Choo Choo Park and Choo Choo Boo App Review (and Giveaway!)

It’s been a while since I last downloaded an app for my four-year-old son, Ziggy and so when I was given a chance to review the Choo Choo Park and Choo Choo Boo apps for kids I readily accepted.

Both apps were create by Choo Choo Apps. They create fun, exciting and educational apps for kids. They only started several months ago and their first release was the Choo Choo Park app.

Choo Choo Park

Choo Choo Park is about inspiring creativity and encouraging discovery among kids.

The app is interactive allowing the child to make the scene come to life by coloring and interacting with the different elements and characters.

It opens to that screen above wherein there is a parent’s guide available. Kids can already press on the objects here to color them or press play to start the app. Then it goes to this scene.

 

As you can see, the scene starts in black and white. The characters and items on the screen exhibit certain movements already. The kids walk around and some even have thought bubbles, cars pass by, the clouds move, etc. However, your child can make this scene become more alive by using any one of the icons located at the four corners of the screen. The upper left icon lets you go back to the starting page.

The other 3 icons are as follows:

Crayon Rack

Your child can create a vivid and wonderful park by coloring each of the elements using the Crayon Rack, located at the lower right corner. Pressing the crayon icon will reveal a stack of crayons of different colors.

As you can see, there are many different colors to choose from. All the child has to do is to press the crayon of his choice then press whatever object he or she wishes to color. Here’s a sample of how it can look like when colored.

 

Object Rack

The scene includes many different characters and objects, such as lamps, see saw, swing, etc. Your child can add or deduct an object from the scene using the Object Rack by just pressing the icon on the lower left of the screen. Doing so will reveal several circles on the left side of the screen just like the one below.

As you can see, all the circles are empty, which means all the available items and characters have already been used. If you wish to remove one, just simply drag the item to any one of the circles on the left. Below you can see that one character has been dragged to the Object Rack.

Aside from this, your child can move and rearrange objects within the scene. You can see above that one of the characters has a thought bubble above his head. He’s apparently thinking of the bench or maybe sitting on the bench. Your child can drag that character to the bench and he’ll automatically sit down.

Your child can actually explore and drag the Choo Choo characters into the different objects in the scene, such as the tree, the slide or the see saw, to see what happens.

 

Camera

After your child is done coloring and playing with the scene, you can take a photo of it using the Camera icon on the top right corner of the screen. Below you can see the sample screenshot I took of the Choo Choo Boo scene.

Choo Choo Park was launched just last October and is currently available for purchase on iTunes for only $1.99.

Below you can see a short video of the app:

 

Choo Choo Boo

Choo Choo Boo, on the other hand, was released more recently in time for Halloween. It basically operates the same way as Choo Choo Park. The only difference is the scene itself.

It also starts the same way, with the parents guide and play button on the start up page.

 

Below you can see that it follows a Halloween theme.

It also has the same four icons on each of the four corners of the screen and they work the same way as the ones on Choo Choo Park.

The actions are different though because of the theme. Your child can enjoy the trick or treat activities with each of the funny characters. Each house also presents a unique surprise.

 

Choo Choo Boo is also available on iTunes for only $1.99.

Choo Choo Apps have also released a new version called the Choo Choo Farm. Plus, I just learned that these apps will be available very soon on Android. So watch out for that!

Ziggy was really excited to try these apps. He liked exploring what the characters will do whenever he drags them to a new location. The objects make little sounds sometimes which is nice. Dragging the character to the object reflected on his thought bubble will reveal stars as some sort of reward, I guess. But there’s no point system. The sounds are very limited. I think it would be nice if there’s also background music of some sort playing while the child is using the app.

Ziggy also liked rearranging the objects and coloring them.  However, after he’s done with it there’s really nothing left to do but take a photo of the scene. There’s only one scene per app so there’s only so much you can do with it.

I think this is a great app to teach a young child about colors and the many objects he or she can find in his or her surroundings. It will definitely hold the attention of a younger child. For a four-year-old child like my Ziggy though, who’s used to more complicated apps and games, the Choo Choo apps may not be challenging enough. So, I hope Choo Choo Apps can also develop more advanced versions for older kids as well.

Overall, I think Choo Choo apps is worth a try and you can have a chance to download it for free if you win my giveaway!!!

The generous people behind Choo Choo Apps will be giving away 5 copies of Choo Choo Park and 5 copies of Choo Choo Boo. So, all in all, 10 people can win. 🙂

Anyone can join and joining is as easy as following the Rafflecopter instructions below. This giveaway will run from Nov. 24 – 30, 2015. (Extended ’til Dec. 4, 2015!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good luck guys! Learn more about Choo Choo Apps by visiting their website.

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Update as of Dec. 16, 2015:

The list of winners are as follows:

Choo Choo Park:

Arge Roque Valencia
May Palacpac
Michelle Solee
Choo Choo Boo:
Toni Tiu
Maan Laxa
Mhaan Arambulo – Delos Santos

Congratulations! 🙂