Remember this book? And how much we LOVE it? Well, the Ministry of Letters has just come out with a new (and equally great!) ipad app. It is literally… a SINGING alphabet! So much fun, and so perfect for my daughter who is now learning the sounds of the letters. The two of us are dancing in our chairs as I type this with the sounds of letters singing their letter sounds loud and clear. It’s catchy, it’s cute and it’s educational in such a marvellous way. (Available from itunes here, and they are soon to release an iphone version too.)

x Courtney

Remember these guys?! We had friends over for dinner the other night — a friend from Korea and a friend from France, and we were all remembering fondly how we watched (and loved) Looney Tunes when we were young! Isn’t that crazy how people all over the world are united by a cartoon character?! Anyway… I’ve already mentioned how I don’t let my kids watch real TV (the commercials!), but I’m okay with the occasional DVD.

We recently discovered the Looney Tunes Box Set which includes ten DVDs each starring a Looney Tunes character. My kids think it’s absolutely hysterical! Their favourite is Tweety Bird — my kids are all giggles over the silly cat-and-bird chases. I just love how simple and charming the cartoons are. Just good old-fashioned fun!

x Courtney

(Image found here)

For accommodation on our recent trip to Australia, we managed to arrange a house swap with a lovely family in Melbourne (have you ever done a house swap before? it was our first time and we LOVED it!). One of the best things about doing a house swap is you get to stay in a family home with toys and books for the kids! So nice! (They even had a trampoline in their backyard. Constant entertainment for the kids!)

Anyway, my favourite find from their shelves of children’s books was this beautiful copy of Puff, the Magic Dragon. When I was a little girl Puff, The Magic Dragon (by Peter, Paul and Mary) was one of my most favourite songs. I can still remember putting the song on repeat in my bedroom and listening to it over and over again. I had almost completely forgotten about it until I discovered this book. And it was such fun to read/sing it to my kids (who know also LOVE the song!), and the book’s magical illustrations bring the song to life so beautifully. Such a gorgeous book (and it comes with a CD of the song, so you can listen while you read).

x Courtney

Sweet, this Shapes app by PrestoBingo! We’re loving the beautiful graphics and the educational content. Currently only available in English, but thanks to the easy lay-out kids will quickly figure out how to play this mathematical app, no matter what language they speak. A great way to practise shapes, math and basic geometry!

xxx Esther

I recently downloaded the Alphabeast flash card app onto my iphone for my kids and it was an instant hit. The app features 26 alphabet flash cards, and when you tap each ‘card’ something cute and clever happens (like playable musical instruments, dancing robots, spinning bow ties and laughing monkeys). So it keeps the kids engaged and teaches them at the same time! I also like that the flash cards feature both the capital and the lower case letter (I always get confused which one to teach my kids, and having them both is a win/win). The app features charming hand-drawn illustrations based on the picture book, The Lonely Beast, and is available for the iphone and ipad.

-Courtney

We’ve been writing about some really cool and educational apps recently, and I didn’t want to leave out the equally cool and educational Count the Animals app from Dutch company Appracadabra. Count the Animals is wonderfully well designed with beautiful graphics and fun sounds, and it’s also full of cute little jokes like frogs starting to jump, dogs starting to poo, a lady catching butterflies and lice jumping from one head to the other. How can you resist? Count the Animals is perfect for children in the process of learning to count, as it is designed to help children develop the pre-math skill of connecting numbers to quantities. And if you’re unsure about your kids learning to count in Dutch (although it can be very useful) then there’s no need to worry: this app also contains Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish, and Swiss German languages. So there.

xxx Esther

My 4-year-old son’s reading skills are really taking off, and I’m pretty sure it has much to do with the educational apps we have on our iphones/ipad. It’s really cool how interactive these games are and how much the kids really pick up from them. I’ve never been a fan of video games for kids, and I know that ipad apps are not a far cry from video games… but when they’re educational and when you see how much your kids are learning, it’s pretty hard to resist them.

Our newest discovery is the Montessori Letter Sounds App from Les Trois Elles Interactive, a French company creating educational (and beautiful) apps for kids. This might be our favourite app so far. It’s extremely educational but also really, really fun. The app is based on the Montessori method of teaching kids to read and includes letter tracing activities, pronunciation exercises, and loads of fun learning games. It’s also tastefully done (I did say it was made by a French company!).

The app is available in English and French, and they also have an App for learning numbers. View their website for more details, and click here to see a demo video.

-Courtney

My husband got an ipad for Christmas (woohoo!) and we are very quickly catching ourselves up to speed with the rest of the ipad loving world.  I’m not sure who loves the ipad more — my husband (he reads the news) or the kids (they play the games)!  We have discovered the world Nosy Crow, which Mo has written about before (here and here). Nosy Crow offers clever and innovative storybook apps which not only tell a story, but also engage children the entire way through. Their newest app, Bizzy Bear on the Farm, lets toddlers (aged 2 to 4) help Bizzy Bear with all his chores on the farm. It’s amazing how many clever things the kids can do — each page is filled with different activities (pick apples, feed the piglets, run the horse, round the sheep up, drive the tractor, etc.). The Nosy Crow apps are available from the itunes store.

