After posting the announcement about the fairly large update to Peekaboo Barn from Night & Day Studios, and officially releasing the app for the iPad, I felt it was time to go back and give a new review, of their official iPad version and the new features.
To start off, this is still the same great app that I’ve featured in my lists for 5 Great Apps for Infants and the Top iPhone apps for Infants of 2010. The new iPad app offers the same fun, colorful, entertaining and educational wonder that the original iPhone app offers. You can watch as your infant and/or toddler learn the names and sounds of the farm animals through the easy to learn controls. You simply touch the barn to open and close the barn doors, making it a superb app for any little one. My daughter was already playing with Peekaboo Barn back when she was 6 months old, and I watched her tonight, at 2 1/2, as she rediscovered the app on the iPad.
Description
Inside a little bouncing barn, friendly farm animals are waiting to pop out and surprise your little one. Try and guess who they are; tap the doors to find out!
Work with your child to learn the names of animals and hear the sounds they make. Younger children will love opening the barn doors to find a new animal animation, as they learn about cause and effect and become familiar with animal names and sounds. Older children will enjoy guessing animals by sound, then seeing the animal names, which helps develop early literacy skills.
New Multiple Language Features:
Press the Language button on the Options screen to try them out.
–Choose from the built-in narrators: child’s voice in English; adult’s voice in English or Spanish.
–Record your own voice: We added this feature so parents, children, and visiting relatives and friends can capture their own voices and star in Peekaboo Barn. Now you can record the animal names in your native language–or grandma’s voice, or grandpa’s–and, if you’re recording a new language, you can save the appropriate written version too, and both will show up the next time you play. (Please note, we can only support the writing systems that are supported by your device.)
–Additional languages: Two packs now available for in-app purchase, for 99 cents each:
* Asian languages 1: Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese.
* European languages 1: Swedish, Dutch, Italian, German, and French.
FEATURED BY APPLE
One of the first apps to be released for toddlers, since 2008 Peekaboo Barn has been downloaded over half a million times, and played over 20 million times worldwide. It has been a top 20 educational game on the iTunes store nearly every day since its launch, and has been featured by Apple often. It won The Best Toddler App Ever award in 2009, and was named one of the top 50 iPhone apps for kids by Babble.com in 2010 and 2011. It is recommended by The New York Times, MSNBC, USA Today, Wired, Telegraph UK, Ireland’s The Independent, Parents Magazine, and the Washington Post.
Peekaboo Barn was made for you and your toddler by artists and educators, not marketers, robots, or companies repackaging clip art. Our team has backgrounds in cognitive science and child development, and we’ve worked in educational media everywhere from Penguin USA to the Smithsonian Institution. When you could really use a safe distraction–in airports, restaurants, and waiting rooms–or you’d like to try something new with your little genius, Peekaboo Barn is the educational, artful solution.
I’m not however here wanting to review the basics of the app, I feel it would repeat of my earlier posts. It’s a mirrored duplicate of the iPhone app in terms of look and feel, however the art and animation is that much brighter and sharper on the bigger screen. No my main point is to review the major new feature added to Peekaboo Barn; the ability to record your own voice speaking or narrating the app.
The addition functions just like you would hope it would. Allowing you to name your recording sessions allowing you to have multiple version. On top of that, you have a 20 second window to record for each animal, so beyond just saying the animal’s name, you can spell out the word, or say anything you want really. This truly gives an expansive use for this app, allowing such flexibility.
As a parent, I can’t suggest this app enough! It was one of the first apps in the App Store to be released for infants/toddlers and it’s still growing. If you have a young one at home and have debated on using your phone as a distraction to help calm them down, or as an educational tool, Peekaboo Barn is all that and more wrapped up into one. This is definitely one you won’t be disappointed in.
 Peekaboo Barn by Night & Day Studios $1.99 |