Juana la Iguana en la Granja App Review
App Info
Price: $1.99
Overview
Juana la Iguana en la Granja immerses preschoolers in Spanish language readiness activities. All written and verbal language in the app is presented in Spanish, and young children can complete familiar activities such as memory, counting, and finding the correct color while hearing instructions, encouragement and vocabulary words such as color names, numbers, letter names, and animal names in Spanish.
Features include:
- 5 activities teach animals, letters, fruits, numbers, and matching
- Voiced narration, instructions, vocabulary and reinforcements all in in Spanish
- Intuitive design with no confusing menus or buttons
- Continuous play with each round leading smoothly to the next
- Rewarding song and dance at the end of every five activities
Quality
Juana la Iguana en la Granja is a high quality app. Developers did a good job of creating an intuitive interface that will guide young children right through the language barrier. They provided many non-verbal cues, such as the main character’s response to correct and incorrect choices, that will quickly show the player what is needed to be successful. Each activity flows smoothly to the next so impatient young learners will have no downtime between the rounds.
Education
Juana la Iguana en la Granja offers basic preschool readiness activities with a twist-all of the interactions and printed words are in Spanish! Young children will quickly get the hang of each type of activity based on visual cues and Spanish prompts by the main character, Juana. Though the children may not understand the exact words, the messages are clear: “You did a great job!” or “Oops, that wasn’t quite right.”
The five games will be very familiar to most preschoolers. They include a memory-style game where players find matching farm animals, see and hear the initial letter and learn the Spanish name for the animal. There is a counting activity that allows young children to hear the numbers in Spanish while seeing the printed numeral and counting items on the screen. Best of all, it does not matter in which order the child presses the items to be counted! The numbers match no matter which is pressed first. Another game asks the player to choose fruits and vegetables with the correct color and names these items in Spanish. Children practice colors and one-to-one correspondence with a game that requires them to drag colored stars to the correct location and has each animal say “hello” in it’s own unique way, once for each star that is in the proper place. A counting exercise presents pictures of animals that recite the numbers in Spanish in order when touched, and as a reward for completing the other games, players get to choose a gift-wrapped present that plays a Spanish children’s song while Juana dances.
As children play, they are bound to pick up some Spanish words, both in spoken and written form. It makes a fun and friendly introduction to the language that will lay groundwork for more serious study later on.
I do wish there was an English translation for parents, so they could help the child understand the exact wording of the instructions a bit more clearly. I solved this problem by typing the written version of the instructions into a translation program on my computer, but that did not help with the spoken sentences that were not written down. Developers also should create a better method of handling players who get into a rush. At present, the app will stop saying the Spanish word midway through and begin the next if the player clicks through too rapidly. This could be confusing to some children.
Entertainment
This app is entertaining for young children. Kids will be intrigued by the immersion into the Spanish language, and perhaps will play a bit longer because of it. Each of the five games is presented with different content and details, as well, which adds to the “staying power” of this game. For example, the colors activity uses one of several different colors and the counting activity varies the number of items to count up to nine. Unfortunately, I believe many children will tire of the limited number of activities and the limited number of responses for correct or incorrect selections. The app would be improved by adding additional games and content.
Value
The app is a bit pricy at $4.99 given the limited staying power it’s likely to have. It does a good job of reviewing a few basic readiness skills, but the main value lies in the language being used. The concept of immersion into the language is educationally sound, and young children are likely to come away with some new Spanish vocabulary. The app will also prepare them to learn from more rigorous programs in the future. For the price, it would be nice to include a few other sets of vocabulary words in addition to the colors, numbers, fruits, vegetables and animals.
Child Friendliness
This app is very child-friendly. Developers did a good job of making it appropriate for the age group.
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- NO external links
- NO social media
- NO 3rd party ads
- NO in-app purchases
