The team that built the Sticky Mosaics Butterflies iPad app emailed us a few days ago to see if we’d be interested in reviewing it. As the dad of a two-year-old little girl (and a 18 week old little girl), I jumped at the chance to have her give this app a go. She is a bit younger than the target audience, but since it includes jewels, girly colors, and butterflies, I figured she’d manage. Besides, who doesn’t think that there kid is advanced for their age’?
I’ll start off by saying that, yes, this app is best suited for girls ages 4 to maybe 8 (I think). The goal is pretty simple, and reminds me a lot of the old ‘color by number’ boards I used to get as a kid. You first choose from 1 of 4 butterfly templates to start with. Once you have selected one, you are presented with a butterfly that is waiting to be filled in.
The butterfly is covered with hundreds of different spots, and each spot corresponds to one of the handful of jewels at the bottom of the screen. Your child will drag the matching jewel to the spot on the board. There are probably 100 spots or so, so if your child can’t do this part (like mine), you’ll be doing this yourself.
Once the butterfly is all filled in, the real fun starts. The butterfly flies around the screen, and if you touch the screen and hold, the butterfly will fly over to your finger and land on it. If you move your finger around, it will stay on it. Once you pull your finger off of the screen, the butterfly resumes flying around its little environment.
While my daughter couldn’t do the matching piece where numbered jewels correspond to numbers on the butterfly template (she tried), she did really enjoy the butterfly flying around. It killed me to have to drag all of those jewels… it took a good 10 minutes probably, but the end result was worth it. I think a whole app or game could be built around just the concept of the butterfly flying around and landing, its pretty well done.
I’d recommend this app for parents who have girls trying to learn their numbers and who are into girly things. I could definitely see my daughter’s older cousins having fun with this app, and she even did herself at just 2 years of old. Verdict: Recommended.
