends.

TribePlay’s candy factory has three stations. Two of the stations have spit screens; and one has a pinball-like machine for four players at once, making this a good huddle-style game. After you successfully complete eight candies, you see them tasted by the Dr. Panda gang. 

It's worth noting that besides the cooking themes, there's a lot of fiction in this app. We've yet to see a pinball machines used in making candy, for example.

The bottom line: after a bit of learning curve, this app is an excellent addition to a tablet that might be shared by more than one child. If you've liked TribePlay’s previous Dr. Panda apps, you'll like this one as well.  

Dr. Panda Candy Factory For iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Android $2.99 For ages: 2 to 8

Oceanhouse Media's "Read & Learn" series continues to expand with another solid title that mixes classic Dr. Seuss illustrations with solid, playful early reading activities.

Content includes 26 letter-themed screens, with touch-and-hear text and illustrations that hide a star on each screen. When you find the star, you get to play a "game" that might involve identifying the lower-case letters in a group, or identifying pictures that go with letter sounds.

The parent or teacher options let you toggle on/off the vamping background music, the learning activities, news and alerts about new apps on the home screen, and the picture words feature. So definitely use them. There's also an auto-play feature that gives you control over the rate of page turns.  Missing is the ability to record your own narration, a feature found in earlier Oceanhouse Media titles.

This app is the third "Read & Learn" title, following The Cat in the Hat - Read & Learn and Green Eggs and Ham Read & Learn. These apps cost more but do more. The difference is marked by the "Read & Learn" at the end of the title.  If you don't see these words, you're likely to get the 2010 edition of Dr. Seuss's ABC, without the extra phonics activities.

Dr. Seuss’s ABC - Read & Learn

For iOS, Android, Apple TV, Amazon Kindle $3.99 Ages: 2 to 5

Here are two words every modern parent must know: Toca Boca. 

For the uninformed, Toca Boca is an innovative Swedish children’s app maker that knows interactive design the way Ikea knows how to load a sofa into a Toyota Corolla. 

One of the best apps they’ve made, in my humble opinion, is Toca Blocks — and it should be on every child’s tablet. This is Toca Boca's 30th app in five years, and it was designed by the team that developed Toca Nature.

Block play comes to your iPad or Android touchscreen with this playful, powerful 2D creativity experience. Not to be confused with Toca Builders, this much more powerful app gives you a huge working space, making it possible to build deep mines or tall towers — over 250 blocks in any direction. 

Because the blocks stick anywhere, you're not limited by things like gravity. Want a floating swimming pool? No problem.  Everything about this app leads toward one-touch success. In our child testing, the kids couldn't resist this app; and we should note that the slightly similar Minecraft "blocky" look doesn't hurt.

To start, tap the screen and a block appears; another tap, another block. Below, a list of blocks with different properties (grass, rocks, water, sparkles) provides more options. If you drag one type of block onto another, they mix into something new, like a tree, chair, toilet or musical instrument. Every time you make something new, it's saved in another menu in case you want to use it again.

All projects are saved automatically and stored with auto-generated thumbnails on the first menu, so no reading is required, and there are no user accounts to worry about. An entire classroom of children could use this app as long as they don't mind seeing (and perhaps editing or deleting) each other's work. Think of apps like this one as a massive tub of virtual LEGOs, where some projects might stay assembled to be shared by everyone.  

Besides the blocks, three animated creatures are appear on the screen that can be used for adding a narrative element to a project. Plus, there's a very nice, not-to-be-overlooked portal (in the form of a door icon) that brings in some basic ideas about coding.  If you added to your project, you can jump back and forth to a hidden room. This gives your work a third dimension.  

This is the type of app that doesn't need a tutorial, but there is one that helps you understand how to "mix" the blocks, as well as three pre-installed worlds to get you started.

Weaknesses are minor but worth noting. There's a pencil and eraser icon for quickly placing or erasing blocks, but sometimes they don't work in the way you think they will, which created some tester some confusion. Also, the background music can't be turned off and could be annoying for a classroom or library setting. Use your the controls found in your iPad's preferences to adjust the sound.

