iPad Adventures at the Yellow House and AlphaBELCH

I had the great pleasure of spending time yesterday morning with my iPad and a group of three year olds.  I was visiting the Yellow House at Elizabeth's Early Learning Center here in Lynchburg, VA. Sabrina Windsor, Program Director at Elizabeth's was interested in my work with kids and new technology and welcomed the visit.

Volunteering (and teaching) in classrooms has been a staple of my life for over 40 years.  Although the focus of of my media development is young children most of those classrooms I visited were not in preschools.  So this was an extra treat to make many new young friends and play technology with them.

The programs that I was particularly interested in assessing were Monkeys in a Boat, AlphaBELCH, Good Night Safari, FlipBoom Lite (you may remember I thought this was doable for three year olds, a hunch), Dragon Brush and Press Here. What I learned was both informative but not really surprising.  I am finding children reacting in similar fashion to this technology.

Written by Stephen White and Illustrated by Tony Neal

The Yellow House
I came into a busy classroom.  Children were in small groups taking advantage of the many activities spread out for them. I was introduced to the kids and a table was selected for our activities. In general there was no hesitation in interacting with me or the iPad.  I chose the apps and gave basic guidance. It's fascinating to see how eager they are for an adventure.

I worked with the kids individually because I think that's the most fair.  The overly eager are likely to crowd out others.  Getting volunteers was not hard and soon there was a group around the knee high table.  The ground rules were simple.  Don't touch until it's your turn.


During the hour or so I was playing with the children, the app that generated the most animated reaction from the kids was AlphaBELCH.  I sort of sigh when I say this. Did I expect them to be sophisticated?  Of course not.  And who doesn't like silly.

AlphaBELCH, illustrations by Tony Neal

AlphaBELCH is an alphabet app that mimics the structure of a book.  Page 1 provides the instructions for page turns and indicates the use of a button to read the text and a second button to play the sound effects.  This app is all about silly sound effects, as you may have guessed from the title. The images are in alphabetic order populated by animals of the appropriate name for the letter.


The audio tracks would elicit giggles and laughter from my new little friends in the Yellow House. Probably because they were clever and funny in themselves but also because belching is marginally accepted as appropriate behavior.  Three year olds know this.

Illustrations by Tony Neal

AlphaBELCH is the creation of Stephen White. Stephen wrote for the TV series Barney and Friends for many years.  His work included not only the television episodes but also home videos, a feature film, traveling concerts, radio programs, and authoring numerous books for young readers.  On his website he says "(he) believes in the serious benefits of teaching with humor."

Tony Neal's illustrations are wonderfully colorful and quite silly in themselves. The images and audio are well matched.

I left remembering these things:

1.iPads are a magnet for kids

2. three year olds have a short attention span

3. audio is a huge factor in engaging the viewer and keeping their attention

4. humor is a powerful tool 

I will be reviewing some of the other apps we played with in future posts. Oh, the three year olds could use FlipBoom Lite with guidance.  We didn't spend that much time in FlipBoom because there were so many kids and so many other options.