We will be reviewing the many iPad apps Jax has been trying out recently. The iPad is great for car rides and waiting in restaurants. I stick mostly to educational and pretend-play when choosing apps for him.
Toca Store by Toca Boca is a free-play app that is a great introduction to money and commerce. What little kid doesn’t like to play store at some point? Toca Store gives you everything you need to open shop with the cute and colorful graphics we’ve come to expect from their apps.
When you enter the “store” you find empty baskets ready to be filled with goods to sell. Click on each basket to choose from 3 dozen colorful items from fruits and veggies to toothbrushes and toy robots. When all the baskets are filled, the shop is open for business!
None of the items in the store catalog have prices, so you are free to assign a price ranging from 1 to 5 coins. The “customer” (often Jax will play both roles, saying, “Store! Buy it!”) places their desired item on the counter and the “shopkeeper” puts in the number of coins it costs. You start out with 10 coins in your purse and each round of shopping continues until you run out. If you try to buy something and don’t have enough coins left, a silly winking coin purse will give you 5 more.
Once the payment is placed in the till, you press the sale button to complete the transaction. A cute animated shopping bag starts hopping up and down, and it is time to put your purchase in the bag.
Jax loves this game and plays it solo in addition to us playing it together. What would I change? It is hard to keep track of how many coins are left. You can’t open the purse to check until the price is already locked in and you can’t see your receipt clearly until the end. So often, if I haven’t been paying close attention, we end up over-budget!
This app is one that will grow with Jax as he starts to really comprehend the concepts of money, buying and selling. I’m hoping they keep adding to the cute catalog of items to keep it fresh and exciting!
For a limited time, another app by Toca Boca is free! It’s a silly hair salon that our whole family enjoys! Of course it went free a couple days after I bought it… 😛
This week really flew by! I’ve been working as much as possible while wishing it was time for our May beach vacation.
I’m starting to think about possible projects to make for it… A beach-themed mini quiet book? Yes please!! Maybe a roll-up city map for playing with cars? Jax doesn’t play with cars too much yet, but I wonder if he would enjoy that. Let me know if you have ideas for either project!
I’m not sure what my next regular quiet book page will be. I’d started drawing a purse, but I’m not excited about sewing a million little things to go into it after all the breakfast foods. I do need to do some simple letter and number pages. Jax loves anything with either of those!
Here is our week in Instagrams…
You can find me on Instagram as username iolstephanie.
I’m so happy to be back to sewing after my little break! And I think this page came out adorable…
Jax loves pretend play cooking and playing with his kitchen, so it made sense to do a breakfast page after someone asked for a frying pan on the Facebook page. (Sorry it took so long!)
This pattern uses some duplicate items from the Starbucks Breakfast page. The patterns are included here, but please see that post for instructions on the banana, egg and bacon.
For this page, I used: background felt in red and red polka dot, felt (in pink, red, burgundy, orange, yellow, cream, white, tan, brown, gray, dark gray, black and glitter black), clear vinyl, batting/stuffing, 1 grommet/eyelet, 5 snaps and a button.
To create the stove page, I started with a 9″ x 9″ red felt square. I covered a little less than the bottom half with a tan felt to make the counter. Because I wanted a way to store the food without using lots of Velcro that damages the felt, I sewed a clear vinyl pocket over the counter.
To make the knob, I sewed the two halves together, then installed a large eyelet in the center. I put it in place on the page and sewed a button to the page through the eyelet. This lets the knob spin around. I placed pins at all the points I wanted to add stitching, and I used them to keep my lettering straight. I free form stitched it all, but you could write it out first with a pattern pen. I did: LOW | | MED | | HIGH OFF.
The burner was simple – it just took a lot of stitching! The red spiral gets sewn to the black glitter circle (you could use plain black). Then the black circle gets sewn to the dark gray circle. The whole thing gets sewn down to the page.
To make the frying pan, I first stitched the inner circle from the pattern onto the top piece using the sewing machine (to save time.) I then layered some batting between the two sides and sewed them together around the outside. I’d considered adding a light cardboard or plastic canvas layer for stability, but I decided I wanted it to squish into my huge quiet book and not be bulky. When it was all sewn together, I sewed a second circle just inside the first to make the pan dip in a bit at the center.
