Big Red Barn Review

Update (3/28/2011): I was just notified by Elly herself that narration is included in this delightful story book! If interested, turn narration “on” found in the settings, top right side of the home page. Thank you, Elly for letting me know! I am sorry I was mistaken.

Big Red Barn is a lovely universal app from the writer and developers of the "Elly" series of story books. Here, this app teaches number and animal recognition, as well as the various sounds that these farm animals make.

My son is a huge fan of Elly the Reindeer, his good friend and favorite reindeer of all time. I could not resist telling him that these farm animals are also friends with Elly and her gang and doing this got the ooohhhs and ahhhs that I expected. We both enjoy this app a great deal, as the illustrations and content are so very cute and inviting. Just about all the animals one can find on a farm are here, and we learn about numbers from 1 to 10 along the way as well.

As with the Elly books, the text is not narrated, making this a lovely book one reads out loud to children and would also make an excellent early reader book as well. Kids will delight in tapping to hear the number spoken or to hear the various animals make their animal sounds incorporating both interactions as well as a classic reading experience. We also love to count the different animals on each page as well, making it an even more engaging. The animals sound very good here and I really enjoy how one can layer different animals together to make this app sound just like a loud and crazy barnyard if one wishes to do so.

My son enjoyed making all the animals sound at once, something easy to do thanks to the last page that brings all the animals and numbers together for the sake of happy tapping. After he was finished here, he also looked at two other farm-themed apps he had not shown interest in for some time, showing me how Big Red Barn nicely peaked his interest in farm-related things. This app is a must-have for animal lovers who are at an age where numbers are new and different, or for older kids who just want to hear the bleating, mooing, and oinking from the tap of a finger. As with the Elly series of apps, one cannot go wrong buying these for baby/toddlers' first apps, as well as beyond.