Shake-A-Phrase Review

Shake-A-Phrase is a nice universal educational game app, much like Mad Libs, that teaches new vocabulary words as well as the different parts of speech as this app generates random, silly phrases.

Shake-A-Phrase includes three sections of game play. "Shake It" creates silly sentences, whereas "Story Starter" creates intriguing questions or scenarios to get the player's imagination going, possibly to be used as a starter of a story or conversation. There is also a quiz included where the player reads a phrase and then selects specific verbs, adjectives, or nouns with the tap of a finger.

It is nice that the words used in the app can be tapped if one would like to read the definition of a specific word, as well as see the part of speech the word in question is. With 1,700 + words available, it is nice that these phrases will always be new and different. One can save favorites as well as email them if desired.

Four themes are included - specifically a starter section as well as animals, fairytales, and monsters. Kids will enjoy shaking their device to generate new random phrases; a button can also be pressed to do the same. Each theme has its own specific color and background image that corresponds to the topic, as well as a specific sound effect when the phrases are shaken - a nice touch.

I think this is a great way to learn the different parts of language as well as new word definitions. I remember learning what noun, verb, and adjectives are by using Mad Libs with a friend, and I think we would have enjoyed playing with this app as well if it had been available to us.

I think this is a good app to get even reluctant readers involved because the phrases are short and are therefore changed often. Without narration, adult involvement may be needed to help read some of the phrases with more extensive vocabulary, which is ok as parents will enjoy this app as well. It would be nice if in the future, other parts of speech such as adverbs could be added to this application in a future update.