Let’s Make a Rhyme App Review

Posted by Jennifer

App Name: Let’s Make a Rhyme

Overall Rating: 4/5

Mom’s Rating: 3/5

Kids’ Rating: 5/5

Recommended Grades/Ages: Preschool, Kindergarten, Grade 1

Skills Developed: Read Aloud, Rhyming, Nursery Rhymes, Drawing, Poetry, Matching, Puzzles

Available On/Price: iPad – $2.99

Reviewed on: iPad

App Description:

Let’s Make a Rhyme includes six classic nursery rhymes that are illustrated in a contemporary, playful, cartoon style.  These classic nursery rhymes are unique in that they let you and your child work together to customize the rhyme.  They include The Incy Wincy Spider, Humpty Dumpty, Three Blind Mice, Little Miss Muffet, Hey Diddle Diddle, and This Little Piggy.

You and your child can customize the title of your nursery rhyme, draw your own unique cover page, edit several of the illustrations from the rhyme, and change the phrasing of key parts of the rhyme.  For instance – you can change Little Miss Muffet’s name and the food she was eating (you can make your illustrations match your customized text) – the rest of the rhyme remains the same.  The customized rhymes are saved in your own personal collection that can be accessed from the main screen.  Finished rhymes can also be deleted if wished.

The drawings of each rhyme can be customized using a wealth of stickers that can be dragged and resized, a simple drawing palette (several cheerful colors and erase options), and the ability to incorporate photos from the camera roll into the rhyme illustrations (in a limited way – see dislikes below).

Each rhyme also includes its own game (tap the die at the top of the nursery rhyme page)  – most of these games include three difficulty levels and are different for each rhyme.  The games include matching, helping the sun come out, tail chopping, repeat from memory, and puzzles.

Sound effects can be turned on and off.  Pages turn by swiping or by tapping navigational arrows at the sides of the screen (arrows can be turned on and off as well).  Parents should note that reading the rhymes requires parent participation or an independent reader.

Other Notes: This app does not include in-app purchases (although some remains from a previous IAP mechanism remain), or advertising.  It does include social media links, email links, and external website links from the credits page.

What We Liked:

With six fully illustrated classic nursery rhymes included in the app, there is a lot of opportunity for reading rhymes to your children and customizing them together.  When every rhyme lets you set up a cover, and edit multiple drawings (often four), there’s a fair amount of content to work with.

My children most enjoyed working with customizing the illustrations.  They loved the huge number of stickers that are provided to put on top of the characters.  There is a huge selection, and my girls really enjoyed combining all the girly bows with long flowing dresses they drew over top of the piggies.

Rhyming is an important pre-literacy skill, and these nursery rhymes can also be read out loud by an adult without delving into the customization. The included mini-games were a big hit that provided another way for my children to interact with the rhymes.

What We Didn’t Like:

The app isn’t very well developed in the audio department – there are a few sounds, but there is no background music, no default narration to read the nursery rhymes to your child before they are customized, and no option to record your own customized versions of the nursery rhymes.  Some of the games would be clearer for young players (and moms trying to explain them to their children) if they had verbal instructions at the beginning.

I also expected to be able to do more in depth customization of the illustrations from the app description.  You can customize the basic main character in each illustration, but you can’t remove the character and replace it with your own drawing. The photos can be imported into a small space in the face area, but the rest of the character remains (so you could put your child’s face on the Incy Wincy spider for example).  You can draw over top of the character, add stickers etc. but the main part of the character remains.

Overall:

Let’s Make a Rhyme has a lot of potential in not only introducing and reinforcing classic nursery rhymes with young children, but also in gently introducing older children to writing their own poetry by switching out parts of the rhymes with their own text.  It does need some polishing but my children really love customizing their own nursery rhyme books by modifying drawings of the characters.

Buy this iPad app now for $2.99!

Have you downloaded this app?  Let us know what you and your children thought – leave a comment!