Cartoonito is one of the more popular pre-school TV channels alongside the likes of CBeebies and Nick Jr. Now there’s an official Cartoonito app, released for iPhone and iPad here in the UK earlier this year.

The app sees the cute Cartoonitos characters exploring a beanstalk and the Giant’s castle that lurks at the top of it. It’s aimed at a broad age-range – 2-8 year-olds – but it’s not a storybook-app. Instead, it’s 15 varied mini-games.

They do follow the fairytale though: the first game will get your child planting beans by matching their shapes to holes in the soil, then watering them by dragging a watering can from left to right (and back again).

Then there’s a musical mini-game where you tap the beans to make different sounds and start the beanstalk growing; a climbing game where you tap on leaves to jump up the giant plant; and then one where you drag and drop colourful feathers into place on a bird.

Five down, 10 to go: next up it’s cloud-scattering, portcullis-raising, key-constructing, cat-feeding, coin-collecting (in front of an increasingly-grumpy giant), maze-exploring (with eggs that pop out of a chicken’s bottom, so prepare for pre-schooler hilarity), harp-twanging, climbing back down the beanstalk, chopping it down, and finally tapping as many coins as possible as they bounce around.

If you’re wondering, yes, it really is a chicken not a goose. Apparently that’s acceptable in certain versions of the fairytale.

Once you’ve played through the 15 mini-games once, they’re all available to choose from, which is good if your child has a few favourites (which, being a child, they obviously will!). The games are all deliberately simple to play, with one task/action in each for kids to grasp. It’s always clear what they have to do next, without any text or even speech needed to explain things.

There are no time limits or stressful moments: even when the giant’s massive hand is swiping at your Cartoonito character as it leaps down the beanstalk, you’re always just out of reach, so it’s funny rather than frightening.

All in all, Cartoonitos and the Beanstalk is a well-designed set of mini-games with plenty of fun to be had. And many parents will appreciate the fact that the app is a one-off purchase, with no ads and in-app purchases to worry about when their children are using it alone.

Kids who already watch the Cartoonito TV channel will really enjoy it – although likely more at the younger end of the 2-8 year-old target age group – but we think there’s no reason why children who are new to the characters won’t like it too.

Download link: Cartoonitos and the Beanstalk (£1.49)