Counting with the Very Hungry Caterpillar – iPad app Review
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Counting With the Very Hungry Caterpillar offers five levels of play to entice fans of Eric Carle’s classic storybook. The game, created by Night & Day Studios is aimed at toddlers who are just learning how to count.
Pre-schoolers can fill their bellies with one slice of salami, one slice of swiss cheese, and one slice of chocolate cake — just like their beloved caterpillar — with no worries about a stomachache, since all of the treats in this app are digital.
Each of the games’s five levels asks progressively more from the user, though all of them are easy to understand. Although the instructions can be quite wordy to read, the voiceover makes it easy for pre-readers to follow along.
Each of the levels focus on a different conceptual skill. Level 1 covers counting. Level 2 integrates vocabulary while Level 3 adds the concept of quantity. Level 4 introduces basic addition skills. In level 5 is a “beat the clock” style round where kids try to eat as much as the caterpillar tells them to.
Parents should definitely check out the app’s option settings. Not only can the user choose to mute the background music, but she can also set the clues to be given randomly instead of sequentially, which makes the game a bit tougher.
Counting with the Very Hungry Caterpillar is available to download in the App store for $2.99.
What I liked: Counting With the Very Hungry Caterpillar adapts Carle’s endearing images in clever ways. For example, when the user “eats” the food within the app, the hole that appears in the strawberry, plum, or pear is identical to the hole the caterpillar makes in the original story.
What I didn’t like: The app only worked in landscape mode, and would not respond to the accelerometer, so I needed to remove my cover to use it. I tried reinstalling the application, but that didn’t fix the problem. Strange UI issues aside, the larger problem with Counting with the Very Hungry Caterpillar is that there is not much to the app beyond counting since even the higher levels still feel very much like slightly more complex versions of Level 1. As soon as the young user can count to ten, she will likely tire of the game’s repetitive nature.
To buy or not to buy: Counting With the Very Hungry Caterpillar is most appropriate for a short window in child development, when children are fascinated with repeating the same task again and again. Some children are bound to love this game, but for most its value will be short-lived, and parents are better off just buying the original storybook.
- App Name: Counting with the Very Hungry Caterpillar
- Version Reviewed: 1.0.1
- Category: Games
- Developer: Night & Day Studios
- Price: $2.99
- Score:
