All of us will win - crowd funding Friendy app!

If you have followed us for a while you already know that there is something big happening. We have teamed up with the company Mental Picture which is focused on helping kids to cope with their emotions. Currently they do it with the help of a specially designed toy Friendy. And very soon it will become an app. Or should we say “THE app”.

First things first

To start with, what is it all about? We have mentioned it a few times and will shortly do it here. The dolls that you have just seen deal with 6 basic feelings – anger, sadness, fear, discontent, happiness and calmness. Psychologists say that these feelings are the most common in our lives and many other emotions that we experience build on their top. Thus understanding these basic feelings may help us and our children tremendously in the everyday live.

Each feeling may be discussed with kids separately. You just take the doll and talk. Why does it happen? How to cope with it? When did you have it last time? What did you do? What should you do next time? Children can draw different feelings and situations, act themselves mimicking particular feeling, learn to accept and not be afraid of these emotions, learn to express and talk about them.

And now – you will be able to pick up the app and do the same! It is in the state of active development and will be released in early December. Kids will be able to do everything they could with real dolls and even more. It will be interactive, interesting and engaging. Check out some of the animations that we have created:

What are the positive effects? Children get to know themselves better – they build the self-esteem, manage to cope with negative emotions and stress, learn what they could do in the case they feel a particular emotion. As a result, they also become more empathic, able to communicate and build the relationship better and to be much more efficient in resolving the problems and conflicts in the future. Hopefully changing that future to the better.

Can you help?

We strongly believe in this idea. It is based on a psychological research and a great feedback from thousands of kids and parents using the dolls. But we need YOU to believe in it too. For the sake of your kids and other kids around the globe – to make them feel better, safer, happier.

There are many ways that you can help – spread the word, give suggestions and ask questions (info@appsandkids.com or just comments below), and finally – support our crowd-funding campaign on AppBackr.

It works like this – you give us a certain sum of money via this special platform. In turn we promise and AppBackr helps to ensure that when we start selling the apps we return you 50% more than you initially “borrowed”. It is an amazing win-win situation – we get more funds for marketing of the apps and you contribute to the idea, help spreading it and finally get your money back and even more!

If it sounds like a plan please visit our page on AppBackr, learn more about the platform and the project and give us some push! Thank you!

 

Animal Tiles for Kids iPhone App - Free just today

We would like to welcome you with a gift today. We have set our iPhone app Animal Tiles for Kids to be free for just one day. And you can download it from the iTunes right now!

WHAT’S ANIMAL TILES FOR KIDS?

It is a great app for little children. Just let them take first steps in solving puzzles, developing logical thinking and having fun with different animals. Just drag pieces of a puzzle into the right places and animals will give you a little performance! Easy and fun for the ages of 3 to 5.

But wait, it will become even better soon! We have drastically improved the animations used in the game. And we are also releasing an iPad version of the app.

Again, it is free today for the App Friday - a special Facebook party organized by momswithapps.com. Every week you can get great deals on iPhone and iPad apps for kids. And this weak Animal Tiles is one of those deals.

GOING IPAD

We are also excited with an upcoming iPad app. It will be called Animal Tiles for Kids HD and will be released in the nearest future. It is still in review at Apple at the moment of writing, though we hoped it to be out by today. We will tell you as soon as it is out – just be sure to follow us on Facebook. 

What’s new in that app? We have changed the animals and animations completely. Also added a small section for parents to read more about the app and improved the game flow. The same features are coming into the iPhone app soon, so stay tuned!

ABOUT APPSANDKIDS.COM

We are a creative studio developing and discussing the best iPhone, WP7 and iPad apps for kids. Visit our website on apps for kids and learn more!

Animal Tiles for Kids - new Windows Phone 7 app for children

Did you ever want your kids to learn more about nature and animals? Now they can do that. Today we are happy to release Animal Tiles for Kids - a new WP7 app for kids - which was available only for the iPhone before. For those who are new to our site I would like to tell more about it.

Animal Tiles for Kids

The game starts off by showing your kids an image of an animal scattered into pieces. A child has to put the tiles into correct places. When he or she does it, the animal will congratulate a child with a funny melody.

Playing this game is a great way to develop the logical thinking, learn to recognize patterns and take first little steps learning to solve problems. In addition, kids will have lots of fun and learn the sounds the animals make.

By letting your child to play the app you will ensure that the time spent playing will also teach your kids something new and useful. Therefore you can bravely take a break during the play time or just play and enjoy together with your little one.

Since picture is worth more than a thousand words, here are a few of them:

How to get it

To get the app, simply follow this link - Animal Tiles for Kids on WP7. It will get you directly to the Windows Marketplace. Alternatively, you can get it for your iPhone via this link - Animal Tiles for Kids on iPhone.

We hope that you like our new game. Let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions in the comments! You can also read more on apps for kids website or on a blog about apps for children.

What Makes the Mobile App Children Friendly

We might sometimes ask ourselves - is this mobile app good for kids? Which apps could we call so? One would say that anything cute - heros, game, sounds - is sufficient. At the same time probably there is more to that. To say so the mobile game has to be thoroughly thought through, potential troubles awaiting the kids and adults should really be weighed and fixed. Today these key points will be discussed, also easiest way these factors should be handled and how it might possibly have an affect on our commitment of buying the mobile game.

Great navigation

Could you just think about a mobile game for kids with lots of setup functions? Despite that young kids find out how to operate the smartphone in an instance, the setup of the game should be not very difficult. User-friendly controls and configuration options surely stick out and help make using iphone a no-brainer. A bunch of variations is not really the best choice despite the fact that it appears so. You want to start the application and begin playing around as soon as possible. Therefore all settings that you should specify need be user-friendly and have good defaults.

Advertizing in iPhone apps for young kids

It is certain that developers are interested to make  earnings from their mobile apps. A sure-fire approach is to offer a cost free application with advertisements in it. In case this is an application for kids, they will touch around the screen and open up the links with ads also. If you do not want it, there is another alternative of buying non-free iphone applications. Doing this you decrease the odds of the children bound into clicking the ads. Looking from the side I may perhaps  justify adding ads into free iphone apps and would expect not to have them in the bought apps. Unfortunately even then one has no confidence that we will escape the ads forever - you find no guides in iTunes requiring the app maker to clean out ads or pop-ups in the non-free iphone applications. Therefore you want to review this factor comprehensively before purchasing the mobile app.

Of course the application programmers want to make more money or to inform you about their other mobile apps. And that is even good in many of the cases. It is quite recommended to avoid the mobile apps making this too annoying. In the iphone apps developed for children any pop-ups or ads should not come up during the course of the game. It could be sometimes the case unfortunately and children are bound to click on them. To safeguard the kids and yourself we should recommend  to protect by password any transactions on iTunes on your mobile phones. When you give your iPhone to children it can surely minimize the chances of undesired purchasing.

What's inside?

The last thing we should take a look at is the content of the mobile application. If the content is educational, enhancing various skills of the child, letting him or her to understand more that is only great. But what about other sorts of applications? Apps which are simply funny and silly. Are these time killer mobile apps really children friendly? They entertain and make our kids laugh. Thus we could say they are needed sometimes also.

Unfortunately there are many many iphone applications to be cautious about. Any game that may have  brutality - you have to kill somebody, destroy anything, fight someone else - needs at least lift the exclamation mark for you. You should examine these apps thoroughly prior to buying them to  kids. These mobile apps can  be attractive to  children. Even several very famous games are of this kind. Recall that the ones using them will be your kids. So it is your decision to let them play it or forbid.

What do you think? Give us your thoughts on our website about iPhone apps for kids!