Lipa Planets: Gods of the Solar System by Lipa Learning – Review

Lipa Planets: Gods of the Solar System by Lipa Learning is a universal app for iOS featuring Skipper the Space dog and his adventures through space. The app itself is free with gated IAP of $1.99 for the entire book. It is designed for preschool through early elementary school aged children and features a variety of languages for the narration. For purposes of this review,

I tested Lipa Planets: Gods of the Solar System with Hudson Puppy of Bluebee Pals and with my toddler son. There are three modes: autoplay where the book will read itself through; listen and play where the book will be read but your child can touch the screen; read and play where the child can independently read and do the different activities on the screen. The app has parental gates which involve touching a picture to access things like language, the Lipa Learning Portal, music and sound as well as a portal for parents about the app. This app specifically targets: science, language, exploration and experimenting and is geared toward “ready for school” or preschool aged children under the age of 5.

The app is bright and interactive which engages children. It is in a storybook like format where you can tap the individual pages for animations as well as moving forward and backward within the story. The animations are engaging and helped keep my son interested in the story. Each language is done by a different narrator voice, which I enjoyed because it helped to switch up the variety especially once my son had heard the story a few times. We liked the cause and effect of touching items like the photograph of Skipper’s grandmother, blasting off the space ship, a visual spinning of the earth. The app itself doesn’t explain that the planets are not actually alive or that it is based upon Greek Mythology, although the planets introduce themselves as that like, Mercury, Messenger of the Roman Gods. Each page when in the read to me mode, has a circle that allows for the text to be read again.  The app itself is free with gated IAP of $1.99 for the entire book and once you get beyond the free pages, you are prompted to get a parent to purchase the entire app via the app store.  There is a parental gate which does not allow your child to access the app store directly.

Having Hudson Puppy read the app and hold our iPad made it more fun for my toddler while he was interacting with the app. My son loved that when we changed the language, Hudson would speak using a different narration voice – and kept saying “do it again Mama!” as we switched between American English, British English and Spanish. I explained to him that we were listening to the same story, just in a different language with the same photos and the words on the page were the same just in a different language. This is a great way to expose kids to multiple languages especially once they become more familiar with a story.

In terms of enhancements, especially given the young targeted age I would like to see word highlighting. For the mini game where Skipper races against Mercury it would be fun if you could pilot the ships as they cross the page.

Overall, this is a fun space themed app which encourages kids to play along while they are learning. Having Hudson Puppy from Bluebee Pals read the story along made it more fun and interactive for my son since he liked cuddling with Hudson while touching the various parts of the app.  I also liked that I was able to expand his languages once he became more familiar with the app to touch the various parts of the story despite the language change.

By Alison from The Imums…I am the girl in the blue dress..