*And if you visit our Facebook page today, you can enter to win one of five promo codes for a free Nosy Crow app!

x Courtney

Coming into winter does have advantages — I would feel too guilty in the summer spending a Sunday afternoon watching a movie, but when it’s cold outside, I reckon it is completely justified!

- Emilie

We’ve often talked about ‘apps’ here on Babyccino and I definitely fall into the camp of loving them for my kids but I do have some rules …

1.  I want them to be beautiful
2.  I want them to be imaginative and to use the media to its best advantages (so not JUST being a book or a TV show – it has to be interactive so the kids have a different experience then they would in another media)
3.  I don’t like them being part of a big corporate machine promoting some already huge kid’s brand (I realise this is highly hypocritical from a lady whose career was spent in advertising but this is mainly because they rarely satisfy points 1 and 2 and are seemingly lazy/cheap way to expose children to a bigger brand — I am all open to be shown I’m wrong on this!)

I really love the ‘Peekaboo’ (Peekaboo Barn, Peekaboo Wild and Peekaboo Forest) apps for my 2-year-old but my 4-year-old needs something a bit more. Enter the new Cinderella App from Nosy Crow (the same people who made The Three Little Pigs app I wrote about a while ago).

Nosy Crow’s 2nd App, Cinderella includes dazzling extras that my kids can not get enough of: helping Cinderella with her chores, stacking the king’s invites to the ball, dressing the ugly step-sisters, building the carriage, choosing Cinderella’s dress for the ball and even the music she dances with the prince too (our favourite bit!). All beautifully illustrated (tick!) and narrated by child-actress, Freya Wilson (who you may recognise from The King’s Speech).

My kids have never seen a normal television program — so far they’re only experience with TV is when they get to watch the occasional Disney movie (the old ones are the best!). My husband and I are both against commercials and the consumerism that is directed toward children (not to mention, the stuff on TV these days is nothing to write home about). So, for my kids, it was Disney movies or nothing … until they discovered Scooby Doo!

Scooby Doo was my husband’s favourite cartoon as a child (can you believe it has been around since 1969?), and so when my kids stumbled upon Scooby Doo in a hotel room recently, we caved in and let them watch it. Of course they LOVED it and haven’t stopped talking about it since (what’s not to like about men in monster suits, a talking dog, and a group of friends solving mysteries?!). We recently bought the Scooby-Doo, Where are you! DVD which has the entire first and second seasons of Scooby Doo. I must say, we’ve spent a few rainy summer nights watching the shows and they’re so fun! The whole family (including grandparents!) gets into them. We’re talking about good, honest, old-fashioned mysteries solved each time by a silly dog and his crime-fighting friends.

x Courtney

The songs my girls learn at school are so cute — they are the same ones that my mom sang to me when I was little. The problem is: my girls are very enthusiastic singers, but slightly tone-deaf just like myself. They have also inherited my inability to remember the words to a whole song — I only ever remember the chorus and then make the rest up to cover my path.

Entertaining as this is, it gets a bit tedious at some point, especially when all 3 of us are doing it. So yesterday I picked up the sweetest little book called: “Les Chansons De Toujours“, illustrated by the master of retro-children’s illustrations, Alain Grée. This book contains the lyrics to most of the famous French children’s songs and comes with a CD so you don’t start singing “Oh Clair De La Lune” to the tune of “Frère Jacques”.

This little book is available at Bianca and Family, which is, by the way, one of my favourite webshops. If you are ever looking for something retro-chic for children, this is the place to find it!

I am clearly a big fan of the Duck Duck Moose educational apps for kids. I just checked, and I have four of their award-winning apps on my iphone. I think The Wheels on the Bus is my daughter’s favourite, and Fish School is another, but their new app, Park Math, is now a hot contender with my boys. I love that these games are educational as well as fun, and they really come in handy when you just need a bit of distraction (in the car when you are trying to keep your son awake, in a long queue at the post office when your daughter is having a meltdown, while you’re making dinner and you just need some peace and quiet, etc.). Now… if only I had three iphones so my kids would stop fighting over mine!

-Courtney

These games are perfect entertainment… but can a book work as an App?  I guess you all know by now that I love children’s books and don’t mind telling you I was a touch conservative about the idea of a book being on my phone or i-pad.  However Nosy Crow’s Three Little Pigs App has totally converted me and I’m now so excited what new technology can bring to brilliant stories.

We downloaded the App onto an i-Pad and my kids seriously could not get enough of it.  The classic story can either be read to your child or the child can read it themselves and there is also the option to read and play. We all know the story but in this version the kids get to know the three little pigs and their idiosyncrasies, by tapping the screen the reader can make them speak, dance, jump and spin and by tilting the screen you can see more of the scene.  The big fun bit comes in helping the wolf to blow down the houses by blowing into the microphone but I also love the little hidden details you find by zooming in or by moving the scenery.

