App review: Kids Connect the Dots for Android

Kids Connect the Dots for Android is a free app that allows your preschool-age child to practice numbers, letters, drawing, and image recognition. The app looks a lot like the connect-the-dots activity pages commonly found in Highlights Magazine. A child must have an understanding of numbers or letters in order to succeed at drawing anything recognizable; the app is recommended for children ages 4 to 7. 

You can choose for the dots to be labeled with numbers or letters, lowercase or uppercase. If your child can count to 20 but doesn't know the ABCs yet, this is a nice option to practice counting (or vice versa). The dots will be numbered or lettered, and the object of the app is to trace your finger from one point to the next while a nice lady's voice repeats the number or letter. 

When you reach the last letter or number, the object fills in with a detailed cartooned image of the thing that you just traced. Then the same nice lady's voice clearly says the name of the object. Envelope! Drum! Pudding! Although I contend that the pudding looks more like a Jell-O mold. 

The objects are placed in contextual backgrounds, which is a nice touch. So the giraffe is in a jungle, the onions are in a kitchen, the books are in a school, and the lobster is under the sea. 

The default setting for the app does not require you to actually trace from one number to the next. Instead, you simply touch the numbers or letters in sequence, and it draws the line for you. I felt like this was cheating, so I changed the setting in the Preferences menu to Drawing Mode. This means that you draw your own lines, which will look rather squiggly unless you have a very steady hand.

You can also draw freestyle off of the intended lines, so your image can look nothing at all like a teddy bear when you finally do touch all the letters or numbers on the page. But the app will still fill in the teddy bear, as long as all numbers or letters are hit eventually. This is not a gotcha game. It wants your child to succeed at making images appear. 

Kids Connect the Dots Lite comes in a free version in the Android Market, with 25 images. The full version costs $2.99 and has over 90 images. There is also a free Christmas version of the app with 30 holiday-related images, such as presents and snow globes, which could be fun as the holidays quickly approach! 

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—Natali Morris