Sometimes when reviewing an app, it can be hard to separate your feelings about it from whether or not it is actually good or not. Super Why ABC Adventures: Alphabet is one of those cases. Based on the PBS show, the app is aimed at preschoolers aged four and up and teaches the alphabet through five games, each one hosted by a different Super Reader.
First of all let’s get my thoughts out of the way. This app is really, really annoying. The music in the background is obnoxious if you leave it on beyond 30 seconds and the characters all talk too loudly as if they are shouting at my child. The colors are bright to the point of being garish; in fact the whole thing gives that chaotic sense of standing in a school playground with loud, boisterous activity exploding all around you. It’s stimulating in the excess and there is no shutting it out when it’s on in the same room – especially those alphabet songs. “U is for umbrella, lickety letters I’m your alphabet fella!” screeches a cartoon pig as I debate claiming on my insurance for an iPad that somehow managed to fly out of a window. There is a tracker in the settings that allows you to monitor how well your child is progressing with learning their letter sounds and names. This might be useful for older children, but for younger children who are guessing their way through the games it gives false data.
If there’s anything my three-year-old son loves more than the alphabet (seriously, he’s an ABCs addict), it would have to be cars and trucks. So you can imagine his exuberance at the sight of Maria van Lieshout’s clever new picture book, Backseat A-B-See. It’s the alphabet in road signs. The alphabet. In road signs. Genius.
The art is striking: a black-and-white road background offsets the bright yellow, green, red, and blue of the street signs. A is for Airport, B is for Bike Route, F is for Fire Station, and so on down the line. “Q is for Quack” — the sign shows a duck crossing — never fails to elicit a chuckle from my young motorist. The sweet opening and closing pages show a child in the backseat of a yellow car, wide-eyed and watchful at the beginning of the trip, and contentedly snoozing at the end. Because when it come to road trips, Z is for Zzzzz, of course.
Invented by New Zealand cartoonist Wayne Logue, Wordtoons show kids how to turn a simple written word into a cartoon depicting that word. With the addition of just a few pencil lines,“dog” for instance, is transformed into a cartoon of a dog. Step by step instructions teach kids to turn words like robot, fruit, city, and lion into fun cartoons. In addition to the words, Logue includes lots of individual letters (though not the entire alphabet). Learn to turn ‘f’ into a flower or ‘m’ into monster.
Fun stuff, yes? But kids may even learn a thing or two with Wordtoons. One cardinal rule of success with Wordtoons? Neatness. Skip the rote handwriting practice and instead draw cartoons. Kids will love that. And no more mixing up ‘b’ and ‘d’ as they’re learning to write. Because ‘b’ is for bee and the cartoon just won’t work with a ‘d.’ Proper letter formation and letter recognition are important in crafting the cartoons.
If you have Google Earth and a lot of time on your hands, have I got a scavenger hunt for you. Over on the Hooked on Phonics blog, my friend Russell found all of the letters of the alphabet using Google Earth. He has plenty of tips to help you do it, too. Happy hunting!