Overview
Smala is designed to help family members, near or far, connect and share with one another in a safe, unpressured environment. The app playfully invites all family members to contribute to an online family journal by responding to daily challenges.
Features include:
- Daily creative activities
- Photo storage and sharing system
- Private, closed messaging between family members
- Simple and fun tools for drawing, messaging and creating
- Secure, safe and private
Quality
Smala is a high quality app that does exactly what developers intend- provides a safe, fun space for family members to communicate with one another and make memories over the internet. The app is easy to use and designed to be intuitive, so even the younger members of the group will be comfortable. The daily challenges are open-ended and creative, so they will get group members of all ages sharing.
Education
While this app is not intended to be directly “educational,” it provides ample opportunity for kids of all ages to share their accomplishments, to show off new-found skills, and to use their literacy skills in a practical way. It also offers some great chances for caring adults to reinforce the things kids are learning in school and to praise their loved ones’ milestones and successes. All of these things support learning in a real-life, hands-on, and practical way. This is why we spend so much time developing skills: They improve the quality of our lives and should be celebrated.
Entertainment
The entertainment value of Smala is the best kind- nondigital! The app is a great vehicle for relationship building and family bonding. Everyone (kids included) will have countless chances to write, to draw, to participate in family activities, and more. What’s not to love about a chance to draw a picture of your funniest present ever or snap a photo of a sound? Smala’s prompts are endlessly creative, and allow people of all ages to show their creativity and sense of humor.
Value
The real value of Smala is in the relationships and memories that it gives the opportunity to build. The app is ideal for families that are spread apart and don’t have as much together time as they would like. The app is free to download and explore for 30 days. That’s plenty of time to get hooked up with everyone and try it out. After that, you’ll need a subscription (available as an in-app purchase) to continue to use it. A monthly subscription is $4.99 and an annual subscription is $49.99 (a significant savings off of the monthly rate.
Child Friendliness
This app is very child-friendly. It’s recommended for children as young as four years of age. It’s essentially a private social networking platform where parents are in complete control over who is allowed to communicate with their children.
- NO external links
- NO social media
- NO 3rd party ads
- YES in-app purchase but behind a parent gates