I'm a full-time mummy

I don't often received pitch email asking me to review iPad apps with the promo code given along as well, so whenever I do get emails like this, I feel obligated to redeem it and try it out and then share my feedback. When I saw the title of this app, I thought 'OK, this is a unique concept, a house that went on strike? Hmmm... must check this out!' Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: The House That Went On Strike
* Price: $2.99
* Category: Books
* Released: Jul 23, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 121 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Jumping Pages Inc.
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Description from the product page:

"This clever, rhyming, musical and interactive original story teaches kids of all ages, and their parents, respect for the house. Legendary House "mom", former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Pat Schroeder narrates, leading a modern day movement of a house and its appliances going on strike against its errant family to win respect!"

* I love this app! It is engaging and interactive! The colored objects on each pages allows us to touch and then see the animations of it!

* I particularly enjoyed the page shown below. It is kinda like we use a torchlight to shine and see through the contents of the house. I used the opportunity to explain to my almost 4 years old boy that the house looks sad as nobody maintains and take care of it. Then I showed him the insides of the house which is a total mess, cobwebs on the ceiling, water spilling in the bathroom, etc etc and told him that we must take care of our house and belongings and to be responsible and clean up our mess.

* I like the storyline where it tells how the house team up with the appliances to go on strike in order to send a message to the family staying in it that they should maintain and take good care of them.

* One thing I would like to recommend is the settings icon at the bottom right to be placed further a bit from the next page navigation icon, other than that, this app is fantabulous!

You can purchase the "The House That Went On Strike" 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"

Last year, I had the opportunity to review "Kids 1st Shape Puzzle" and "Trucks and Things That Go", a both are fun and educational apps for my boy to play with and this time, the same developer approached me again asking whether I would be interested in reviewing their latest app. Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: Animals Babies and Homes
* Price: $1.99
* Category: Games
* Released: Dec 14, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 101 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Gil Weiss
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Description from the product page:

"Children delight in spotting familiar animal friends and learning about their different homes; a doghouse, a birdhouse, a mouse hole or a goldfish bowl and babies; bird chicks, cow calf’s, owlet, baby giraffe. These colorful puzzles of Animals Babies and Homes is a challenging and enjoyable game that will develop your child’s ability to visual recall and build up his/ her English and Hebrew vocabulary.

Kids match the pieces correctly on the puzzle to hear the word of an animal and it’s match (home \ mother) duck – pond, owlet – owl, horse – stable, tadpole – frog, cub – lion, camel – desert and much more! Animals Babies and Homes is an eye and ear catching puzzle enhances matching and listening skills. Let your toddler play with it, while enriching their language skills, developing their fine motor skills, and learning names of numerous objects."

* As part of our learning activities, I am always looking for more activities and stuff that I can let my boy try and work on, whether from books or iPad apps, so I am very happy to be able to review this puzzle app as I hope he will learn where animals stay and also the names of the animals when they are babies and grown up.

* I like this app in the sense that I myself get to learn new things too! So yes, learning with my boy at the same time is kinda awesome as well!

Room for Improvement?

* I would prefer to have some buzzer sound if the puzzle is placed incorrectly so that we can know that it is wrong. Maybe that's just my weird preferance.

* There are few occassions where I noticed the puzzle pieces are a bit not sensitive, meaning we need to put it really, really close to the puzzle shapes (shadows) to solve it. Unlike other puzzle apps we reviewed before, I find that these few occassions make us quite frustrated as we have to keep trying and moving the puzzle very slowly to ensure that it is almost fill up the shadow of the animal puzzle in order to solve it.

You can purchase the "Animals Babies and Homes " 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"

A year ago, I get to review "Koto Go Silence" and the developer has recently emailed me to request for my review on their latest Koto series. You know, my almost 4 years old boy still occasionally watch the Koto Go Silence app before his bedtime, so of course I am all for reviewing the latest story on Koto the awesome dog!

* Title: Koto Go West
* Price: $2.99
* Category: Books
* Released: Dec 19, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 96.4 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Daniel Shneor
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Description from the product page:

""Koto Go West" is a new beautifully animated storybook app that throws users into the adventurous world of Koto, as a tenacious sheriff dog in a Wild West town. Following the chases he embarks on, through tracking down mysterious noises, Koto encourages the reader's cognition between sound imagination and real life objects."

* Like the previous Koto book, my boy's eyes lit up when he sees Koto the dog again but this time in a different scene, the West! My boy sometimes like to pretend play with cowboy and guns and stuff, so to see Koto the dog as a cowboy dog is quite cute!

* The illustrations in this book is top notch and I love the vivid colors used, very attractive and eye catching.

* I like the storyline where it tells how Koto imagine weird things happening around whenever he hears some weird sounds around him.

* I also used the opportunity to teach Ben some new words, such as cowboy shoes, rattle snake, aborigines and so on.

* It was such a nice coincidence that I just went through a Youtube video with my boy on rattlesnakes and we saw a rattlesnake in the Koto book. My boy immediately called out rattlesnake when he saw it!

* The app comes automatically with the Read Out Loud feature but requires us to tap each pages to move through the story, so I used this opportunity to teach Ben to tap the text himself, so that he can learn that tapping the text will enable us to know what is going to happen next and I also want him to be more in-charge when we are going through this app.

You can purchase the "Koto Go West" 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"