Kid’s Book and Kid’s iPhone App reviews continue. For my “reasons” behind “Why Apps?!” look here. Type “Kids” or “children” or “educational” into the Apple iStore and you get bombarded with Apps. Which to get?! Look no further… As well as our usual Monday Morning Book Club review!
All previously reviewed books can be found on my Amazon store:
Red Ted Arts Book Recommendations on Amazon
Book Review – When We Were Very Young, A. A. Milne
Reading Age: 6yrs+ Read Together Age: our house from 0 yrs – 6yrs
“When We Were Very Young” – A.A. Milne. As a key “Reader to Red Ted”, I asked The Englishman for “their” favourite read… The Englishman didn’t quite get that this was about the books that Red Ted “demanded”, however, he did have a very good point: “I grew up with A. A. Milne, particularly “When We Were Very Young”. I am now immersing Red Ted in the same. Most people know A. A. Milne for Winnie-the-Pooh – however these forty-four poems – first published in 1924 – are a cracking read. Red Ted loves them – as much as I do. For Winnie-the-Pooh fans, he makes one of his first appearances in this book (thirty-eighth poem in the book, Teddy Bear)”. The point I want pick up on, is the fact that he reads some things with Red Ted that he grew up on and tha9 he loves. This brings passion and pleasure to reading and helps the little ones get into it too!
Children like rhythm and rhme, so a book of poems for children really should feature in all children’s libraries. There are many wonderful nursery rhyme books to choose from, but why not get something more “classic”?!
When I try and pick this book up to read it to Red Ted, I get a VERY CLEAR “No Mummy Read the book! Daddy read!” – this is one for Daddy and Red Ted only. No mummies allowed! And I am sure it will form part of Red Ted’s treasured childhood memories of his bedtime stories with Daddy.
I think that that is lovely!
iPhone App Review – I Hear Ewe
Ok, a little bit of a funny one to review, as I don’t much like it. There, I have said it. But these are reviews about things for our children, and not everything Red Ted likes, I like and vice versa.
So I decided to bring it to you anyway, especially since it is another FREE App. And so long as they are free, what is the harm in trying them out?
So what is the App and what does it do? Basically, it is a whole range of pictures – predominately animals, but a page of vehicles too. Press on the image and a voice says “This is the sound a xxx makes” followed by the pretty realistic sound. Red Ted is able to spend AGES playing with this.
What I do like about it, is that you can change the language to English, Spanish, German (ha! There you have it) and Chinese! You know I am keen for the English/ German bilingualism, however, I am also keen for Red Ted to get an understanding that there are other languages too (he loves saying “Au Revoir” and “Ciao Ciao”). So, we sometimes play with the languages on this App.
It has languages. It teaches a bit of vocabulary and it is free. So give it a go and see what your toddler thinks!
Previous iPhone Apps:
All 5 Duck Duck Moose Giveaway + mini review – Face iMake (free at time of posting) –KidArt – Dr Seusss ABC –The Wheels on the Bus – Duck Duck Moose
Music
With all these “rhyme time” and “music” classes available for our toddlers, parents often forget that they can enjoy music together at home. I have sought out nice music for us to listen to together from the beginning and am always keen to try out new things, as well as expose my children to classical music.
So I was very pleased when the lovely people at Beautiful Creatures asked me to review their children’s music album.
Beautiful Creatures is fab new music production from South Africa. I was chuffed to download their original Beautiful Creatures album. We have always enjoyed eclectic music and have all sorts from the very traditional nursery rhymes to American vintage songs to alternative music such as Putumayo. What Putumayo is to “to the world”, Beautiful Creatures is to Africa. Catchy tunes with an African twist (lots of African animals of course). One song reminds me a little of the Rocky Horror Picture show (Lucas the Lazy Lion), whilst others are wonderfully mellow (Down comes the rain). When we put it on for Red Ted, he started jumping up and down and twisting and turning. He particularly like the Mafutha song (“More Tut Tut Tut more!” – Tut tut tut = Elephant in Red Ted speak).
You have adults singing the lead with chidlren in the chorus. No annoying high pitched or patronizing adult voices. Proper singing! What says it all for me, is that The Englishman will put on this album! He isn’t very good with the normal children’s music…
If you are uncertain about buying you can preview it on the Beautiful Creatures blog, but I do think this is worth adding to your music library!
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