Happy App Friday
Explore and play in the underwater world with “What’s in the Oceans?” Learn about Turtle Island and Mother Earth with “Askî and Friends.” Plus, kids are finding ways to circumvent the parental controls on their phones and tablets.
Garry Froehlich
Jellybean Tunes
What’s in The Oceans?
by Learny Land
In “What’s in The Oceans?” kids can select from several different scenes featuring penguins, dolphins, turtles and more. Each scene presents a backdrop and several stickers which come to life when placed in the scene. Fish swim, rocks fall to the bottom, divers snap pictures, and ships sit at the top of the ocean. The creatures also interact with each other, so dolphins can pair up, hunt, or get caught in fishing nets from the ships (kids can tap to break them out), or pollution floating by that needs to be cleaned up. There are no voiceovers or text explanations so it may be best played with an adult, but the design and animations are well-done, and it’s fun to place things and watch them come to (digital) life.
Askî and Friends
by the Government of Saskatchewan
“Askî and Friends” is a free storybook app for pre-kindergarten kids with simple easy to follow stories targeted at reading and language development. There are four stories about four animals, where they live and their roles. What sets it apart are the languages available which include English, Cree and Michif. Stories can be read to a child, or they can read the text themselves, plus there are underlined words that they can tap on to hear in different languages. The pictures are clean and well-done, but there is no animation, nor does the app highlight words as they are read.
Teens Getting Around Screen Time Controls
Apparently kids are getting around the limits placed on them by parental control software. It’s something to be aware of if you use the screen time software built into mobile operating systems.
