SUPER WHY!, PBS Kids, made for iPod ($2.99) and iPad ($4.49), available on the iTunes Store
“Help your child achieve the Power to Read with this collection of four SUPER WHY interactive literacy games.”
So I chose SUPER WHY! as my first product review because it is the one that was used in the Learning: Is there an App for that? report by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (as seen in a previous post). I also played it on iPhone, same as the report. SUPER WHY! is made up of four different games that are meant to help children learn to read. These four games are:
- Super Why’s Story Saver – This involves finding the right word to fit a sentence. The sentences come from common fairytales, like Snow White and Jack & The Beanstalk. To fill in the sentence, three different word choices are shown and the child has to click on one.
- Wonder Red’s Rhyming Game – This involves finding rhyming words. The app shows a word (like Trap) and requires the child to choose which words rhymes with it from two (like Cap and Bear).
- Princess Presto’s Wands Up Writing Game – This involves spelling words letter by letter. The app says to spell the word (like ladder) and then sounds out the first letter. It then asks the child to select which letter makes that sound out of the options shown.
- Alpha Pig’s Lickety Letter Hunt – This involves choosing the right letters to spell a word. Unlike Princess Presto’s game, this one says the name of the letter instead of sounding it out.
The game is in forced landscape. It opens into a menu with the four different characters and very minimal text. The presentation is very colourful, though I think the characters aren’t very memorable. The thing that struck me the most about this game was how slow it was. Not in performance, but in just playing the games. For example, in Alpha Pig’s game, which presented a cross-roads with different letters, when I clicked the right letter it would take me down one of the roads. Instead of going directly to the next crossroads, it went by a blank road that felt like it did nothing but slow down the game. I can only imagine that this slowness is to help with children understanding what is going on.
The game attempts to keep motivation up by introducing “stickers” which can obtained by playing the game. These stickers were used in a “picture book” mode, where you could just stick them on a background.
Another thing I noticed was that the game always required sound. It was impossible play without sound, which is an interesting choice. If you’re playing it on the move or in public, relying that heavily on sound may become an issue as it can be hard to hear. But it might be necessary for the children its targetting.
The Learning: Is there an App for that? report mentioned that this particular game was more successful with 5 year olds, which makes sense upon playing the game. It seems its aimed at kindergarten or just below students, because it attempts to teach the very basics of reading (learning and sounding out letters, word recognition and rhyming). And I guess its pretty good at doing that.
Main Points:
- Landscape
- Requires sound
- Colourful
- A little slow
- Icons with no text
- Stickers for collecting