The App is illustrated beautifully and with great comedy (I love the Pork Pie truck that the wolf drives!). The narration (all done by children) and music are charming and engaging. In fact I am hugely excited about what this means for children’s stories.  My children tend to get lethargic and bad tempered if they watch television and I think it is because it is a passive medium whereas these stories are bought to life in a way that actively encourages children to help the story evolve and even allowing them to make decisions as to how it does so.

The App is available for i-phone (even though you need to have the slightly newer snazzier version) and i-pad and it is currently on special offer (until Monday 25th April) so definitely a worthwhile treat for the kids (and parents) for the Easter holidays!

-Mo

If you have an Iphone, you’re probably already aware of the wonders of Instagram — I’m always hopelessly behind with these sorts of things (I’m only just starting to figure out Facebook). Instagram basically lets you take a picture of the object of your desire (in my case my kids), effortlessly add a filter to make it look really cool and hip, and immediately share it with your friends using Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, or other social networking tools. A very cool app indeed!

xxx Esther

PS Photos of my two lovely daughters Sara and Ava

After having come back from a recent vacation with the kids  I have developed a new-found love and appreciation for the I-Pad.   True — I was skeptical at first… but there are actually a bunch of really great applications you can download to thwart meltdowns, kill time on rainy days or simply to secure time when you just need a few minutes to yourself.   As a family, we have all became obsessed with Cupcakes! by Maverick Software.  It’s so simple yet so satisfying.  You can select your batter, tin liners and all the icing and toppings you can imagine (sprinkles, jelly beans, even bacon!) to build the most elaborately delicious cupcakes you can conjure up.  At the end you can even light birthday candles, blow them out, and “cyber eat” them.  It’s so oddly fun and engaging you have to check it out for yourself.   I am planning to get the rest of their delicious apps  — cookies, pizza and even grilling!

-Dina

We have re-discovered an old favourite video of mine, and it has been a huge success in our household: Mary Poppins. What is there not to love about a nanny who can make anything come out of her handbag and can clean up a childen’s room by clapping her hands?

It is such a great fluffy story with songs, dances, a good dose of animation and some great characters with really bad English accents (Dick van Dyke).  The ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ song is our favourite — the children love singing it and even attempting the dance (I think that song even won an Oscar as best song, back in the day).

One of our other favourites is The Sound of Music, and I think I am going to get  Singin’ in the Rain and Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang next. If you have any other recommendations, do let me know. I have a bit of a soft spot for cheesy old musicals, and so do my daughters apparently!

- Emilie

Possibly the one thing that imprinted a love for classical music for the rest of my life was an album I owned as a kid and absolutely loved. That album was Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’. My album was in Dutch, of course, and narrated by Henk van Ulsen. I recently got my children the modern take on it (narrated by Paul de Leeuw), and they love it too, although they still find it a little scary so they will only listen to it sitting safely on my lap!
In 1936, Prokofiev was commissioned to write a new musical symphony for children, with the intent to introduce school-going children to classical music. He composed the tale about Peter and the Wolf in just four days! The concept is simple: Each character in the story has a particular instrument and a musical theme, and it is thus very easy for a child to distinguish the different instruments.
I just looked around on the internet, and I found out that there are some pretty famous narrators of the story in English: Sting, David Bowie, Dame Edna, even Clinton, Gorbachev and Sophia Loren did a recording! Although Richard Baker’s version seems to be the one that people recall most from when they were little.
I don’t think I will ever grow tired of the story of this storey… Did you own a Peter and the Wolf album as a kid? And do your children love it?

xxx Esther

PS picture from here

If there is one thing out there that can instantly transport me back to being a young child, it’s the soundtrack to “Really Rosie”. Carol King’s bell-bottomed clad voice is forever burned into my memory bank and for those of you who remember the songs “Eating chicken soup with rice”, “One was Johnny” and “Pierre” I urge you to share them with the next generation. I recently purchased the soundtrack on Itunes and also picked up this boxed book set called “The Nutshell Library” so I could share the 1970’s magic with my girls. Maurice Sendak (The Night Kitchen, Where the Wild Things Are, etc;)  really was a creative genius and there is a reason his stories have stood the test of time — I love that these sweet little books are not only wonderful stories, but you can sing them! Download the soundtrack on itunes.

-Dina

My friend, Al, told me about this wonderful website which has apparently been running for years and years and years but I never knew about it. Bembo’s Zoo actually started life as a book, designed by world renowned graphic designer, Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich (I know, fabulous name!).  The concept used the letters of the alphabet to create animals (using type font, Bembo). It was turned into a flash-animated website and is utterly mesmerising — you can spend hours just clicking through the alphabet and watching the animals unfold.  My children love it and it is a great way to start familiarising them with the letters. Enjoy!

-Mo