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My three-year-old son is of the generation that will never remember a time without iPhones and iPads and other devices of electronic wizardry. And, predictably, he *loves *all of those devices passionately. I'm aware of issues with screen time, and we remain vigilant about making sure he spends time outside running around and inside doing hands-on activities, but I don't mind the time he spends with the gadgets. He plays one game that's teaching him simple math, and he's using a speak-and-spell app that helps him learn to spell words. He even "wrote" a full sentence on that one the other day. (It was: "Mom went to Santa's party," and I don't know what that's all about, but I like it.)
But I'd be fudging if I said all his iPad/iPhone time was spent on educationally enriching stuff. The fact of the matter is, his very favorite app is purely fun and totally non-educational. And also predictably -- given the genes he got from me and my husband -- that app is about superheroes.
It's called ClickySticky Superheroes by Merge Mobile. (There are also ClickySticky apps with cars, trains, spelling, math and more, so not all are non-educational.) It's available for iPad and iPhone, and it costs 99 cents to download. Essentially, it's an app that allows you to dress up characters with various superhero faces, outfits, and accoutrements. And that's basically it. Some of the game pieces move around a little, but generally they don't really DO anything. You just get your super characters (or bad guy characters) looking how you want, and then maybe take a screen shot, and you're done.
But he loves it. He could play this game for hours if we let him, creating new characters and going back to assemble his old favorites. The app interaction is simple, as it mostly involves dragging icons around and placing them in position, but there's also a resize and rotate function that he easily mastered.
So, nothing educational to see here, but a whole lot of fun for kids at the right age and skill level who happen to be really into superheroes. For my kid, it's a perfect fit.
