I recently received a request from zinc Roe Design to review their latest preschool apps; three in a series called Tickle Tap Apps.  It’s always good to keep abreast of the latest kids offerings in the App Store, so I was happy to oblige.  Here goes!

Sort Slider asks players to match full color objects with their silhouettes, one at a time.  You play by dragging the color picture with your finger, or tilting the device until it slides into the correct shadow.  Practicing the skill of observing the shape and characteristics of objects could come in handy in school, because standardized tests often include questions that require careful observation.  To me, this feels more like an academic activity than a game, but then kids in the target age range like school, so this may still hold appeal.
Sort Slider features an adorable dog mascot who provides positive feedback after each correct answer.  He doesn’t talk, but he does bark, and is obviously pleased with the player’s success.
I would place the target age range for this app around 3 years old.  The objects used in the app have distinct shadows that young children should easily be able to differentiate, but this may make it too boring for kids 4 and up.

Count Caddy is another app that features a good educational concept for preschoolers.  Counting games for kids are a dime a dozen, but they usually don’t take the challenge beyond touching items one at a time to hear numbers in sequence spoken aloud.  Count Caddy is a young child’s counting activity done right.  Instead of simply tapping an item to hear a voice count it, the objects appear one at a time, and the player drags it to move it into a collection area.  This allows the child a moment to process the fact that she is adding it to a group. 
What really makes Count Caddy first class among counting apps is that it introduces the concept of counting by twos and threes, sometimes called 'skip counting'.  Counting by twos and threes is a concept kids don’t usually fully understand until kindergarten, first grade, or even later, but I think it’s great to expose preschoolers to topics that are a little advanced for them.  A child as young as 2 could play Count Caddy, because the only action necessary is sweeping items across the screen to the collection area.  In counting by twos and threes, the objects are already lumped together in groups, and the narrator counts by two and three aloud.

Sound Shaker is an app I would only recommend for a very mellow child.  It’s more of a toy than a game, which is not to put the app down in any way.  It’s a noise maker that a child can customize.  There are 6 sounds to choose from.  Once you’ve selected a sound to work with, you tap the screen to make fingertip-sized balls appear that will chime the selected sound when they hit the edge of the screen.  The app has great physics, so you can make a pile of balls and slowly tumble them around.  The one that impacted to make noise gets a star on it so you can see which impact triggered the noise.  Another feature I didn’t discover until the third or so time I played is that you can hold your finger down on the screen to make items that sound at a higher pitch.  A narrator does say about 12 seconds in to "tap the screen longer to make new sounds," but I guess I was previously too busy playing to really listen to her.  I fall into the camp of people that try to tune any narrative I hear out as an annoyance, even though it may be providing helpful information.  That’s OK though.  Discovering this feature on the third play made the game novel again.
I haven’t observed a child play with the app, but it is my fear that the game encourages you to shake the iPhone / iPod Touch vigorously, because sounds are only made when objects collide with the edge of the screen.  To their credit, you can use your finger to fling balls into each other or against the wall, and shaking the device fast does not make the balls move fast.  They seem to have selected a reasonable top speed to discourage rough shaking.  That doesn’t mean a child won’t want to try, though.  It would be all too easy for the device to slip right out of the hand and go flying across the room.  I would recommend this app only to those parents who have a rugged grippy rubber case on their device.

Each of these apps is currently priced at $1.99 in the iPhone App Store.