I'm a full-time mummy

My 3.5 years old boy loves animals! Everytime we walked past a pet shop, he will stop us and dragged us in to have a look. Fishes, rabbits, dogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, cats, everything! So when I received an email pitch on this app, I immediately requested to review it. Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: Oh, the Pets You Can Get!: All About Our Animal Friends
* Price: $3.99
* Category: Education
* Released: 08 December 2012
* Version: 1.09
* Size: 47.7 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Oceanhouse Media, Inc.
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Description from the product page:

"Playful puppies, purring kittens, and flying birds bring the pages to life as children learn about animal behavior and how to keep pets happy and healthy. Look for information cards from Thing 1 and Thing 2 which teach pet safety, and find out more about each animal by tapping on instant glossary words throughout the story. 

* It is engaging and interactive and I love that we can also touch the objects in each page on the screen and the words pop out to tell you what it is!

* I like the storyline where it teaches us how to care for animals and pets, in fact, there are some pages which I particularly enjoyed as I feel the tips given can be apply to our daily life as well.

* For example, at the picture below (top right), it says that we should not let any pets play with string as it can get tangled. I used this opportunity to remind my boy that not just animals, little children and us adults should not play with strings and ropes without practising cautions and safety.

* Another example is the picture above (bottom left) which mentioned that we need understanding and patience when our pets make mistakes. I feel this particularly rings the truth even for us as parents that we should be understanding and have patience with our own children especially when they make mistakes! I totally love this app!

* I also used the opportunity to educate my boy on how we should handle our pets and what type of foods they eat everyday. I also enjoyed the extra tips and facts about the animals as I find myself learning new things too!

You can purchase the "Oh, the Pets You Can Get!: All About Our Animal Friends" app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code 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"

Sharing some pictures taken about 2 weeks back when we did some crafts work to get into Christmas mood hahaha... I had previously blogged about my kiddos making the snowman craft.

Now what happened during this craft activity was pretty impromptu. I took a green colored A4 paper, folded it into half and cut it into 2. From each of the half, I folded into a triangle shape and cut it accordingly so that when I opened them, it looks like a tree. Initially  I thought of getting my kids to doodle and draw on their Christmas tree.

I gave my kids some color pencil and my 3.5 years old boy started drawing circles around his Christmas tree telling me they are balls (ornaments) while my 15 months old girl just doodled happily. And then she started biting her color pencil lead. That's when I stopped the color pencil session and changed it into sticker session. Gave my kids a bunch of stickers and let them stick all they want. I finished off their trees by taping an ice cream stick at the back of their trees.

And their artwork here... tadaaaaaa!! Alyson's artwork on the right while Benjamin's on the left. I like them both! I like that my boy drew circles on his tree to represents the ornaments. It's not easy telling my boy to draw circles actually - not that he doesn't know but more like he doesn't want to.

One surprising observation I noted with my girl is she likes to stack all her stickers. I found her sticking one after another round stickers on top of each other. You wouldn't see it on her craftwork as it is quite thick that I peeled them off :P

Anyway, the objective of this craft session is to get them to familiarise with decorating Christmas tree and to let them use their imagination on how they want their tree to look like.

That's all the updates I can share for now, feel free to ask and share if you have feedback!

In the middle of Sept this year, I have started teaching my 3.5 years old boy unofficially. Unofficially in the sense that we do not follow any curriculum or schedule. I have tried introducing phonic word families to my boy but our progress is still at a very slow pace, hence this review is based on my sole opinion as I did not involve my boy's participation in this app. Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: ABC Phonics Word Family
* Price: $2.99
* Category: Books
* Updated: Nov 29, 2012
* Version: 2.02
* Size: 36.9 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Abitalk Incorporated
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Description from the product page:

"The Phonics Word Family provides the word phonics spelling, beginning sound, word family phonics, short vowel sound, and images with a lot of animations and interactions for each word. There are a total of fifty six word family groups which focus on the short vowel, long vowel, two vowel, and combination vowel word family phonics learning. After children complete the phonics spelling in each group, the matching game follows and children can review what they learned. Word Family Phonics Basics includes 56 different phonics word family groups."

* I like the simplicity of this app where you choose the word family to try on and then guess the missing letter which should complete the word given.

* I also appreciate the image of the object which is also shown so that you can visualise better.

* You can hear the phonics pronounciation of the letters when you tap on it so you can try guessing which is the correct letter to drag to solve the question.

* My boy is not at the recognising so many alphabets and phonics yet so I can't really feedback on this app at the moment but I will definitely revisit this app when the time comes (I always do that for all my products and apps!).

In summary, I think this app is a great app and would benefit my boy when the time comes since I'm currently teaching him.

You can purchase the "ABC Phonics Word Family" app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code 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"