iTunes App: Dino Tales

Disclosure: I received compensation in exchange for sharing my honest opinion.

“A groundbreaking dinosaur app that mixes gaming and reading?” Seriously dinosaurs, learning and fun – amazing! Dino Tales is an iTunes app that uses your child’s gameplay to create a storybook. The game features a talking dinosaur, Darwin, who helps your child along the way as they answer any of the 240,000 questions!

So how does Dino Tales work?

Basically your child gets to explore an island filled with prehistoric wildlife and while they explore they get to ask questions. The game is aimed at kids ages 4 to 10 years old and works to build literacy, reasoning, and questioning skills. The questions have been developed alongside students and teachers to ensure the language and content are age-appropriate and that all the opportunities for educational skills are taken advantage of. I love that they make use out of everything they can in the app so kids can get the most benefit from it.

While playing the game, kids will uncover a wealth of paleontological facts and fictions to satisfy even the curious of little minds! To ask questions, kids use a Word Wheel to build questions to ask Darwin, who answers in a child-friendly voice! The questions Word Wheel is based on Apple’s Siri technology which sounds pretty neat to me! It is amazing how much technology is packed into this app.

For parents who want to control how much the app is used, they can do that as well. Dino Tales has a “Parent Corner” where parents put in a pin-code so they can set the reading age and length of play sessions. I will say though I don’t think I’d mind if my kids wanted to play this app all day long! Parents can even receive email notifications when their child has created a new Tale that they can then read together.

Another feature of Dino Tales is there is no third-party advertising. Since the app costs money I appreciate that they have removed advertising.

Here are some screenshots:

This demo film will give you a sense of the look and feel:

Overall, Dino Tales is a game that really seems like any child would enjoy it, whether a huge dinosaur fan or not. There is a lot packed into it from asking questions, learning facts and creating stories that can be shared. It is the perfect way to bond with kids as well as you can read the storybooks created together.