Product Review of Alpha Tots Alphabet School Edition
“A for Action!” This is an entertaining app designed by Spinlight to teach your kids the alphabet, featuring 26 verbs. While learning the letters of the alphabet, they also learn the sounds they make. The app comes free, with no in-app purchases or ads. It features 26 puzzles and mini-games.
What Users Love About the App
“This app has been a terrific addition to my speech and language program. As a speech language pathologist working with young children with Autism, I find it very helpful to teach the idea and concept of words having actions and power to make people do things. The use of verbs is very limited in students with autism and having an app that allows them to learn verbs in an alphabet format is fantastic. I have had several nonverbal students learn to request action from me because the want to “build robot” or “add candles.” The use of the “Can you?” question before they perform the action has helped me build longer responses with them such as “Yes, I can build the Robot” followed by “You did it.” This allows me to ask, “What did you do?” which gives the student the opportunity to state the verb in the past tense. “I built the robot.” When they want to do it again, they can work on “I want to build a robot.” I have recommended it to many of my students’ parents. I would love to see an option under each letter to choose between two different things to perform the action on, such as “build car” versus “build robot” so that my students can be really motivated to make a request by using an action word.”
“This was one of the games gifted to us by a friend. My son absolutely loves playing it and I love that it’s helping him learn his letters and work on his fine motor skills. It’s also helping us keep him busy on the road for our summer travels! Highly recommend.”
“All of my grandchildren have enjoyed this app! It is definitely the ‘go-to’ app for my three year old granddaughter! I love to hear her responding to the vocabulary used and enjoying all the activities! What a fun way to learn! Great app!”
“The developer listened to customer reviews and updated this app so that the letters are pronounced correctly. The letter sounds no longer have an inappropriate ‘suh’ at the end of certain letters. A big A+!”
“This app is one of the best apps out there! You will be extremely happy with your purchase of this app. Each letter has a fun activity to assist in the learning. My 5 year old son and 14 year old mentally disabled daughter both play with this app for hours. My son already knows his alphabet but he still loves this app. A true gem. I can’t praise this app enough!”
“I bought this for my 20 month old toddler. It’s a little early for him to be learning his letters, but we have fun with the games like cutting the strings on the ballons and whacking the clown heads. He gets a little frightened of the gingerbread man making sad faces as he is being “nibbled” though. It’s a great little app. I know that as he gets older it will really be useful when it comes time for him to learn the alphabet.”
“This app is very age appropriate for my two-year-old who knows his ABC’s. Upon choosing a letter, the game gives you its pronunciation and sound and then leads the user into a game associated with that letter. For example, M shows three glasses: 1 yellow, 1 blue, and one empty. You need to “lift” each glass to “pour” it into the empty glass (“Mix”). The game then tells you that yellow and blue make green. My 2-year-old son figured out how to play the game of each letter on his own after one time with me. It is by far his favorite app on our iPad2. My four-year-old is interested and likes to play but there is no challenge for her skill/content-wise. This game is worth a $1.99 download.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“My 2 year old loves AlphaTots and TallyTots, and so do we. But Spinlight has taken a big step backward by putting a button on the bottom of the home screen leading to its other offerings in the App Store. Before, everything that the child pressed was safe and educational. Now she’s going to get caught up in the “buy this!” page. Please, Spinlight, don’t screw up a great kids’ apps with this unwanted button. Parents who love the apps are smart enough to find the other ones you make in the App Store without it. Please drop it in the next version, and put the next version out soon.”
“My biggest complaint is the song. It is melodic and pleasant, but instead of the traditional “now you know your abc’s, next time won’t you sing with me” it says, “let’s play Alpha Tots and see if we know our abc’s.” It irritates me every time; do we really need that kind of self-referential edit to the most widely recognizable song in the English language? It’s not enhancing the educational value of the program.”
“The vocab represented by each letter are mostly verbs. My 2 year old is slowly grasping his ABC’s and learning phonics.He questions why the C card has balloons as he can’t seem to picture that C is for “cut.” He knows what cutting is. If there were scissors, he would understand better. Another example is the F card. It asks to “fix the bicycle.” We can’t see fix and my 4 year old (who is already familiar with the alphabet and phonics) asked if the narrator meant to say “assemble.”Similarly, my 2 year old can’t understand why J has a train running on a track. While it is easy for an adult to comprehend, a young kid learning his ABC’s may require extra explanation on how the word fits into the context as he doesn’t automatically see it. Perhaps revise the vocab or emphasize important details like joining the track vs details on the train chugging through. Have a pair of scissors to cut balloon strings with, and fix one part of a bicycle like the flat tyre only. I really regretted my purchase.”
“The contents do not even fit within the iPhone 11 screen, even though the app details show it as compatible with this version of phone. The app is also clunky in that it doesn’t guide the user on what to do after an activity is completed. It was a waste of our money and my preschooler is bummed.”
“I really like the educational value on Tally Tots numbers so I was very excited to get this. I was disappointed because a number of the sounds are wrong, which is misleading. The Bb, Kk, Tt, sounds and more add the “uh” sound at the end. Instead of a distinct “b” sound they say “buh.” Same goes for other sounds, t-tuh, s-suh, etc. I would love to use this in my kindergarten class but will do so with caution and some re-teaching. That said, I did it with my granddaughter and would say the sound correctly as the app said it incorrectly so she only heard the correct sound. I would not let my students or my granddaughter use this app independently.”
