I'm a full-time mummy

Last week, I received an email from Nicola of Punflay, a company that develops educational iPhone/iPad apps for kids asking whether I would be interested in reviewing any of their apps. I replied with a big 'YES' of course and mentioned that I prefer to review apps of the alphabets, numbers or story time theme as these are what Ben is into lately. Anyway, my review as below...

* Title: Kandy Fish
* Price: $1.99
* Category: Education
* Updated: Feb 01, 2012
* Version: 1.2
* Size: 58.7 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: EMANTRAS
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Description from the product page:

"Dive undersea to play and learn about shapes, colors, and directions with the colorful Kandy Fish. Watch a lively video and enjoy 4 fun learning activities in this adorable 3D animated picture book from Punflay. Kandy Fish has been specially designed to teach your child, simple preschool concepts. With developmental milestones in mind, the app has been carefully crafted to introduce age-appropriate concepts in a fun and engaging interface.

Your preschooler will love watching the whimsical Kandy Fish teach them simple concepts. Play the video and watch the vibrant fish come alive on your iPad. Voiceover and text highlighting allow kids to follow the story easily. There’s even a lilting tune that little ones will want to listen many times over. Kids will have fun seeing the fish form a straight line, triangle, square, and a circle. Upward and downward arrows demonstrate the concept of up and down while the fish swim to the left and right teaching your child the concept of left and right. Not to miss how your child will love seeing the fish form a beautiful rainbow. What a fantastic way for kids to learn their colors! Also included in the app are the following 4 exciting activities that stimulate learning.

Kolor Pots - This is a color match activity that lets kids drag and drop fish in their respective colored buckets

Kandy Fun - Kandy Fun is a simple pattern recognition activity where little ones will have to figure out which fish comes next to complete the pattern.

Kandy Time - This is a great activity to develop eye-hand coordination. Kids can get a lot of practice tracing a straight line, triangle, square, circle and even directions.

Kandy Kolor - Little fingers can paint beautiful pictures using a color palette with many color choices. "

How good an iPad app to me is based on how often Ben goes back to playing and/or using it. For this app, Ben has been playing with it almost every day!

What's good?

* I love the 4 learning activities and using fishes in this app is just too cute as we have an aquarium at home, so I feel Ben is able to relate more and feel more excited playing with this app!

* I am happy to see Ben able to complete the "Kolor Pots " activity without any problems at all, he drags and drops the correct fish color into the corresponding bucket colors. Seeing him enjoying and learning at the same time just puts a smiley face to this happy mama! Hahaha!

* In "Kandy Time" activity, I try to use this opportunity to teach Ben in drawing circle, straight line, square, triangle and so on.

* Ben still needs to practise more on the "Kandy Fun" activity as he keeps getting distracted with trying to match the fish color instead of solving the fish color sequence. I think this is a good activity as it will help sharpen his memory and mind based on what he sees and thinks.

* In "Kandy Kolor" activity, Ben just draw and scribbles all he wants, as of now during Ben's drawing activity time (with paper and color pens), Ben is mastering the skill to color within the drawn shapes/picture so it's good to see Ben continues doing so on this app.

Room for Improvement?

* I'm not sure whether this can be done, but I would prefer if EACH of the learning activities started off with a sample solution so that the child (or even us!) understands what the activity's objective is. For example, under the "Kolor Pots ", it will be good if the app starts off with 1 fish being moved automatically into the correct bucket color.

* In the "Kandy Time" game, I would prefer if the tracing line color is darker as the current light gray is a bit too pale and difficult to see.

You can purchase the "Kandy Fish" app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code by the sponsor to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"

I stumbled upon this tweet message by LensCases looking for bloggers to review their products and as usual whenever I see Tweets like this, I always replied to ask whether they are OK with international bloggers, and my oh my, they are happy to provide me a product of my choice from their website for my review! So here goes my review for the "Glasses Cleaning & Repair Kit":

Description from the product page:
"We stock many different types of contact lens cases, accessories and solutions, including screw-top, barrel, RGP holder, Bausch and Lomb RGP Barrel Case with pincers, Bausch and Lomb Screw-Top, flat, soaking case, travel case, easy-grip, leak proof, 3D cases, contact lens storage cases, dual glasses and lens travel cases, cases for disposables, timer, novelty, gifts, travel kits, make-up bags, eye masks, compact mirrors, and handbag hangers!

We also have a great range of glasses cases, reading glasses cases and large sunglasses cases, in a range of styles, shapes and colours, such as flip-top, snap close, hard, soft, polka dot, clamshell, leather effect, slip-in and more."

Why I Requested It?