To make the table page, I started with a 9″ x 9″ square of polka dot felt. I sewed the plate down using my sewing machine (I used off-white for my plate and cup) then sewed a second circle inside the first.
To make the napkin, I used a square of yellow felt. Use whatever you have on hand that coordinates! I went with yellow thanks to a Facebook suggestion. I folded the square then hand stitched a running stitch just beside the fold to keep it folded. The fork, knife and spoon are all made by sewing the two sides together. The fork also has three rows of stitching to make the tines.
The cup was made by sewing the orange juice down to the top of the back of the cup, just below the top so you see a little lip. You could make your orange juice go the full length of the cup (or even come out!). I hadn’t originally intended to leave the cup open like a pocket, but that is what I did. I sewed the front to the back around the lower three sides, catching the handle in the stitching.
The napkin, fork, knife, spoon and cup all have snaps sewn to them and the table to hold them in place.
The pancakes are made by simply sewing the two sides together. I made two. For the syrup, I sewed butter squares to the top pieces and then sewed the tops to the bottoms. For instructions for sewing the banana, bacon and eggs, see the Starbucks Breakfast page.
What do you think? Jax loves this page! He hasn’t figured out how to turn the knob yet, but he likes stacking everything onto the frying pan then putting it all away in the counter pocket. He calls the juice “tea” – maybe I should have made it brown! He sees mama drinking tea a lot.
If you sew this page, feel free to share your photos here or on the Facebook page!
Pardon the dust around here! I am redoing the site’s template and I’ll be changing things throughout the end of the week until I get it just right. The new system I’m using will make changes easier in the future, but things are going to look a little crazy for now. All the links and content is working, though!
I’m finally sewing again! I took a break to fold hundreds of origami cranes for Jax’s party. Big thank yous to the ladies on our Facebook page for helping me decide which color scheme to go with. I’m hoping to post the finished page and pattern tomorrow night or Saturday.
Here are some links for you!
I want to try making these macrame bangles, though bangles tend to fall off my little hands. So pretty!
I like wide jersey headbands, but can never find them in anything but black. Maybe I should grab scissors and a t-shirt?
Adventures of Our Fami-Ly has a cute spin on my sock matching quiet book page. You can also check out the Facebook page for more photos of how others have used my patterns!
Winners will be getting a code via email from me soon! If you didn’t win, you can still get these apps on sale for a limited time. Grab them now in the iTunes store while they are $0.99!
I didn’t get a chance to sew this past week, so that is my goal for this coming week. We were having trouble with teething interrupting bed and nap times. It was a long week! But today we were rewarded by Jax climbing into his bed on his own, singing himself the ABC’s and curling up to nap. Sweet boy!
We will be reviewing the many iPad apps Jax has been trying out recently. The iPad is great for car rides and waiting in restaurants. I stick mostly to educational and pretend-play when choosing apps for him.
We are giving away one of each of these iPad apps! See below for details!
We have had AlphaTots and TallyTots on our iPad for quite a while now. I was really excited when I found then because Jax was just starting to get into letters and numbers. When Spinlight Studio contacted me to try their other apps, TableTots and Swapsies, Jax and I were happy to oblige!
TableTots
Don’t purchase TableTots thinking you are buying an educational game – you’ll be disappointed! Think of it as an educational tool. Imagine buying a bunch of learning placemats and all the shapes, letters, numbers, coins and more that go with them (with the added bonus of no little pieces to clean up!) That’s TableTots!
Jax just turned 2, so some might say he is too young for a teaching tool like this. But he adores letters and numbers and I am teaching him every day while he is so enthusiastic. Because he is so young, I do let him free-play with the app more often than when I quiz him with it. He chooses the board and the pieces, and I’ll ask him to find a letter or count the coins. He loves the dominoes and it has become one of his new favorite words. This app is helping me teach him to count objects and associate quantity with the numbers he has already learned to recognize. Later on we can move on to simple math, spelling and learning about money. But, even just with free-play, he learns so much because the objects all say what they are when he touches them.
