What We Liked:
Fish School is such a neat concept – the fish rearranging themselves into letters of the alphabet, shapes, numbers, etc. is so playful and fun, it’s pretty hard to resist. The under-the-sea theme is continued through the interactive fish, the matching game, the spot the differences activity – and all with beautiful colors and Duck Duck Moose’s trademark sense of children’s design.
There is a lot of fun interactivity built in, like little fish eggs that pop open when tapped, letting little baby fish swim out, starfish that bubble when tapped, and a number of neat options in the play screen. The music and voice are so lovely – I’m always so pleased with the quality of the sounds in Duck Duck Moose apps, classic children’s songs are rendered in cello and violin for a beautiful, soothing sound experience. This is one app that parents won’t mind listening to their children using – no jarring, annoying tones here!
This app is also rather uniquely designed so that it encourages the development of visual scanning and comparing and contrasting – skills that I don’t often see developed in other children’s apps but ones that form an important foundation for learning.
While I do have some suggestions on how this app could be even better, it is really competing against itself and the other high-quality children’s apps produced by Duck Duck Moose. They’ve set the bar high for app excellence for young learners.
What We Didn’t Like:
I have to admit that Duck Duck Moose has totally spoiled me with the incredibly easy to use, but powerful navigation system that they have built into Park Math and Word Wagon. I’d love to see that same style of navigation available for Fish School – as it is, you can slide through the screens easily, but tapping the bubble makes you cycle through all of the activities until you find the one you want.
Also, the ABC song goes pretty quickly through the “LMNOP” part of the song, it is tricky to get a good look at each of the fishy letters before it moves on; this has long been a problem in early childhood education. It is confusing for children when there isn’t a clear break between the letter names. Also, the lovely background music isn’t included in the numbers or shapes activity.
Overall:
Fish School HD covers many early-learning topics. If you have preschoolers, the beautiful interactive activities will keep little hands busy while little minds explore core educational content and develop vitally important thinking skills.
Disclosure: I received a promo code of this app to review.
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