Yeah, so I work for this cool group of labels which releases cool music. For the last two weeks I have spent my entire working days whistling the theme tune to ‘Olly the Little White Van’ – and this is all thanks to a new app which we’ve been testing out.
Olly the Little White Van is currently available at iTunes for free – so firstly, go and get it before it costs something – I’m a firm believer in trying things out when they’re offered for free. It’s a nice simple game and while the theme tune might end up stuck in your head for the forseeable future, it’s proved to be one that H keeps playing and doesn’t need too much supervision.
A big bonus is there’s no buttons which send her off to the internet to buy things that she shouldn’t – there’s a link to Facebook and Twitter pages that are hidden away in the information section – so it is possible to click outside of the programme but no more than that.
There’s two games. ‘Delivery Race’ involves you directing Olly around the roads to pick up packages in Bumpton – one which I started playing dragging the car (this can be done, and easily) before I realised you could also tap where you want the car to go. H picked this up straight away and had no difficulties and had a sense of pride when she did each level.
The second game ‘Fix It’ has three of Olly’s friends who have broken down, and you need to help fix them – a simple drag and drop the car part into the right bit. H did struggle a bit with this one, but it’s not difficult – I think it’s something that will come as she’s older (she’s nearly 3).
Overall the game is quite short, and very straightforward. It doesn’t have any bonuses for completing levels (like, say the City of Friends app), but that’s not a problem – it just means you’ve finished quickly. On the plus side this works if you want to limit the time your child plays on apps, as they’re not on for a long time.
We like it – although I wish I could get the theme out of my head!!
We played the game on the iPad – the app is compatible with the iPod, iPhone and iPad as long as they’re running iOS 4.0 and later.
Olly the Little White Van airs weekdays on CiTV at 9.45am and 1pm. Did I mention that Justin Fletcher is the voice of Olly?
Way back in February we were at The Baby Show, where I’m always eager to try out new things – food wise, that is – especially if there’s free samples being given out. We go out a lot so always need handy snacks, although I think we need to branch out a bit more after keeping Organix in business with their bars! (probably)
Even better, they’ll send some 
Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom are no exception – there’s a brand new DVD ‘
The individual games include :
As a music-loving mummy the biggest plus point for me was the music – I’m not sure if it’s the original Norwegian tunes, but it wasn’t in any way annoying and was really quite pleasant – plus there’s more than one tune in there, so it’s not the same few bars on repeat.
Read Write Phonics was released in April 2012 – and for us a slightly different approach, as it has been launched for Android phones first, rather than heading the Apple way (that’ll follow towards the end of the year). This isn’t a problem for us, as we both have Android phones, hubs was able to put it on his (I’m still on 2.1 for my OS), and we got it up and working quickly.
The ‘Write’ section is a favourite in our house, if only for giving you the chance to write some letters. H is only young (at two years and almost nine months) so occasionally got frustrated when she couldn’t quite get it right – but we found it was a lot easier for her to do with her smaller fingers, than our larger adult ones, so we were often met with a “you’re nearly there!” and “try again!” type comments, which were encouraging and didn’t frustrate her when she didn’t quite do it. I think this aspect would work a lot better on a larger tablet than a phone – but probably for adults (and our big fingers), as H had no problems other than she’d never written anything before. She did manage to write a lot of the easier letters (i, j, o, a, t) so that’s a really good sign!
The ‘Phonics’ section is divided into two sections, small words and big words – and both spell out individual letters you’ll have covered on the earlier sections. I really liked how they’re regular words you’d use every day so there was a good context to it – and nothing too difficult. Also – the way they’re phonetically spelt out is really good – as I’ve found a few games we have will only have one option of how a letter sounds. There’s also combinations, such as words like ‘queen’ breaking it up into qu-ee-n sounds. If you slide your finger quickly along the word it sounds like the actual word, rather than a weird amalgamation of letters – another plus point!
I was pleased that the phonics are all British English – H comes from a Yorkshire Mum, an Australian Dad and has nursery with people from Sutton and Croydon, so her accent is all over the place at the moment (though definitely London), I found the accent here to be nice and clear and with no regional variation. The app features all 44 phonic sounds of the English language, plus all letters and combinations.
Tickety Toc, ahhhh how I like you. H is at the age where she’ll identify numbers when she sees them and is hugely excited every time – so we decided to teach her how to tell the time in a very basic way. We bought some books, we have clocks, and now we have the addition of Tickety Toc on Nick Jr!