What would I change? My biggest gripe is there is no multi-touch. This is an app a parent/teacher and child play together, yet only one of us can move an object on the screen at a time. I also don’t like how the pieces are randomly tossed on top of each board, covering up the writing. It makes it hard for Jax to understand that he should sort objects into their correct places.
It would be nice if there were color names. There is a screen that give you a circle of every color to lay out in a color wheel, but when you touch each one, it just says “Circle!” There is a “peek-a-boo” curtain that can be dragged across the screen that I don’t really understand, but that can be turned off.
I think TableTots would be a great buy for anyone who does preschool learning with their child, whether informally or as a part of home schooling. This is an app that parents and children play together, and it is always great when you can combine learning, technology and time spent with your child!
AlphaTots & TallyTots AlphaTots is a great interactive alphabet game. I give this app a lot of credit for Jax learning his ABC’s so quickly. What sets it apart from similar apps is that each letter is represented by an action, not an object, so you don’t have the same old “xylophones” and yo-yos”. Instead, you “x-ray” some presents and “yank” on a cord to fill and empty a tub of water.
TallyTots is very similar, but deals with the numbers 1 – 20. Jax has learned all those numbers, though he has trouble counting on his own past 13 just yet. This app has unique activities for each number as well. Jax loves to build sandwiches, feed flies to the frog and look at tiny cupcakes under a magnifying glass.
When you choose a letter, They tell you its name and the sounds it makes, then you are presented with an activity. When you complete the activity, you can move on to the next letter. You can also switch to a different letter by pressing an holding one of the letter tabs until the meter fills up. This is a great feature because it prevents clumsy hands from bumping a tab and switching letters accidentally. It doesn’t stop Jax from navigating the app. He quickly figured out how to do it.
What would I change? Not much – just the stability of both apps. We have very few problems with our iPad 1, but AlphaTots and TallyTots are our number 1 crashes. Jax learned to say “sorry” because they were crashing so often and that is what I’d always say to him. AlphaTots likes to crash most spectacularly: it freezes on the loading screen for a minute or two, then the whole iPad reboots. Yikes! The frequency of crashes tends to change whenever they update the apps, and it seems like it is happening a lot less often right now.
Crashing troubles aside, I would definitely recommend these apps for toddlers! With so many activities per app, Jax never gets bored. He picked up on his letters and numbers so quickly and takes pride in getting them correct. I think Jax’s favorite feature of both games are the songs. He loves to hum along and dance around.
Swapsies
I’d seen Swapsies in the iTunes App Store before but had passed it over. I just didn’t think Jax would be that into it. And, so far, he isn’t. We have a sticker book game with a page of both boy and girl dolls that he enjoys dressing – especially putting glasses on them! This app is different. It isn’t free-play, but matching. I think it’s a great idea, but Jax hasn’t really latched on to it yet.
You have your choice of a few boys and girls and buttons for three items of clothing: hats, tops, and bottoms. The clothes are all typical “what I want to be when I grow up” outfits. Police officer, astronaut, train engineer, etc… While gender neutral, they all tend to be masculine.
To play, you drag an item to the boy or girl and if you complete the outfit, a little button appears to play a reward sound. Jax thinks the sounds are funny, but they haven’t been enough incentive for him to match the outfits himself.
What would I change? The interface is a bit awkward. The clothing choices are presented in three round buttons which make Jax think he should press to choose them, not drag them to the body. This quickly frustrates him and makes him lose interest. I think if there was more of a celebration when a match is made, he might better understand the goal of the game. Perhaps a gallery of all the completed outfits with a word/audio telling what they are. Jax just doesn’t instinctively know what a mail carrier or “rancher” wears.
As with all apps I get that Jax isn’t into, it will stay on the iPad just in case he likes it later. This has happened more often than not! I don’t think we would have bought this one, but it could be fun for a child who is into what they want to be when they grow up.
The graphics on all of Spinlight’s games are cute, crisp and colorful! I love when my son’s favorite games are pretty to look at, in addition to being educational. Their apps are available in both the Apple App Store and the Android Market for Android devices. They are currently on sale for 99 cents each!
Here is a video of Jax playing Alpha and TallyTots, plus a clip of Swapsies:
Would you like to win one of these great apps?
