It’s safe to say that Apple’s App Store is well stocked for delightful animal alphabet apps.
Animals Alphabet; Idlezoo’s A-Z of Curious Creatures; Wee A B See; Alphabet Animals: A Slide and Peek Adventure; Mini-U: Zoo Alphabet; Funimal Phonics; Happipets… All excellent.
Yet there’s still scope for new apps to spring a surprise in this crowded genre. Witness Drawnimal, which slunk quietly onto the App Store last week, and has since captured us with its charms.
The twist here is that the app is designed to get your children drawing in the real world. As its App Store listing notes: “All you need to get started is pen and paper, and the app”.
How? You place your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch on a piece of paper, and then swipe left and right to the letter of your choice, which is displayed in the top half of the screen. Tapping on it makes the app read the letter out.
The bottom of the screen shows a little animation explaining what animal parts your child needs to draw on the paper around the iOS device: legs, tails, ears, fins and so on.
Once finished, they tap on the animation, and the face of the animal appears full-screen, while the letter and its name are read out again (“G for Gorilla” etc).
Yes, that’s the joy of Drawnimal: the device becomes an animated face for each animal, with your children drawing the rest on paper around it.
Tapping on the face triggers another animation and sound: the horse harumphs and shows its teeth, the jellyfish glows and waggles its eyes; the penguin shivers; the lion roars and so on.
It’s ace: a simple idea, beautifully crafted. And of course, the fun comes when your children realise they can add their own embellishments to their drawings. Longer tails, colouring in, sparkly pom-poms even.
Drawnimal is a freemium app, which may spook some parents given the current media controversies around in-app purchases. We think this is one of the responsible examples though.
The app itself is free, and includes animals for A, B and C. If you or your child taps on another letter, a prompt pops up to “swipe left with 2 fingers to continue”, after which you’re able to pay a one-off fee of £1.49 to unlock the lot.
The prompt and gesture should ensure younger children don’t accidentally find the payment page, although for older kids who can read, we’d advise (as ever) ensuring your in-app purchase restrictions are turned on.
Actually, we’d advise you going straight to the payment page and paying £1.49, because that’s a small price to pay for the fun that’s contained within Drawnimal.
It reminds us of another of our favourite apps, Makego, which got children making cars and boats out of Lego or cardboard in the real world, with the iPhone sitting on top of them and acting as the animated vehicle.
Like Makego, Drawnimal is an innovative blend of physical and digital play. It’s creative, it’s educational, and most importantly it’s a lot of fun.
Rating: 5/5