7 Nights’ Bed Time Stories App Review
App Info
Price:Free In-App Purchases
Overview
Parents looking for bedtime stories for their children can find a whole weeks’ worth in 7 Nights’ Bed Time Stories. In this series of sequential stories, children and their parents read about Danny, an artistic little boy, whose drawings transform into bedtime adventures. He interacts with aliens and dinosaurs, heads under the sea to talk to fish, goes on a treasure hunt with a pirate, and experiences many more adventures. As parents read the stories with the children, they encounter discussion questions designed to help children think about the stories and start making connections between the stories and their own lives. In the final story, parents also have the opportunity to give their children a special surprise. While the stories lack narration and interactive graphics, they don’t lack imagination and provide the perfect stories to read before bedtime to help inspire sweet dreams.
Features include:
- 7 Stories
- Discussion questions
- Calming background music
- Highlighted words
Quality
Calming background music greets parents and children as they open the app and start reading the first story. While the stories themselves are written in a way that kids will enjoy, their overall appearance lacks a bit of quality. There’s no narration to allow children to explore the stories on their own and they cannot interact with the illustrations in any way. Instead, parents simply read the stories with randomly highlighted key words (supposedly designed to help with improvisation). Kids will still love the stories, but adding narration and other interactive components could make them more engaging.
Education
Highlighted key words help kids learn to recognize common sight words and key names in the story. Discussion questions help kids thinking critically about the story and make connections between what’s going on in the story and their own lives. Along with these two features, the each of the seven stories build on one another, giving kids a chance to track the story and learn how to follow a longer story from start to finish.
Entertainment
Bright colors and a cute, simple story may be enough to entertain kids, but the real entertainment comes in the seventh story. Before reading the story, the app encourages parents to get a new box of crayons and hide it under the bed. After children read about Danny, the main character, getting his own new box of crayons, they will be delighted to find their own surprise and that surprise will make the entire sequence of stories that much more entertaining.
Value
The first story comes free with the app, while the other stories much be purchased to continue. For seven stories that build on one another, it offers a great value. However, including a surprise at the end of the seventh story may limit how often parents read these stories to their children to keep from having to buy a new box of crayons or other surprise every time they read that final story.
Child Friendliness
Access to the additional stories and settings screens is hidden behind a parental block, requiring parents to answer a simple multiplication problem to enter. However, it’s not likely most children will spend a lot of time perusing the stories on their own. They largely appeal to younger children and beginning readers, but the lack of narration will children in those age groups from enjoying the stories without a parent to read along.