Toca Blocks is a staple app with broad age appeal that should be on every child's screen. (Reviewer note:  We didn't test the Android version.)

Toca Blocks For iPad and Android $2.99 Ages: 4 to 10

Give your young train lover an artistic treat, with five games from Spanish studio DADA Company.  Each game has a different illustrator, described in the publisher’s blog.

The games, which look like interactive paintings, consist of Look Inside (see the parts of a steam locomotive at work); Train Factory (color a locomotive in various scenarios and complete different challenges); Playground (discover hidden characters, overcome obstacles and explore worlds); Simulator (take a seat in in the engine, with a view through the tablet's camera, driving through swarms of bugs or rain); and Magic Canvas (make drawings or collages with stickers and a basic set of coloring tools).

Testers noted that one of the problem-solving games uses parts that are clumsy to position, and the sound option is "all or nothing" — if you turn off the music, you also turn off interactive sounds. But these are minor issues. The bottom line? This is a nice general-purpose app that will expose your child to quality ideas and illustrations. 

DADA Trains For iPad $2.99 Ages: 4 to 9

Beauty meets the beast in this artistic monster decoration experience. As with other Tinybop apps, you start by creating a profile for each child, which is a one-time process. Next you start mixing and matching body types, arms, legs, heads, eyes and noses... as well as sounds that you can record, fur textures and colors. This app makes it extremely easy to make something extremely strange... easily and quickly. You learn that it is easy to stretch the arms or legs, and that parts can be popped off and modified in many ways.

If we have a criticism, it could be that most of the creative ideas in this app don’t come from you. The illustrations are the result of an obviously very talented artist Tianhua Mao. But as a mix-and-match experience ("like Mr. Potato Head on steroids") this app offers a lot of possibilities. When you layer on the ability to "program" sounds that you can make or the ability to pose your creator for a photo, you start to see that this app is a lot more than a simple Mr. Potato Head — and feed it a snack.

We also like how easy it is to take your creature back to the drawing board for modification. Despite a bit of dead air when you're stuck between the choice screens, this is a wonderful aesthetic experience, with plenty of monster parts and coloring options to keep things fresh. This is the third app in the Digital Toys series, following The Robot Factory and The Everything Machine.

The Monsters by Tinybop For iPad or iPhone $2.99 Ages: 6+

Ideal for early readers, this playful word building game turns Tiggly’s $30 interactive vowel kit into cookie cutters. If you buy the vowels, you get a download code for the $2.99 app so there is no extra charge; otherwise you can buy the app and use your fingers.

Your job is simple... to make cookies for Cookie Monster using the vowels to stamp out vowel outlines to make a CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word. There are 150 words in all: 90 are real (like hen) and 60 are nonsense (like han), and both types turn into cookies.

Once a batch of four words is made, you get to feed the Cookie Monster. This is a one trick pony app, and there is no narrative structure. So while the words are used in a sentence, there's not further contextual glue to help children make sense of the words. We also found that Cookie Monster talks a lot. This is far from a peaceful experience.  

Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen iPad, iPhone $2.99 Ages: 4 to 8

Further stretching the definition of fairy tale, Nosy Crow's most recent interactive story app for iOS tells the same classic story from two points of view. You can read the story as Goldilocks or as Little Bear. To switch points of view, you rotate the screen. Besides offering a new "twist" on the well known story, early readers are helped by text highlighting, an interesting topic, quality illustrations, and the same wonderful child narration that has set the standard for this genre of app. 

There are two modes of play: Read by Myself or Read to Me. The story can be presented in your choice of UK English or US English, and as in other Nosy Crow apps, you can determine how long the printed text appears on the screen (short, medium, or long). Reading teachers love these types of features, for good reason.  

In the 17 scenes, Goldilocks gets lost and visits the bears’ home, eating their porridge, sitting in their chairs, and sleeping in their beds; while Little Bear is in Goldilocks’s family’s home – eating their pancakes, wearing their clothes, and reading their books. Nice touches include the ability to rock a rocking chair by rocking the tablet, and the ability to see yourself inside the mirrors in the app.

