How To Find The Best Rated Apps For Kids

In preparation for marketing The Prisoner of Carrot Castle, I did some research to find app reviewers and discovered some great sites I want to pass on to busy mom's. If you're an iPad, iPhone or iPad Touch user looking for great apps to make your busy mom's life a bit easier, read on.

First up, Apps for Children With Special Needs:

a4cwsn is committed to helping the families of children with special needs and the community of educators and therapists who support them. By producing videos that demonstrate how products educate children, a4cwsn provides a way for users to see how an app works before they buy—great concept. Choose apps to review by various categories (e.g., colors, creative play, etc.), iTunes category or developer. There are apps for motor skill development, autistic kids and if you're a special needs family, they currently have a campaign to give away iPads. Check it out.

Digital Story Time creates Top 10 reviews of kid's apps in various categories (e.g., most educational, most original, best extras, etc.). You can also find ideas, such as how to have a successful digital bedtime experience with your kids.

Digital Story Time (blog titled The Digital Media Diet) is one mom's take on kids, technology and the world of apps. This site also provides a rich resource of links to other sites for parents.

Appcheese is a straight forward review site for kids' apps. Each app reviewed receives a cheese wedge rating and lists Platform, Price, Age Group and Publisher.

Pictured with each review is the app's icon for the iTunes store along with screen shots and the book trailer (if available). An iTunes button below the icon allows you to order the app. Scan the sidebar to see a list of recently reviewed apps. Lots to love about this clean review site.

Apps for Kids~kids learning (disguised as fun) is a review site by a mom in Silicon Valley. Primarily doing reviews, she dispenses some wisdom on how to balance your kid's time on technology. Providing parents a short cut to finding some real gems, is her intent, plus giving an honest opinion on a few of the popular apps that may be stinkers. Apps for Kids is focussed on making it easy for parents to find an app for a particular purpose. By the way, contributors to the site include Dad and 5-year-old son Sal.

The Greasy Screen (don't you love the title?) discusses ebooks for kids, reading habits and stuff. Crystal, from the Chicago suburbs, blogs here and covers all things picture books—right up my alley.

Besides ebooks, you'll find library books reviewed. Each app review shows a screen shot with app title, publisher, format (iPad, iPhone), number system rating, synopsis, current price, features (e.g., interactivity, sound effects) and a brief written review.

Last, but not least The iPhone Mom reviews all things for kids and parenting for the iPhone and iPad. She will hunt down little known apps hidden in the deep recesses of the iTunes store (and they are deep).

Reviews are categorized for moms, toddlers, pre-schoolers, elementary school and beyond, plus a category just for iPad. Every week a special is posted that might be an interview with a developer, navigating in the App Store/iTunes or a step by step "how to," for example, submit an app review.

I hope this gives you lots of places to find great apps for your family fun and learning.

Up For The Job

If you have a dog then you know that every dog has a job. Some dogs pull a sled and other dogs sniff out certain material (e.g., drugs). Then there are dogs that herd sheep and others that rat out rodents. Dogs live to do the jobs they have been bred to do and no doubt you've seen how happy they are at their job.

We have always had retrievers and as you might guess (duh), their job is to retrieve.  Now... retrievers are not particular about what they retrieve--just give them something that they can call their own to get and they will get it.

Our dogs have used sticks, frisbees and balls as their item to retrieve. Brandy, the current occupier of the dog bed/throne in our home, looovves to fetch her ball. The midair catch is her speciality.

I came across this video of a smart pooch doing her job.  She loves to get her ball and figures out how to get it even though she hates to swim...or perhaps swim in a yucky pool.  I'd say she is up for the job.

The Red Hawk Has Landed

"Ooooooo..." cooed the crowd as the Red-tailed Hawk swooped onto the scene and landed on the glove of its handler.  Thus began the opening ceremony of the first Indian Casino in El Dorado County.

My husband snagged a ticket for the VIP opening of the long-faught against casino.  All seems to be mended by the looks of the anxious, gathered throng, which included many county officials and business folks.  We shuffled our way through the front entrance, lined on each side by uniformed employees grinning and greeting ear-to-ear, and met the twirling Mercedes above the encircling slot machines ready to tempt the visitor to try their luck at winning the fine automobile.

We wondered around the immense gaming floor making sure we saw all there was to see.  Slot machines ranged from a penny to $1000 per pull and there were many black jack tables scattered throughout--something for everyone.  We passed by a small performing stage, where two shirtless male performers demonstrated their strength and agility to the gawking viewers, and came upon a seafood restaurant where a wall of water invited the hungry to dine.

Retracing our steps, we took the escalator down to the lower level where a vast buffet and two more restaurants were located along with a non-smoking gaming area.  On the trip down the escalator we were awed by the perfectly framed bucolic scene outside; a huge wall of windows provided a view of stately oaks displayed against the pastoral countryside beyond.  I almost bumped into the bronze statue at the bottom of the escalator just as "it" curtsied to the shock of those surrounding "it."  OK so it wasn't a statue after all...

Riding up the escalator back to the main floor, we settled in front of a $1 slot machine that was calling to us.  Being total neophytes when it comes to gambling, we view the act of putting money into a slot machine as pure entertainment.  In other words, you pay to play.  That in mind, we fed two $1 bills into the machine whereupon it quickly rejected one of the bills.  OK...with no more $1 bills, we try a $5 bill.  Works.  We press Double Play and the wheels spin and land on double bars all the way across (gasp) showing $31 in the credit display.  Wow.  "What now?" queried my husband.  "Press this," I responded quickly while pointing at the Cash Out button.  I like the quit while you're ahead technique.

With that we proceeded toward the parking garage elevators by way of one of the many ATM, Make Change, Cash Out machines and inserted our winning ticket.  Put $31 in to our pockets and felt proud to have made $25 on our $6 investment in the new Red Hawk Casino.  First stop...Starbucks to put some of our winnings back into the economy.