Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car

This is no April Fool’s joke, Oceanhouse Media has done it once again.  Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car is now available for your Apple device.  As I read the title and make predictions from the interactive book icon, I have to think: What crazy adventures can five little monkeys really get into?  What is it with monkeys being so curious?  Books are very important whether they are interactive via your Apple device or hard covered.  The key is to model the various ways that a book can be shared and read.  Applicable2U enjoys how Oceanhouse Media incorporates new words in context and  out, with the interactive piece, children begin to develop their interest in reading.   Knowing that my own little adventurer is rather curious, I knew this book would be an excellent addition to our iTouch library.

With all the recent talk about how interactive books are changing the way children see and read, I felt it necessary to approach this review somewhat differently.  Applicable2U would like to share the many opportunities that an interactive book like Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car can do for a parent and child similar as having it in hard cover.  When reading a hard covered book, children envision the sounds that characters might make, but with an interactive book, those sounds are no longer guesses, it’s real for them.  Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car offers a variety of effects and sounds in order to enhance their very colorful graphics and story.  In addition, like most interactive book developers, Oceanhouse Media provides three different reading experiences with their educational apps:  Read to Me, Read it Myself or Auto Play.  This provides the curious reader and learner a new approach to a new found interest – BOOKS!

In our opinion, most interactive books are appropriate for the younger generation to early elementary.  Whether you are a teacher reading to the whole class or a parent reading to your child(ren) at night, so many educational opportunities were arising as we read this book. For the educational piece of an interactive book app to come to life though, parents/teachers needs to be key players in the development of a young child. Without the parent or teacher to child interaction as one reads, the things that Oceanhouse Media are hoping to encourage will be for nothing. It is quite obvious that they have taken into consideration the following:  the incorporation of highlighting words as the narrator reads which develops a users vocabulary, adding the ability of the reader to touch the screen and find objects coming to life as words, the use of rhyming, opportunities for the reader to make predictions, while also stopping along the way to ask comprehension questions.  Through multiple uses as a group, children can build a number of reading skills that will guide them through their educational experience.  In addition, Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car also shows children to be thinkers, to test ideas even if it turns out bad.  It also encourages the reader to be creative and resourceful.  Yes, Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car can be read solely by the child, this too builds confidence and academic purpose in a number of areas as well.  Interactive books like Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car has value just as much as a hard cover book experience provides for them.

If your child(ren) love crazy antics, learning new words and developing their interest in reading, then you will want to explore what Oceanhouse Media has to offer your own family and/or students.  Be sure to visit Oceanhouse Media’s website to learn more about Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car. Or you can begin downloading this interactive book from your iTunes library by clicking here.