Faced with such a rapidly changing world, parents may be wondering how best to equip their children for the future. Why not start with simple, user-friendly mobile applications (Apps)? By leveraging the recommended features, you can enhance your child's 21st-century essential skills while strengthening your parent-child bond. This edition kicks off with creativity, introducing three practical apps to help parents unlock their children's latent ‘creative power and imagination’ – results that may well ‘blow your mind’!
The DAILY MONSTER Monster Maker
Supported Systems: iOS✓ Android✗
App Store Rating: 4.3/5
American psychologist Guilford proposed that creative thinking processes include divergent thinking: approaching a goal from multiple angles: exploring diverse perspectives, and seeking varied solutions. Monster Maker challenges children to imagine adorable monsters from a single inkblot, training their divergent thinking as they associate the ink's irregular shapes with different creatures. Parents can also use these ink monsters as conversation starters to understand their children's associations and motivations behind their drawings. Remember the hat and elephant in The Little Prince? Come capture your little prince's imagination with this app!
Toonastic 3D
Supported Systems: iOS✗ Android✓
App Store Rating: 4.0/5
After family outings or trips, rather than urging reluctant children to write travel journals or diaries, why not use Toontastic to transform your journey's sights and sounds into animated cartoons?
Toontastic is an animation creation tool that's simple and easy to use. Users simply select a scene, add one of over a hundred provided cartoon characters, and with a wave of the magic finger, can create animated notes while narrating the characters' feelings and dialogue. Parents can join in, collaborating with their children to create an animated travelogue or adventure story, featuring encounters with dinosaurs and pirates, for example. By removing the barrier of text, children can freely express their adventures vividly through voice narration (often in a higher-pitched voice). It also helps children understand the importance of the narrative structure: introduction, development, twist, and conclusion within a story.
Kids Doodle - Colour & Draw
Supported Systems: iOS✗ Android✓
App Store Rating: 4.0/5
‘This picture is lovely, Dad. Will you teach me how to draw it?’
Kids Doodle - Colour & Draw empowers parents to answer such questions. The app records every stroke children make on their tablet, capturing the entire process of writing and drawing. This allows children to revisit and share their journey with peers, fostering mutual learning and self-documentation.
Beyond its artistic function, Kids Doodle - Colour & Draw enables parents to practise Chinese character and English alphabet stroke order within the app. Repeated review deepens understanding of both languages' writing systems. Viewed differently, this fluid drawing application proves versatile across diverse learning domains.