Teaching Tool: Bugs and Bubbles App Review

I've been waiting since its release a few weeks ago to try out Bugs and Bubbles, a second offering by the Little Bit company that created Bugs and Buttons. My iTunes account was down to $1 and the app cost $2.99. So I was thrilled to see iTunes cards on SALE at Target yesterday- I bought $30 worth of iTunes credit for a bit over $25 with my husbands blessing. Seeing the mentions of the app was making me think I was going to have to go behind his back and purchase a card! Thankfully he understands my obsession with quality apps and testing them out before recommending them.

As soon as I got home I downloaded the Bugs and Bubbles app and played with it. I love the app developers balance between playfulness and learning activities. The app is perfect for the 3-6 year old set although many of the games could be played by younger kids and older ones too.

The app is spendier ($2.99) than I'd like for classroom apps, but worth it for a family app or one iPad classroom.  The value though is in the volume of quality activities- all kids will enjoy the games while parents and teachers will love the early learning concepts built into the app.

 (Photo Left) 1. Children can choose to play the games in random order or explore any of the games. The activities start off easy but progressively get harder.  2/3 activities 4. Shows a simple sorting game.  5. Fill in the missing numbers 6. patterning with colored bubbles (Photo Right) shows the Scale-Balance activity that introduces addition sentences and concept of equality, more activities, and the ever popular strategy game Connect 4,

The pictures on the left show the memory game, tracing alphabet letters, a stacking/balancing game (which announces the shape name) and opportunity to draw freely and reveal a soothing background picture.
Pictures to the right are of bowing activity that introduces Ten Frames, comparing attributes, and counting, matching letters, counting and more.


There are 20 activities (if you do the math they end up costing about $0.15 each so maybe I should take back my criticism of the price, especially if you use your VPP).

The best part of the app in my opinion are the gorgeous graphics and soothing background music.

My daughter just caught me playing the app and is demanding to use my phone so this review is over for now! Unfortunately my iPad is still out of commission- we ordered a new screen and a couple of other components but the new screen got a crack during the process of fixing it so now I have to wait a bit longer (and pay out more for another screen!).

Did you notice I turned on ads on the blog? I debated long and hard but decided to give it a try. I figured it might eventually help fund iTunes cards and repair costs for the sad iPad. Let me know what you think!