We reported yesterday on the release of Sesame Street Family Play, an inventive collection of children’s games to play in the real world. But having given it a proper spin with our two children yesterday, we can now offer a proper review.
Our initial positive impressions held true: it’s a fab app, full of good ideas to get kids up and moving. The idea is simple too: you tell the app where you are and how many children want to play, answer its questions about what items you have to hand, and then get instructions for one of more than 150 games.
The app is divided into three sections by location. Included in the (currently free) app download is At Home, which provides games for the living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. A single £1.49 in-app purchase unlocks the other two sections: Away From Home (outdoors, restaurant, shopping or waiting) and Traveling (car, plane, train/bus or walking).
The games support one, two, three or four-or-more children playing, with each introduced by an icon signifying the face of a Sesame Street character, from Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird to Bert and Ernie. Every time, you’re given a bit of information about the game, and then asked to choose whether to play or get another suggestion.
The games aren’t played on screen at all: the Family Play app simply displays the instructions so you can play them in the real world. And they’re a varied, entertaining collection of activities.
Examples? Grouchy Picnic riffs with language: the old game where each player has to add an item to an increasingly long line (“I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing a rusty old can, and a smelly cat, and a dirty bucket etc etc”).
That’s Not How It Goes gets you as the parent to attempt to trick your children by changing key words from a favourite book or story, while Color Spotters gets children looking for specific-coloured objects in the world around them.
Zoo Am I? gets you to pretend to be an animal and your children to ask questions to figure out which one; Stay on Your Side of the Lake involves floating toys from one side of the bath to the other; Cup Handed Robots is a race to pick things up with cups on your hands; Blanket Monster gets you to don a blanket and try to catch your kids before they sneak up on you, and…
Well, you get the idea. What the games have in common is that they’re easy to grasp, and memorable for future play – a good thing, since there isn’t a feature to navigate straight to a specific game, rather than cycle through the suggestions for a specific location until you find it.
The games are also good in the way they don’t expect esoteric or expensive objects to be close to hand: it’s more about pen and paper, rolled-up socks, toys, blankets and so on. After each game, you’re shown some hashtags about the educational, social or physical benefits of what you’ve just played, which is a neat touch.
The app looks like it’s had plenty of care and attention put into its design, with big, colourful buttons and intuitive navigation to get around its features. The focus is on your real-world play, as it should be, but the app does look nice.
Our main gripe about Sesame Street Family Play – which is really a compliment – is that it didn’t come out at the start of the summer holidays, when parents were facing up to the prospect of keeping their kids happily occupied for six weeks! Still, we think it’ll be filling many happy family moments in the coming weeks and months.
Also, we think it’ll be good for sparking parents’ own ideas, modifying the games suggested here, or coming up with new ones after being inspired by some of their elements. We wonder if that could be a feature for a future update: a way for parents to suggest their own games that their children have loved.
What about Sesame Street though? A big button on the app’s main menu prompts grown-ups to long-tap another button for a few seconds to visit the Sesame Street mobile site from within the app, where there are videos, games (as in on-screen games), recipes and more activity suggestions.
We often get frustrated of criticism of children’s apps as ‘digital babysitters’ designed to keep kids quiet and out of their parents’ hair. Sesame Street Family Play is one of the apps proving that doesn’t have to be the case.
If it’s a babysitter, it’s the kind of one that sticks a blanket on a parent’s head and makes them pretend to be a monster, or gets them standing on one leg like a flamingo for the amusement of their children, or helps them make up invisible presents (to name but three). It’s a marvellous tool, but the actual fun is provided by the interaction between you and your children.
Sesame Street Family Play is a free download for iPhone and iPad.