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Art Stories Cities App Review

App Info

Price: $0.99

Overview

“Discover some of the most beautiful cities in the world!” That’s how kids are welcomed to Art Stories Cities. From there, kids are invited to select a country and explore one of the cities presented. Kids explore the city by matching the outlines of local attractions. After correctly placing each attraction, kids get a chance to learn all about it. This app offers a unique way to help kids learn about some of the major cities in the world and the attractions they contain.

Features include:

- Explore the world
- Learn about tourist attractions
- Interact with illustrations
- Available in Italian and English

Quality

Kids will find that the app is fairly easy to navigate. It opens on an inviting main screen where kids are prompted to tap an arrow on the banner of an airplane to get to the cities. Then they’re prompted to “Discover the world” by tapping on a flag on the world map. Once kids select a flag, they’re introduced to a city and they see a few outlines with a scrolling selection of buildings along the bottom of the screen. Kids must select the building that matches the outline and drag it into place. It’s pretty clear which building fits in each spot, but a few of the skyscrapers may get confusing. Once kids place the building, they’re treated to a description of the building. The audio is clear and read at a pace that is appropriate to kids. All of the details are also age appropriate. Once kids have correctly placed all of the buildings in a city, they get to enjoy a short interactive animation related to the city. This component is not immediately obvious and may be a bit trickier for kids to figure out.

Education

The app offers a lot of information about main attractions in some of the best-known cities around the world. Kids will learn fun facts about the buildings and other attractions, such as who designed them and when they were created. Unfortunately, the app only offers information about a limited number of cities. This leads to kids learning random knowledge rather than focused knowledge. If the app offered a larger selection of cities, teachers and parents might be able to make more use of it in the context of a larger lesson about a particular city or country or even to familiarize kids with a city before they go on vacation.

Entertainment

Younger kids will enjoy matching the structures with their outlines. They’ll also enjoy the animations and sound effects included in the app. Older kids will enjoy learning the facts about the different attractions. While all facts are kid-appropriate, many of the facts are likely to go over younger kids’ heads.

Value

Given the limited number of cities available in the app, it doesn’t offer the best value. If developers doubled or tripled the amount of cities, the app would have immensely more value and be worth a download by many different users.

Child Friendliness

In the lower left corner of the main screen, kids will find a more apps icon. A parental block limits access to the apps displayed when the icon is tapped. Kids can also change the language from English to Italian with the tap of a button or view info about the app, but there is nothing inappropriate in the info section.