Jax & I have four free app codes to give away (one for each app) to four lucky winners. To enter, leave a comment on this entry. Four random winners will be chosen at noon on Monday, February 13th. Each winner will receive a code good for one of the above apps (my choice, as I only have one of each.) Good luck!
Full Disclosure: We purchased AlphaTots and TallyTots ourselves. Spinlight Studio provided us with free copies of TableTots and Swapsies to review and a copy of each to give away. This review is my own, honest opinion.
If you have a toddler or preschool app you’d like Jax and I to review, please contact me with details. We have an iPad 1 and an iPhone 4.
Ask my son what he wants for dinner and his answer will most likely be “sushi!” Of course, he doesn’t really eat actual sushi, but we go to our favorite sushi spot and sit at the bar. They bring him bowls of miso soup with rice and heaps of tofu and little plates of crab sticks. He adores it! So when I was brainstorming his birthday party theme, sushi crossed my mind and I knew it would be perfect.
Decorations
My decorations were a combination of items I owned, items from the thrift and dollar stores and items I purchased from a party supply. I decided to focus on only one room – the kitchen.
For the ceiling, I purchased a set of green paper lanterns and 2 sets of small, white paintable lanterns. I painted them a variety of colors using craft paints I already owned. I hung our old icicle lights on the kitchen ceiling and then added the lanterns. I had envisioned the lanterns as well as lots of paper cranes. Using three sizes of origami paper in beautiful traditional patterns, I folded about 250 – 300 cranes over the month of January.
Crane Mini Tutorial: Fold your cranes. I can do this in my sleep, as I used to make hundreds of teeny tiny cranes when I was little. Using strong thread (I used this) cut to your desired length and a needle, poke your need through the tail and neck of the first bird (for a horizontal garland) or up through the body (for a vertical garland). Tie a knot after each bird and repeat until your garland is the desired length. To make my knots, I made a slip knot, then ran my needle through the loop and pulled it tight.
The food table is our kitchen table push up against a wall. The Asian prints were already there. They are from a calendar a Chinese restaurant gave us years ago. From around the house I added: one of my many bamboo plants, my beloved Geisha doll that my grandpa gave me when I was little, a maneki neko and a black bamboo candle holder. I also used our new bamboo placemats as a table runner. From the thrift store, I was able to add a set of Japanese food trays that held cupcakes, fruit and veggies. I also found a pretty sumi-e ink set that I displayed with some brushes and a green square platter for serving edamame. I added handmade labels to all the dishes with both the English and Japanese names (or at least what the internet told me the Japanese names were!) I glued some toothpicks and skewers onto some cranes to embellish the food.
Food
The main attraction was the sushi cupcakes. I am so happy at how they came out! And they were so simple. I made a ton of them – two full cakes worth – and provided cupcake boxes so guests could bring home 3 or 4 mini cupcakes.
Sushi Cupcake Mini Tutorial: You’ll need cake, white frosting, lots of white jimmies/sprinkles, red and orange pearl sprinkles (I purchased all my sprinkles from the Etsy shop Sweet Estelle’s Baking Supply), assorted gummy candies (I used large Swedish fish, candy orange slices, gumdrop peaches, strawberries and cream gumdrops, gummy worms and gumdrops), green or black mini cupcake papers, black fondant (I dyed some green I already had black), and one of these great cutters. For my round maki sushi, I made dark chocolate cake in green mini cupcake papers. This made the papers look really dark green. I frosted them with cream cheese frosting, stuck on some sliced candies or pearl sprinkles, then covered the rest of the frosting with white jimmies.
For my nigiri style cupcakes, I baked lemon cake in two 1/4 sheet pans and chilled them for a few hours. I used the cutter to make perfectly even rectangles. I rolled out the black fondant and cut it into strips. I frosted everything but the bottom of the cake (I used more cream cheese frosting but with lemon extract added), laid candies on top (for the orange slices, I rolled them flat with a rolling pin), then wrapped a strip of fondant seaweed around some of them. I covered the exposed frosting with lots of sprinkles. I chilled all the cupcakes overnight to help the frosting firm up a bit. They were great, and I had none left after the party.