Ever since I gave birth to Alyson, I've been getting really annoyed at having to tighten the screws on my glasses E.V.E.R.Y freaking D.A.Y! No, it's not that she's been grabbing or playing with my glasses (not yet!), it's more like my glasses expand when I got pregnant (like my body, hips and feet size) and shrinks back after giving birth. So like I said, I'm getting really annoyed at having to tighten back the screws as I have to kidnap borrow my hubby's screwdrivers set (which he uses for his IT business) and then getting scolded for kidnapping taking his things without asking.

And if I don't tighten the screws fast, my lens will drop out (happened a few times!) and thank God each time I managed to find the darn screws back!

Another problem which I think most glasses wearer face is the dirt and smudges on the lens. No matter how careful we are, there aren't any way we can keep it clean and clear at all time (unless you don't wear it at all and leave it in the case hahahah...)

Packaging & Product Features

The glasses cleaning and repair kit comes with a 20ml lens spray, microfibre cleaning cloth and an optical screwdriver with keyring.

When I first received the item, I was pleasantly surprised as it is very small! It is so tiny I almost felt like I'm James Bond or something with one of those mini gadgets thingy hehehe... I also like the genius design of the flat blade head, phillips/cross head and a hex nut socket all in one handy tool!

Some other info about the product:

• The cleaning spray is anti-fog, anti-static and is suitable for glasses and sunglasses.
• The optical screwdriver has a handy keyring attached and comes with a flat blade head, phillips/cross head and a hex nut socket. They all fit together on a keyring, which measures approx 6 cm long, or 11 cm long including keyring. 
• The high density microfibre cloth measures 14.5 cm x 14.5 cm and is and is safe for all types of lenses, including plastic, mineral and AR coated. Can be used dry or with the cleaning spray included in the kit. 
  

Testing & Feedback

I immediately got down to tightening those darn screws on my glasses and happy to report, the screws only start getting loose again after 6 days. I totally love the optical screwdriver!

And you know what? I still have to check my glasses EVERYDAY as I just can't believe those darn screws are still screwed on tightly! Simply awesome!

Storage & Appearance

With 2 kids on tow and tons of things to lug along whenever we are out (and I'm already bringing way less things compared to formula feeding parents!), I am happy I can bring along the optical screwdriver at least! I just hook on the keyring to my small purse zip and store the optical screwdriver inside the purse.

Now my purse is already small enough (no bigger than the size of a credit card), to know that I've got this nifty little repair kit around me at all times is so assuring!

In summary, totally love this cool little cleaning and repair kit!

I'm so happy to own it!

You can check out the many products and designs from Lenscases website

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the product by Lenscases in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.

I came across a Tweet on the opportunity to review a kids related iPad app, of course being the usual busybody mummy blogger, I immediately checked out the company and the app and find out that it is an app to track a child's growth, vaccination schedules and more! What a cool app that I must simply review! Hahaha... Anyway, long story short, my review as below...

* Title: My Kid's Health
* Price: $8.99
* Category: Health & Fitness
* Released: Jan 18, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 6.3 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Pomelo Limited
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad.Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Description from the product page:

"Vaccination schedule, doctor/dentist appointments, growth & illness history, and more. Reminders sync with the iPad calendar. All through a beautiful, user-friendly interface. Developed by parents, for parents, to create the perfect tool for keeping track of your kid's health and development. No more looking for papers, it's all there on your iPad! "

Here in Malaysia, when a child is born, parents will be given a medical book which will list down the vaccinations taken, required and so on. Picture below is how my daughter's medical booklet looks like.

What's good?

I started off with this app by selecting my country (Malaysia) followed by entering my children's details.

* I am impressed with the objective of selecting the country (there are 194 countries in the list), which is to personalise the vaccination schedules for my child, and this data are provided by the World Health Organisation and national health organisations.

* I like that I am able to personalised each of my child's records by selecting their photos from my albums on the iPad

* I also like that I can enter details such as blood type, weight, height & head circumference by different dates and then view those data in graphs (growth charts)! Look at the picture below of Alyson's record on the app. And I can also see her growth rates indicated by the blue line are above the normal range in green line hahaha... (This was also mentioned by our paed few months ago)

* I am also impressed that the app can prompt the next vaccinations which are due to be taken (even the date!)

* I think this is a very handy and useful app to help a parent to track the health and development of their child as all the information is available right at our finger tips! No more flipping through pages of records and books!

Room for Improvement?

* I would love to see notes of what to look out for or to be alert for (such as growth spurts at which months and what symptoms or clues to look out for) as these would be an added special touch for the app user.

* I would like to have the option to email the details out as well.

You can purchase the "My Kid's Health" app from the iTunes App Store.

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! TWO of you lucky people are going to win a copy of this awesome and useful app! You will absolutely love it! Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code by the sponsor to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"