Bottom line: A sweet app that allows little ones to practice 1:1 correspondence, counting, sorting by colour and other number sense concepts using candy as manipulatives. Try it for Free!
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Candy Count Advanced from Camigo Media uses the simple media of candy and glass jars to teach colours, sorting and counting in a virtual spectrum. Start by selecting your lolly of choice from either jellybeans, jujubes or gummy bears. Even though the concept is simple, using candy is a nice idea and will entice children like...well, like candy to a baby. It's yet another app where children are playing with their food, thankfully only in a virtual sense. Now, let's shake the bag and send all the candy tumbling out. Oh dear, it needs sorting. And gameplay commences....
There are clear verbal and written instructions and every time a piece of candy is tapped, its colour is both said and flashed up on the screen. The aim of the initial game is to sort the candy into the correctly coloured jars, and each makes a satisfying clink when it hits the base of the glass jar. There is good verbal redirection if the wrong choice is made.
Once all the candy is sorted by colour the next game is to count the items in each jar. Once again this game is given very clear verbal and written instructions and it should be easily played without needing parent/adult supervision. Later games leave colours and numbers behind and focus on 'most/more' and 'fewest/fewer'. This is a nice extension on the numbers - what it won't do is actually teach your child the concept of more or fewer as the answer can be randomly guessed. This one will need some prior knowledge to actually be useful.
And that's it. Off you pop and play it again. The gameplay doesn't vary on subsequent tries, only the number and colours of the objects differ, and the player can choose different candy each time. This is where this app met its downfall in my home - it simply didn't keep the attention of my young player. My 4 year old played it twice and hasn't touched it again in the two weeks that it's been on the iPad. So there's not much in the way of replay value unless your child really loves the plinking sound of the candy. The routine and simplicity of the app might make it a good choice for a special needs child, however.
Candy Count Advanced is highly configurable - within the settings users can set the maximum number of lollies that can appear in the game from 5 up to 12. There are also 10 different colours that can be toggled either on or off. This is very useful and means that this app can be used by very young children up to early schoolers with ease. There are five language settings currently with more on the way - English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.
On the homepage there is a button that links to other apps by this developer, as well as social media links under the settings icon. I'd really like to see a lock put on these, as they are way too easy for little fingers to access. One of the things that baffled me in this app was the inclusion of a timer. I don't really see the need for it, especially for the age levels that this app is aimed at. I prefer my kids to take the time and care to complete the aims properly.
Candy Count Advanced does what it says it does and executes it in a simple and sequential way. It's not the most exciting app out there on the market but as a teaching tool it doesn't have any distractions and it will be easy to focus the student on the learning. What it doesn't have is replay appeal - I can't see kids voluntarily coming back to this app when there are more exciting apps to be played with on the iPad. But for time-poor teachers, this app would serve very well in the classroom setting.
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Eleanor Holland would like some gummy bears now. And some jujubes. Oh and some jellybeans. Thanks. smartappsforkids.com was paid a priority-review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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