The bottom line? This is a rich early language/reading experience, combining good interactive design with first-rate illustrations and narration. It's well worth the download.

Goldilocks and Little Bear iPad, iPhone $4.99 Ages: 4 to 8

This review of Goldilocks and Little Bear originally appeared in CTREX (www.ctrex.us).

Read even more great kids app reviews on Yahoo Tech:

The Earth by Tiny Bop

DragonBox Numbers

Grandma’s Preschool

Warren Buckleitner, Ph.D., is editor of CTREX (Children’s Technology Review Exchange), a professional subscription-only database for teachers, parents and librarians. Have a look at www.ctrex.us.

Perfect for a budding mathematician, DragonBox Numbers comes with a set of smart blocks can be sliced into parts (for subtraction) or fed to one another (for addition). Mix in a familiar Angry Birds style leveling system, a "Cut the Rope" game mechanic for subtracting, plus a bit of finger painting for numeral recognition and some money for introducing place value, and you have the year's all-time best early math experiences.

However, there are a few limits. You can't turn off or adjust the background music and you're limited to just four player profiles. These aren't deal breakers, however. A child's progress is saved automatically, and this app makes no attempt to sell or harvest information — making it a viable classroom or library choice.  

The ten animated blocks, called Nooms, are inspired from Cuisenaire Rods, a staple in any quality early childhood classroom. Each block is color coded, and comes with a unique look and personality. The bigger the rod, the higher the number. As children stack, slice, toss and sort, they start discovering the relationship between number and length.

There are three modes of play: Sandbox for exploration, Puzzle with 250 challenges, and Ladder, which has specific number targets.

The active/discovery pedagogy is the same that is employed in the other DragonBox apps. There are no quizzes and children always drive the activity.

DragonBox Numbers iPad, iPhone, Android and Amazon $7.99 Ages: 4 to 9

Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci loved cats? That's just one of the many actual facts you learn as you play through StoryToy’s Leonardo’s Cat, a $2.99 collection of 60 well-crafted logic puzzles for the iPad that start easy, thanks to a handy tutorial, and then get very hard. 

Each puzzle involves dragging and dropping one of nine da Vinci-inspired devices into place on a path so that his cat can pick up a reward without getting bonked, dunked, or fried. There's no explicitly graphic or worrisome content other than classic cartoon violence, and this cat has an unlimited number of lives.

Commentary is provided by Leonardo himself, depicted as a white-bearded old inventor with a slight British accent (supplied by Sir Patrick Stewart of Star Trek and X-Men fame). 

In the story, Leonardo’s latest invention, the Automaton, has been stolen by Michelangelo. You send Scungilli, Leonardo’s cat, into an ancient city to find the parts. Each level contains a animated movie that illustrates some of the actual products made by da Vinci. The game takes place in Amboise, an animated version of da Vinci's studio. The more levels you play, the more robot parts you collect that are used to reassemble da Vinci’s Automaton.

The inventions include parachutes, spring ramps, cannons, catapults and ornithopters (wings); each must be fine-tuned before it can work. Success requires repeated testing and debugging, and the later levels can get tricky. For example, there may be different paths in the same maze, and the water or fire pits that take up many cat lives. The 60 levels provide lots of challenges.

However, Leonardo’s Cat did cough up a few hairballs. Our game testers were frustrated by the inability to pinch and pull into Da Vinci's actual work (especially the Mona Lisa), and noted that there is a "win or lose" element to the puzzles, when a "you lose!" banner appears if the cat dies. (A simple "try again" would suffice.) It would be nice to get some specific feedback from da Vinci when struggling. Other suggestions: Make it easier to reset a level and include a sandbox mode. None of these are deal breakers, but they are important to note. 

There’s a lot of star power in Leonardo’s Cat, aside from having Captain Jean Luc Picard as the great inventor. The characters were created by Michael Frith (The Muppets, Fraggle Rock), with script writing and scientific writing by Bob Tedeschi (New York Times, Bobo Explores Light). 

