Futaba Classroom Games

Futaba Classroom Games for Kids by INKids

Have you noticed how children pick up an iPad and just use it…? Both of mine certainly did and the youngest is only four…!

We have just had the chance to review Futaba Classroom Games, which is an educational package designed to teach children from early ages upwards simple math, English, time telling, etc.

Here’s a quote from the INKids website on the app:-

• “Futaba Classroom Games is the ultimate classroom learning tool for children 4-8 and is ideal for supporting class room activities of all types. For instance, it’s a great way for kids to start learning a 2nd language or they can just polish up on their arithmetic in a competitive, but very fun game environment.
• While the app comes with a bunch of great learning sets (including Dolch Sight Vocabulary Words, Subtraction, Multiplication, Telling the Time, Currency, Countries and Flags to name a few), the real power of Futaba is that you can make your own learning sets.
• Parents, teachers and even students themselves can create their own content by using either the built in camera, the camera roll by copying images to iTunes. Dropbox account holders can also upload new images via the cloud (a hassle free way to share content across a number of devices).”

So what can we say about it? There are a couple of things we couldn’t use in the app, simply due to the localisation of the app (being US based), for example adding up nickels and dimes, and the addition of Japanese Kana (I guess British kids don’t do Japanese at the ages of 4-8!), but these are easily turned off in the Game Content page.

It is highly customisable from that perspective, and I even went on to turn off the “My First Spanish Words” for this trial. You can change the length of each game to give you children a chance to do more sums per round and even enable background music while they’re playing the game.

One of the most successful features is the inclusion of a PIN lock to ensure happy fingers don’t try to change your cherished settings!

Each round the winner earns a little Futaba (or Seed) and the first to three Futaba’s wins the game. You can select 1,2,3 or 4 players per iPad, and add your own images via dropbox for example, or the Camera Roll, iTunes documents or simple take a picture with the Camera.

We were kindly given a demonstration code to evaluate this great little app; in the end I purchased it…! This is a great learning tool for parents, and gets my thumbs up.