Baby Games: Piano & Baby Phone

This app is aimed at an age most apps ignore entirely: babies from around six to twelve months and upwards. At that age a child is not learning content, they are learning cause and effect. Touch something, something happens. That single discovery is the developmental work being done, and it is why simple apps hold a baby's attention while elaborate ones do not. The activities are built around it. A baby piano makes a note when tapped, so a baby learns that their action produces sound and starts doing it deliberately. Balloon popping gives an immediate visual and audio response to a touch anywhere on screen, requiring no accuracy from hands that do not yet have any. Animal pictures paired with their sounds introduce the first association between an image and a word, which is the foundation of vocabulary. Nursery rhymes and musical modes add the familiar songs babies respond to. The interface has to tolerate a baby's hands, which means no small targets, nothing that can be triggered accidentally to leave the activity, and no way to reach settings. That design work is the difference between a baby app and an app that happens to be colourful. It is free.