The bottom line? This is a fun, challenging app with no gimmicks or in-app purchases. And it even contains an underlying layer of scientific authenticity that is rare these days.

Leonardo's Cat iPad $2.99 Ages: 6+

If you already have Tanglible Play’s $80 Osmo system (consisting of a special mirror and a stand) and an iPad Air or newer, this free app offers a new way to trace, and will give children an amazing fine motor challenge.

It also has the possibility of turning your iPad into an art tutor, walking you through sample sketches of common objects. A search feature (powered by Bing) pulls up common items from online searches as long as you are online. The feature can be turned off in the parent's menu, but is on by default.  

After you put the Osmo stand and mirror in place, you find a piece of paper and a dark thin-point pen. The app takes over from there. Note that you can also use a whiteboard to save paper. This is one of several apps that work with the Osmo system. 

Masterpiece for Osmo, Tangible Play, ($free on iPad  but requires $80 accessory to work), for ages 6-up.

Any master preschool or Kindergarten teacher knows that one of the best words to unlock the power of reading is a child’s first name. Because it is comprised of letters, syllables and phonemes, it makes sense to use kids’ names as part of an informal early reading curriculum.

After you type in your child's name into Seven Academy’s Name Play, you hand the tablet to them so they can enjoy its 14 easy-to-play activities. 

They can blast the letters as they fall, type them using an old-fashioned typewriter, feed a hungry word snake, play with the letters of the name on a magnet board, or tilt the screen to try to capture the letters in the right order. There's plenty of variety.

Parent options let you toggle between 18 languages, just in case you want to use this app as an immersion activity. You can also add the names of friends, pets, or family members.

Need to know: Explore the parent options to add friends names, and adjust the background music.

Name Play Android; iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch (iOS 8.2 or later) $1.99 Ages: 3+

Just in time for Halloween -- a playful new design app that has both tricks and treats, plus some nice problem solving opportunities.

First you design a funky car with some painting tools, custom wheels and Halloween-themed stickers. Next, you get to drive your car on one of a dozen tracks that start easy and get harder.

We've seen this “design then drive” formula many times before, but this is the first with a haunted theme. We liked how each track has a just one finish line but many possible ways to get there. This may involve jumping over spikes, timing a jump to hit a moving platform, or choosing the shortest route through a maze.  

If you’re not feeling creative, you use use a blueprint to make your car, and it is easy to save your progress or your car designs. 

Need to know: show children how to jump, reverse, and start over if their car gets stuck.

Read this review in CTREXhttp://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/review.php?id=18854

Labo Halloween Car, Labo Lado Inc. www.labolado.com, ($1.99 on iPad, Android, Amazon, for ages 5-up.

Warren Buckleitner, Ph.D., is editor of Children’s Technology Review, an ad-free, subscriber-supported publication that was founded in 1993. Did you like this review? Get hundreds more for just $20/year, at www.childrenstech.com/subscribe).

FOR THE WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 28

By Warren Buckleitner

There is a time when a child wants to go to school... in the worst way. 

It happens when a big brother or sister goes away on the bus, leaving the little brother or sister behind. 

Grandma’s Preschool ($2.99 by Fairlady Media) can help, with a dozen no-fail school-themed activities, plus 13 interesting videos -- all in a fun, easy-to-use preschool setting. 

Each small game playfully introduces the same early math and reading concepts that a young child really will encounter in school. They’ll finger paint, match moving train cars to to colors and words, pair stuffed animals to napping children, plant and water seeds. As they explore, children gently bump into stuff teacher’s love, like short high frequency words, color words, seasons, shapes, letters and letter sounds and logical thinking. 

Multi-touch is supported which means that more than one child can play at once (or you can play along with your child). 

If you like this app, you should check out others by the publisher, which is run by a Connie Bossert, who holds a  Ph.D. in educational psychology. These include Grandma's Garden, Grandpa's Workshop, Grandma’s Kitchen, Grandma Loves Bugs, Grandpa In Space and Fishing With Grandpa. 

Grandma's Preschool, FairLady Media, Inc., $2.99 on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, for ages 3-6.