Excellent App for Preschool and Kindergarten! – PLAY-DOH Create ABCs Review

I am a reading teacher who works with toddlers and elementary children and this is one of the BEST apps I have seen. There are so many things that this app does right to develop the prerequisite skills needed to learn phonics and reading. Along with letter recognition, it teaches letter sound and letter formation. In the matching section, it teaches left to right progression. The multi-sensory approach to learning the letters -i.e. visual, auditory and kinesthetic - is the best way to learn and this app does better than most in that regard. Since rhyme is a critical component to phonemic awareness, I especially liked the poems they have after the child learns a letter. Funny and brilliant! The graphics are refreshing and the animation is delightful. The pace is just right and the voice is pleasing and encouraging. The creativity aspect where kids can create their own masterpieces makes this a superb app for creative development. Also, the ability for the child to save and send their creation to friends, parents and grandparents makes it a hit for everyone. There are a few drawbacks that I would like to see changed. First, it takes up too much space on my 16 GB ipad. Second, I found that although some 3 ad 4-year-olds enjoy and learn from this app, their short attention span had them skipping the poems and creation parts of the program. They mostly enjoyed writing the letters and then "squishing" the picture which you'll have to understand is fine for their level and still worth buying the app. I would just like to see a "back" button on the pages (instead of just a "home" button) so they can go back to choosing a new letter. However, the entire program is very well-suited for kindergarten or advanced preschool children who will listen and engage more readily in all the fun activities. Third, while most letter formations are correct, some lowercase letters are taught to be written in one stroke which is not the preferred technique for many schools, including mine (p,g,d,b). Some kids seem to forget how to make these letters after the app demonstrates the sample letter.To make it easier for kids, I would like to see directional arrows or the letter strokes broken down into more steps. When a child makes the wrong stroke, I'd like the app to say, "Go back to the top", instead of go to the "beginning" or "first dot." What a perfect time to teach directional words. All in all, I would highly recommend this app. It is very well done, and I hope with such a smart and well-developed app, it will continue to improve and make updates. Thank you for focusing on critical pre-reading skills that preschoolers and kindergartners need to know!
Review by CatholicFamily on PLAY-DOH Create ABCs.