Great Apps for Babies

Ever since Tom has been old enough to use his hands, he’s been fascinated by my iPhone and Jane’s iPod. It’s amusing to see how blasé he is about the technology involved, especially the touch screen, which he picked up in no time at all. In the same way that young children now expect to be able to see a photo on the back of a camera a moment after you’ve taken it, Tom will grow up expecting gadgets to have touch screens, anything less will seem horribly antiquated.

While it would be nice to keep his banana-smeared mitts completely off my expensive gadgetry, but Tom is remarkably persistent, and I’m basically a big softy, so it seemed easiest to track down some iPhone apps that were suitable for well-supervised baby play. Here are some of the best that I’ve found.

Bab Bab Lite
The “lite” represents the free version, the full version has more features but I found the basic functionality of the lite version perfectly adequate.

Bab Bab basically turns your iPhone into a baby rattle. Three shapes float around the screen, and shaking the iPhone makes them fly around, sparking vibrant patterns and musical chimes when they collide. The shapes can also be moved with a finger, making it a fairly tactile experience as well.

Everything about Bab Bab is delightfully Japanese, from the cutesy graphics to the bamboo-like clunking sound of the shapes colliding. It’s too simple to be entertaining for very long, and I’d question the sanity of letting a baby really shake an iPhone which is liable to be bouncing off the pavement a few seconds later, but it’s a great way to distract a little baby for a short while.

Peek-a-Bouncer
This is the iPhone version of one of the many baby games available on the excellent Kneebouncers web site. The Kneebouncers are a collection of friendly looking animals, all rendered in saturated primary hues. The idea is very simple, touching the screen causes it to open like a pair of curtains, revealing a random Kneebouncer who says “peek-a-boo!”. Releasing the screen closes the window again.

Great for babies who like playing peek-a-boo, but I found that Tom had trouble holding the iPhone in a way that wasn’t touching the screen somewhere, thus keeping the window permanently open. It would be nicer if the app used the iPhone’s multi-touch functionality to work out what the babies hands were doing and react accordingly.

Talking Carl
This isn’t really an app designed for babies, and I actually downloaded it for my own amusement but found Tom loved it. Talking Carl repeats back everything you say to him, in a squeaky high-pitched voice. It took Tom a little while to work out what was going on, but now he has little shouting competitions with Carl, each trying to out-squeak the other. Tom also likes the way Carl reacts to being prodded with a finger; different animations such as Carl laughing when he’s tickled and crying “OW!” when you poke him in the eye.

The Little Red Hen
One of the first apps I downloaded for Tom’s sake, this little animated storybook is very well executed. With The Little Red Hen, you can choose to have the story read to you (by a cute-sounding little girl with an English accent) or you can read aloud yourself. Each page has a limited amount of interactivity; click the hen and she clucks, click the cat and she meows, etc. Nothing ground-breaking but just the right level of interactivity for a little baby to understand and enjoy.