Jax loves fruit, so despite him being a winter baby, I treated him to all his favorite off-season fruits. The party had been underway 30 seconds when he was already stealing watermelon off the fruit tray! For the tray, I laid out rows of watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe and mango, with star fruit and blueberries on top. The center was a row of kiwi “sushi”. I hollowed out some thick kiwi slices and stuck some sticks of watermelon and cantaloupe in the hole. A sprinkle of pomegranate seeds on top finished them. With my extra fruit, I mixed a big bowl of salad for the counter with: watermelon, kiwi, honeydew, strawberries, blueberries, grapes and pomegranate seeds. Just about all of the fruit was eaten. I also had a veggie tray with carrots, celery, sugar snap peas and a cucumber “sushi” made like the kiwi ones but with veggies.
Other food: I had a tray of Asian cookies from our local international market that were a big hit. On the origami table, there was a tray of savory snacks including rice crackers, siracha and wasabi peas and a Japanese snack mix. The wasabi peas were the only thing at the party not really eaten. I served shelled edamame that was a big hit with all the toddlers at the party.
Drinks: On the counter I had a tea station with green, black and oolong teas. There was also lemonade, a pitcher of ice water and cold juice boxes.
Treat Bags:
The treat bags went along with the theme. At Target’s Dollar Spot, I bought stuffed toy sushi and sushi erasers. I also added a set of pretty painted chopsticks, origami paper & instructions, a party horn with tinsel and an assortment of Asian cookies such as Pocky. I packed them in inexpensive clear bags and tied them with colored string. The tags were paper circles I wrote Thank You in Japanese on one side and English on the other. I added a mini paper crane to each bag.
Activities:
Jax is too young to really do any formal games and crafts at his parties just yet, so I set up an origami table with lots of paper, books and instructions. Both the older kids and the adults enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the origami designs.
We had the Washington Capitals game on, as we are big fans (they lost, boo…) but the playroom was the other big attraction. Jax adored playing both with the kids his age and the older ones. He also spent some quality time playing with his relatives. Some big hits in the playroom were: Jax’s barn, his little kitchen and the tool bench he got for Christmas always had a crowd.
Candles… Take 1!
Highlights:
My favorite moments? Jax’s face when we started singing him “Happy Birthday”. The fact that he loved blowing out the candles so much he asked to do it again later on. And I obliged! Seeing him leaning sweetly on an older boy, hanging on his every word. Spending time with friends I see too little of.
I am hoping to have a party post for you soon, but I only have half of the photos so far. A friend helped out taking photos of the second half of the party. Jax LOVED his party! He alternated between stealing watermelon off the food table, playing with friends (new and old) in the playroom and asking to sit at the table and snack on all the tasty food. He loved getting sung to and blowing out his candle SO much that we did it twice!
Here are some links for you while I wait for the photos:
Now that the party madness is over (though I admit I haven’t taken down the pretty lanterns and cranes just yet!), it’s time to get back to sewing some new quiet book pages! I hope to have something to share very soon.
Threadless is having a sale! They have a bunch of baby and toddler tees/onesies for as low as $5 each. They are selling out fast, so you’ll need to hurry if one catches your eye. Jax would love the “rain-bow” one – he is big into rainbows at the moment. I love the little planets!
For myself, I’d get this $10 aqua v-neck if clothes were in my budget… It’s very “me”!
Things have been crazy here! I’ve been doing my normal job (30 hrs/wk of graphic design work), a freelance job and starting party prep for Jax’s 2nd birthday party next Sunday. I may not get sewing time this coming week, but I hope to get a couple quiet book patterns up soon.
I’ll keep the Facebook page updated as to if I get a chance to sew!
When you enter the “store” you find empty baskets ready to be filled with goods to sell. Click on each basket to choose from 3 dozen colorful items from fruits and veggies to toothbrushes and toy robots. When all the baskets are filled, the shop is open for business!
) cut to your desired length and a needle, poke your need through the tail and neck of the first bird (for a horizontal garland) or up through the body (for a vertical garland). Tie a knot after each bird and repeat until your garland is the desired length. To make my knots, I made a slip knot, then ran my needle through the loop and pulled it tight.
