3

Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles 123 App Review

App Info

Price: $2.99

Overview

Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles 123 is a cute educational app that allows children to learn new animals and practice problem solving skills while challenging themselves with a variety of puzzles.

Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles 123 is the latest addition to the jigsaw puzzle series by Giggle Up. This adorable app provides a fun way for little ones to learn new animals and practice problem solving skills by piecing together cute puzzles in a variety of settings. With over 40 animals in 7 different settings, 5 difficulty levels, and a hint feature to help children as they play, this app is a great alternative to the traditional puzzle. Same puzzle fun, with no puzzle pieces to be lost or misplaced.

Features include:

  • 42 animal puzzles
  • 5 difficulty levels
  • 7 wildlife settings
  • Hint feature

The instant you open this app you will notice the cheery music, delightful illustrations and colorful characters that create a storybook feel children will enjoy. The illustrations and audio are very well planned and executed as are the puzzle options.

Upon opening the app children are able to explore the 7 wildlife settings as they decide which puzzle they want to put together first. After selecting a wildlife scene, they are prompted to select an animal puzzle to complete and they also have the option of choosing how many pieces to use in their puzzle. There are five difficulty options available ranging from 2 pieces to 16 pieces making for a nice variety for children to challenge themselves. There is also a hint option available in the event players get stuck and need a reminder of what the actual picture looks like which is a nice feature. After they successfully complete each puzzle, the name of the animal is shown and the narrator reads the word aloud adding a reading and word recognition component to this already charming app.

With the cute illustrations, clear audio, smooth transitions from page to page, and the overall usability of this application, this is a great quality app that parents will appreciate and little one’s are bound to enjoy.

Educational apps are designed to teach or improve specific skills and this app does just that. In addition to being exposed to 42 new and sometimes exotic animals, children are also working on their problem solving skills as they put the puzzles together piece by piece. They also have the opportunity to learn new words and practice their reading skills once they complete each puzzle, as the animal name appears and the narrator reads the word aloud.

An added bonus is the ability for this app to be in 9 different languages, so if you are working with your child on Spanish or French (or one of the other languages offered) in addition to English, this app provides an additional foreign language opportunity. And with so many puzzles and 5 difficulty settings for each, children have ample opportunities to improve their word recognition, problem-solving, reading, and foreign language skills while having fun. What more can you ask for?

As with many education apps, it can be difficult to balance education value with entertainment value, but for younger users Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles does an okay job of balancing the two. Piecing the variety of puzzles together provides children with a sense of accomplishment and though this is app is not specifically a “game”, it is a fun activity for children.

With that said, there could be some improvement in this area by adding a short story within each scene or an alternative way to use the puzzles.

The price of this app seems a little high for what you get and while the quality is very good and the illustrations are superb, the actual diversity in the activities don’t make up for the price tag. There is a free version that provides a little taste of what the app has to offer before purchasing the full version with the extended features.

One thing I really liked about this app was the positive reinforcement and praise that is given when all animals in a specific scene are completed. This helps provide the child with a sense of accomplishment for a job well done. The main interface of the app is also easy to use and children will likely have no problem moving from one puzzle to the next, however parents should be aware of a few things.

On the main page there is an option under “More”, that allows access to view other apps by the same developer. There are “free”, “paid”, and “mine”, tabs that show specific apps under that category and while the “free” apps are the first you see, children could get side tracked and accidentally end up in this area and incidentally end up in the App Store by mistake. There is also a settings button on the main page as well that controls the language, difficulty, hints, audio options, but it also has some social media to be aware of. Just something to watch out for when your child is playing this app.

Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles 123
Wildlife Jigsaw Puzzles 123
3