| Claireware Software (all apps) |
| I See Ewe – A Preschooler Word Game (Age 3+) | |||||||||||
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I already had the free “I Hear Ewe” app which I thoroughly recommend. Great little app, even for Little-J, my 1 year old. So I got “I See Ewe” with high expectations. Its a good app, but I find the added complexity almost detracts.
I suggest the parent starting at options and setting things up before teaching your child to use the first two selections. I selected “random” for the card set with “small” for the card sizes since Big-T has played a few other similar apps and is pretty good at it. I also turned off vibrate (once I realized it was there). I however wonder if it would be better for the designers to have just picked a set of settings and stuck with them, reducing the UI complexity.
Big-T (my 3yo boy) likes the app, but always goes to other apps first. I wonder if its because the icon is so similar to “I Hear Ewe” which he has probably out-grown/over-played now, so he stays away. (They are both very similar sheep pictures.)
The Application
The opening screen has three options: “Learn”, “Match”, and ”Options”. In Learn mode (I think this is the best mode) the app shows a set of images and asks a question like “touch the green rectangle”. In Match mode its a memory match game (you have to find pairs of tiles with the same image). An extra twist is it says what the image is (e.g. “find the other pig”). Options allows you to change the application settings (which I recommend before giving to your child).
The Good
- Good user interface.
- Quizes for shapes, colors, animal sounds, pictures in an intuitive way.
- You can change the quiz mode. I changed it to randomly pick between all the quiz types which adds variety.
- Even in the matching game, it reinforces the images saying things like “find the other pig”. (A negative is however it slows down game play waiting for the sound clips to play.)
- Three languages (English, Spanish, Chinese).
The Bad
- It shows the words at the bottom of pages in ALL CAPITALS. All lower case or capitalizing only the first letter seems more like the real world.
- The icon is very similar to “I Hear Ewe” which can make it confusing for little ones who cannot read to pick the right one if you have them both. (Ok, I’ll admit it, it confuses me too!)
- The matching game vibrates every time you pick two tiles that don’t match. I think this is silly as you have to expose lots of tiles before you start finding matches. Big-T quickly asked Dad to hold the phone, then never voluntarily came back to this match game (preferring others that did you vibrate). Big-T understands that vibrating means “I did something wrong”. Note you can turn vibrates off in the options (as I discovered later).
- After “I Hear Ewe” the user interface is more complex as it does several things in one app and has lots of options that can be set. Its better value for money, but I prefer apps that do a single task well (and simply) rather than add complexity to support multiple things. (Not a big minus however.)
Educational Value
Its got good educational merit with quizes for shapes, colors, images, and sounds. A good mix that I find good for Big-T now that he has played a few other similar games. The memory match mode is also good to exercise the memory, although Big-T tends to go to specialized apps without the sound clips (I suspect because they play faster).
My Score
4 stars. Its a good app teaching a range of concepts. The only reason I don’t give it 4.5 stars is Big-T does not seem to enjoy it as much as other apps. (I may change my mind here and bump it up one day as it does have good educational merit compared to many apps.) I have a growing personal belief that its better to get simple apps that do one thing really well rather than apps with several modes built in, adding to the complexity of the interface.
Get it in iTunes
More information, screen shots, and user reviews can be found in the iTunes store.
Other Suggestions
- Animals: Elephant Song, I Hear Ewe – Animal Sounds for Toddlers, Peekaboo Barn, Preschool Adventure, Animal Farm, Clara
- Colors: Preschool Adventure
- Shapes: Preschool Adventure, Shape Builder – the Preschool Learning Puzzle Game, Toddler Teasers Shapes, iPushFit Jigsaw
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Thanks for the review!
I’ve got to admit, having the phone vibrate when the child selects the wrong answer really polarizes people. In my own experience, my daughter actually enjoys the vibration. However, I did put the option in the game to turn the vibrations off because the vibrations scare my daughter’s friend.
The reason many of the setting are offered is because users requested them after they downloaded the earlier versions of I See Ewe, which did have a reduced set of configuration options.
I hope to add in the near future a few more shapes and language localizations to the game. I am also working on making the “random selection” of objects to be more intelligent so that it emphasizes shapes the child is consistently getting wrong.
By: Michael Kamprath on July 21, 2009
at 2:30 pm