AlphaBaby: The Joy of Discovery

One of any child’s favorite early games has to be the classic “peek-aboo.” Adults love to play this game because they can immediately evoke a positive reaction from a young child and amazingly, it can be played for a while without the child losing much interest.

The reason peek-a-boo works so well is that very young children have an underdeveloped sense of object permanence. You reveal yourself from behind a blanket or your hands over your face and, for the child, he is seeing you all over again. Throw in a funny face and a silly voice, and you’re pure entertainment gold for the child.

Of course, as the child gets older, and the brain starts forming more permanent connections, she can figure out that Mommy and Daddy haven’t really left—they’re just behind the blanket, being silly. A little bit older, and the child may just look at you as if she’s thinking, “Really, Daddy?”

But there’s another element to the fun of peek-a-boo: the joy of discovering that familiar face all over again. That excitement is something that carries forward as the child grows older, and indeed can become the driving force behind much of his behavior as he moves into toddler and preschool age. That’s why he’ll empty out the cookware cabinet onto the kitchen floor, because he has discovered a whole new playground of shiny, noise-making objects that (bonus points!) usually bring the parents running.

AlphaBaby is a remarkably simple app that taps into that excitement of discovery within a more structured format. Toddlers will experience the thrill of discovering new and random objects on the screen (they never know what they’ll see next), with the repetition that will slowly build connections between the letter, number, or shape displayed and the word for that object.

Source of Information : Cengage-iPad for Kids Using the iPad to Play and Learn 2011