We’ve followed the career of developer Curious Hat with intense interest: they’ve tended to be inventive, creative attempts to use features like the camera in your iPhone or iPad for children’s apps.

See InfiniScroll and Eye Paint Alphabet for examples of what we mean. Their latest might also be their most ambitious. It’s called Curious Playground, and it came out this week for iPhone and iPad.

It’s aimed at 3-7 year-olds, but very much also at their parents: it’s an app for you and your kids to use together, to create games based on the people and places that are part of your daily lives.

“Within the Playground, children can explore and play with a variety of fun activities while adults can use the same app to create content that is converted into personalised experiences for the child,” explains its App Store listing.

“A photo of grandma becomes a puzzle or a memory game, a quip from Dad’s favourite song can be musically recreated and played, a cousin’s hometown can even become an exploration opportunity on a map. The interaction between the real and digital world provides limitless learning opportunities.”

Interesting, eh? You can create word games, turn photos into memory puzzles, and then share the best ones via email or AirDrop – Apple’s new technology that lets you ping things between iPhones and iPads.

We’re going to be putting this one through its paces over the weekend with our sons, but give it a try and let us know what you think. Curious Playground is a free download for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store.

However, there are some in-app purchases if you want to unlock all its puzzles, memory cards, mystery words and other content. Unlocking them all at once costs £1.99, or you can unlock individual sections for £0.69 each.