Review: Miffy at School

Compared to many others we were actually quite late to the iPad owning party and it was only at Christmas that I was lucky enough to get my hands on a mini as a gift from Mr C. As a result I've always been rather keen to hang on to it myself rather than let Little Miss C loose on it. Until now. 

She's off to nursery school in September and when we went to look round they pointed out how they have both iPads and laptops for the children to use. We're also travelling abroad next month for a wedding and I'm pretty sure that an iPad will come in very handy for keeping a three year old amused whilst travelling and away. 

Miffy at School Main Menu

It therefore seemed perfect timing when we were asked to review the app Miffy at School which has been released to help celebrate Miffy's 58th birthday next month.

Helping Miffy Follow the Route to School

The app is in three parts. The first is an interactive story book where the story of Miffy at School is read, but interspersed with activities for children. Children can help Miffy find the route to school, practice drawing loops, count on an abacus and move block shapes about to fit on a template. Little Miss C loved the story and joined in the games very enthusiastically. She always understood what she needed to do quite easily and they were all really good at helping develop her fine motor skills as well as teaching her some numbers and getting her ready for handwriting too. It was interesting to see that she always wanted to trace from right to left, rather than left to right, but hopefully the game will help her understand that she need to do it the other way.

Drawing practice

As well as the interactive book there are also three games which children can play: a memory card game where children need to find matching pairs, building with blocks and a "make your own card" game. LMC loved the memory game and the block building, but the make your own card bit made her a bit frustrated.

Making our own card

The idea with it is that you drag shapes on to the drawing surface and then tap on them to colour in the sections. The sight of coloured pencils in the top right hand corner of the screen confused LMC (and me at first) as she thought that you could choose your colour and then draw free-form with your fingers, much as you can in other apps and when you're tracing lines during the interactive story. A bit of a shame that this wasn't the case, but it didn't distract from the rest of the app for long.

The final part of the app allows you to record yourself (or your child) reading the story. With Master C making rather a lot of background noise at the time we didn't fully try this out, but I could see it being really good to record Mr C reading the story before he next goes away so that LMC can still have him reading her a story. 

I'm delighted to have found this app as I hope it will help keep LMC entertained when we travel, as well as being eductaional. And after all, who doesn't love Miffy?

The Miffy at School app is available to download from the iTunes store and costs £2.99.

Disclaimer: We were gifted Miffy at School for the purposes of this review.