Baby Phone & Kids Games

Toddlers want a phone because the adults around them have one, and pretending to make a call is one of the earliest and most persistent forms of imaginative play. This app turns a smartphone into a toy phone properly rather than as a joke. Pretend calls and video chats connect the child to Lucas, Ruby, Lilly and Brody, characters with their own personalities who talk back. That interaction is more valuable than it first appears: a child having a conversation, even a scripted one, practises turn-taking, listening and responding, which are the mechanics of talking to people. Around the phone sit learning activities: the alphabet, numbers, sounds, music and colouring, so the app is not only pretend play. Everything is presented through the same friendly characters, which gives a small child continuity rather than a menu of unrelated exercises. The age range is one to five, and the design assumes a child who cannot read and whose taps are approximate. Large controls, picture-based navigation and nothing that leads out of the app are all deliberate. For parents, the appeal is a phone a child can actually be given: it looks like the real thing to them, and nothing in it can call anybody or spend money.