App review: Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman's Lunch Rush

PBS Kids has launched its first mobile app featuring augmented reality: Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman's Lunch Rush. It is a math game for kids ages six to eight.

"Augmented reality" is a term gadget geeks use to refer to the juxtaposition of the real world and the digital world. It means that you can use your gadgets to "see" computer-generated objects in the real world and interact with them. In Lunch Rush, you use the camera on your Apple device to interact with game pieces that you print out beforehand.

Ruff Ruffman is the dog that hosts "FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman" on PBS Kids. I had not heard of him before, but he is a canine version of a talk show host / Hollywood director type. He is enthusiastic!

In Lunch Rush, he asks players to help count sushi pieces in order to feed his movie crew. Each page presents a math equation that asks players to add or subtract pieces of sushi. Instead of typing out the numerical answer, you pick the correct answer from game pieces that you print out and cut up.

For instance, the game may say that Ruff needs four plus one pieces of sushi. He wants to know how many pieces total that will be. The game pieces that you print out have numbers on them, 1 through 10. Since the answer to this question is 5, you pick up the piece of paper with the number 5 on it and hold it up to the back camera on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Your device reads a code on the game piece—much like a QR code—and in the game, you see five pieces of sushi appear on top of the number 5 card. You touch the sushi to submit your answer.

This neat app helps children practice addition and subtraction and do so quickly while trying to find the right answer in their stack of pieces. If they answer incorrectly, they can try again. The equations get progressively harder as the child succeeds.

The instructions on the game could be better. I felt a little dumb for not understanding that the game uses your device's back camera. I was holding my answers up to the front-facing camera, and nothing was happening. D'oh!

I also didn't automatically understand that you need to touch the sushi pieces to submit an answer. I thought the camera would automatically read and accept your submissions, but it does not until you confirm your answer.

Keeping the game pieces around also might be a challenge for a busy child with many toys, but I suppose an organized parent could laminate them.

Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman's Lunch Rush is a free app for any Apple device running iOS 4.0 or higher.

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—Natali Morris