A Touch of Learning

I Hear Ewe – Animal Sounds for Toddlers (Age 1+)
	Overall: Quality: Education: Longevity: Fun:

I was looking for an app that had animal pictures and sounds, and found “I Hear Ewe”.  This one has distracted big-T (almost 3) for some time.  He still comes back to it every so often.  Little-J (almost 1) likes to look at it too — although it can be a challenge to wrest the phone out of those strong little fingers afterwards!  Anything that has side swipes his fidgety little fingers loves.

The Application

Has two pages of pictures of animals.  The first page is more domestic animals, the second more wild animals.  You click on a cartoon image of an animal, it zooms larger (others fading out), plays a sound clip for the animal, then restores back.

The Good

• Nice clean interface
• Its obvious for little fingers to click on the pictures of animals
• The child gets to pick which one to listen to next
• Each animal has a sound for the animal
• The animal selected zooms up larger with others fading out, making it clear which animal is being listened to
• Little-J frequently laughs at the sounds.

The Bad

All up, a pretty good program.  The negatives are pretty minor.

• The “i” (info) button can be very hard to press at times — no idea why.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.  This frustrates little figures who like to explore every thing you can click on.
• It took little-J”s fidgety fingers to realize there was a second page.  There are two little dots (indicating multiple pages) at the bottom of the page, but even Dad did not notice until the second page flicked across during a fight for iPhone ownership.  The dots get a little lost in the background image (that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!) It is interesting to note that little-J has trouble touching an image because it always slides (he cannot do clean touches yet).
• The fish makes bubbling noises, which most fish don’t really make.  Better than nothing I guess but I got “Are our fish sick Daddy? Our fish don’t make those noises Daddy.”

Educational Value

This is a good little app to teach names of different animals and the sounds the animals make.  If you were a purist, maybe it would have been good to have realistic photos displayed as well as the cartoon images, but I am not a purist and recognizing there are different ways to represent the same animal has value too.  (See “Animal Farm” if you prefer realistic animal photos instead of cartoon images.)

My Score

4.5 stars. Its not very sophisticated, but does what it does well.  Both boys enjoy it, and I think that is the real test.

Get it in iTunes

More information, screen shots, and user reviews can be found in the iTunes store.

• I Hear Ewe – Animal Sounds for Toddlers

Other Suggestions

• Animals: Elephant Song, Peekaboo Barn, Preschool Adventure, Animal Farm, I See Ewe – Animal Sounds for Toddlers, Clara

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