Mummascribbles – KidloLand App – review and giveaway! – Mummascribbles

There is no doubt that our children are living in a very different era to the one that we did. Where I was once still typing on a typewriter, there is now the ablity to talk and have it typed for you. Where we used to get excited about the updated Snake game on the old Nokia’s (remember them?!), nowadays you can play full on games with awesome graphics, take amazing photos and keep a check on all your spreadsheets. The world has changed and who knows what the next generation will have in years to come.

Along with the awesomeness of this major upgrade in technology, there is always the advice that we shouldn’t let our children on such equipment for long periods of time, if at all. Personally I think that as long as they aren’t glued to it, it really doesn’t hurt and I sure let Zach use the iPad. I think it’s about allowing them these things in small doses and letting them know where the limits are. It’s also about having the right things for them to do and there were times when I was a bit worried that I was being a bad parent when he went to watch Dingle Dangle Scarecrow on YouTube and then ended up clicking on all of those nursery rhymes down the side that are simply just for watching and not at all interactive.

When the team behind the app KidloLand got in touch to see if I wanted to review for them, my initial thought was that I don’t really review apps because quite often they are hard to write a full post about. Instead of responding straight away and saying no, I had a little look on the Galaxy App store to see what it was all about. The reviews just on the app were enough to change my mind straight away and I quickly went back and said yes please!

KidloLand is an app that is aimed at young children up to the age of five that incorporates learning with fun and songs. It is a subscription service which you can pay for a whole year or on a monthly basis. Within the subscription you get every single download available plus any additions/updates as and when they are made available.

Upon downloading the whole app (each section gets downloaded on its own so you have to be a little bit patient), I had a little play before showing it to Zach. I was really impressed at the amount of stuff that is on there from many nursery rhymes to counting and phonics activities to a whole Christmas themed one! I just knew that he would absolutely love all aspects of this (and in particular the Christmas one of course!).

He was very excited when I told him he had a new app to play with and sat down one morning with it whilst I was getting ready for work – flicking through and finding different things to look at and seeing what he could do.

One of the things that he and I love about it is that it’s interactive. Yes there are a lot of nursery rhymes etc however if you touch the different parts of the screen, different things happen. For example, on one of them there is a train and when you press it, it starts moving and choo-chooing. On the song one potato, two potato, three potato four, there are many potatoes on screen doing different things and if you touch them, they do other stuff. There are a couple of potatoes playing badminton and when you touch one of them, the shuttlecock hits the other on the nose which Zach thinks is absolutely hilarious. He was literally in hysterics at that one!

Then there are the counting and phonics ones. It seems to be all about repetition which obviously can be a wee bit annoying for us parents but wonderful for our learning children. For him, it really helps him to hear the phonic and copy it and seeing the picture there representing the letter is a great aid.

There are also other activities that build cognitive skills and hand eye coordination, like the jigsaw puzzles and dot to dots. Zach was doing brilliantly with the dot to do the other day which was fab to see.

I love how much he likes this app because as a parent, I really do feel that it is a learning tool rather than being just something he is staring at. He asks for it in the morning whilst we are getting ready for work and has been playing with it on the car journey to my mum’s, but equally, it’s not like he’s become addicted as he will happily go a whole weekend without remembering that it’s there. That for me, is the perfect level of play allowance!

Probably the only annoying thing for me is having Jingle Bells playing at 8am on a July morning! But since he’s been talking about Santa for the last 6 months anywhere, it’s not really much different!

We absolutely love this app and whilst I don’t usually pay for them, mainly opting for the freebies, I would have absolutely no doubt about paying for this. Funnily enough we were talking about apps at work the other day and my manager said to me, we have this app at home called KidloLand and her little one loves it too!

***GIVEAWAY***

I have the opportunity for five of you lucky readers to win a 3 month subscription to the app! All you have to do is enter the Rafflecopter below. The app is available to download on IOS, Android and from the Amazon Appstore and you can pretty much download it from anywhere so it doesn’t matter if you are in the UK or the States (or somewhere else!).

Good luck!!

T’s & C’s

Competition ends at 23.59 on 30th July
Prize to be arranged direct with KidloLand – prize winner’s contact details will be passed over to them
Responsibility of winners receiving subscription is with KidloLand, not Mummascribbles

a Rafflecopter giveaway