My 2½-year-old son is a master of the iPhone. Whether this is a testament to his smarts or the iPhone's intuitive design, I can't definitively say—although of course I lean toward the "my kid's a genius" explanation. In any case, he can unlock the phone, bring up the iPod app, and pick out his favorite song from a playlist. He can take pictures and videos with the camera function, then switch over to the photo/video viewer to look at them. And he's inadvertently sent a few garbled text messages, placed some phone calls, and rearranged and even deleted some of my apps. (Note to Apple: The iPhone needs a parental lockdown mode!)
Since he's so enamored of the phone, I've found a few kid-friendly apps to entertain him on car rides. The latest to come to my attention is My Very First App, created by Night & Day Studios in conjunction with well-known children's book author/illustrator Eric Carle. Carle, famous for The Very Hungry Caterpillar and many other books, also has a My Very First Book series, which provides the illustrations for this app. It's essentially a matching/memory game with various levels.
The "Easy" level splits the screen in two halves, with a color in the top half and a drawing of an item in the bottom half. Kids are supposed to match the item (say, a lemon) with the correct colored square (in this case, yellow). The drawback to this level is that it's almost too easy—swipe a finger to move the squares around, and the game will automatically announce a match as soon as it runs past, meaning the child doesn't have to deliberately identify the match. Even for very young kids, that doesn't seem like much of a challenge.
My son's age meant that the "Medium" level was more his speed. This level plays out like a traditional memory game, with a grid of 16 "cards" that you tap to turn over as you try to find matching pairs. Be aware that the initial download of the game comes with only two "decks" of matching cards—one with items like grapes, umbrellas, and shoes, and one with solid colors. This lack of variety didn't bother my son—in fact, he latched on immediately to certain favorite pictures and enjoyed seeing them again and again.
The "Hard" level has 20 cards in the grid, so there are more pairs to match, and it combines item pictures with colored squares, so that instead of straightforward item-to-item or color-to-color matching, kids are supposed to match an item with its color. This kind of matching didn't appeal to my kid, but it might add a more challenging layer to the game for an older child.
The initial purchase of My Very First App is $.99, but you should probably just go into it with the idea that it's $5. That's because you can buy more card sets from within the game at an additional $.99 each. I ponied up the buck for one of the extra sets (full disclosure: my initial download was comped by the app designers). This one focuses on matching shapes rather than colors. My son likes it a lot, so I imagine I'll end up springing for the other three available decks—Numbers (counting fruit and matching that to a numeral), Food (matching animals with their favorite foods), and Animal Sounds (matching animals with their sounds). And yes, Night & Day also has a Very Hungry Caterpillar app in the works, so I'll be on the lookout for that.
Ellen Henderson is a novelist and web strategist. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and son.
