As you may know, this week Lara and I attended the launch of a new children's cookery and adventure app, Henri Le Worm : The Missing Cookbook.
Lara was lucky enough to get a week's preview and so she was already a big fan of the app by the time of the launch. Yesterday though Lara sat down with my iPad and played the entire game from beginning to end and was engrossed for just over an hour. When she got to the end she seemed very proud of herself and did a little dance.
Henri le Worm is an app of two parts. The first is a game which features Henri, a very stereotypical french chef (and worm) and his adventures with his insect friends. The second part is a set of child-friendly recipes provided by world-renowned chef Raymond Blanc who also happens to be the father of one of the two creators of this fab new app. The idea is that the fun of the app which features food-related games and interesting food facts is designed to encourage an interest in food and that once that little spark has ignited, there are easy-to-follow recipes to help your child then get involved in the creation of fabulous food.
The app is suitable for children from 2 years to about 6 or 7 years old. Each scene has interactive activities and games to get involved in such as cleaning up a spilled bowl of flour (Lara's most favourite part of the entire game) or preparing pancakes for breakfast. There is a map to explore and puzzles to solve such as simple hide and seek.
The app features fun sound effects and great comedy voices supplied by comedy genius Simon Pegg. The story through the scenes is narrated and also features text across the bottom of the screen for young readers. It took Lara a few tries with the game to realise that there was a story to follow, but i think her epic play session this weekend was the point when she realised that there was a goal to the game. It took me quite some time to realise that there is a tab in the top-right of the screen which allows you to navigate straight to any point in the game you wish... even so, I still think that it would be nice to have a feature that allowed your child to re-start the game directly at the point they left off.
Lara loves fruit and vegetables, she cooks a meal with me at least once a week and loves to cook and eat meals with us so I don't think she NEEDS an app like Henri Le Worm to encourage an interest in food but I think she enjoys the app even more because of this love. Lara was really eager to try out some of the recipes in the app after our visit to London this week but I feel like this part of the app was a little bit of an afterthought - the recipes could do with more photos and more of a focus on cooking with kids, rather than for kids... I'd also like to see MORE of them and to have more direct references and links from the games into the recipes.
That said, I think Henri Le Worm is a great app and i can't wait to see more Henri adventures in the future.
Henri Le Worm : The Missing Cookbook costs £2.99 in the app store. It is currently available on iPad but will be coming to iPhone soon.
Lara was lucky enough to get a week's preview and so she was already a big fan of the app by the time of the launch. Yesterday though Lara sat down with my iPad and played the entire game from beginning to end and was engrossed for just over an hour. When she got to the end she seemed very proud of herself and did a little dance.
Henri le Worm is an app of two parts. The first is a game which features Henri, a very stereotypical french chef (and worm) and his adventures with his insect friends. The second part is a set of child-friendly recipes provided by world-renowned chef Raymond Blanc who also happens to be the father of one of the two creators of this fab new app. The idea is that the fun of the app which features food-related games and interesting food facts is designed to encourage an interest in food and that once that little spark has ignited, there are easy-to-follow recipes to help your child then get involved in the creation of fabulous food.
The app is suitable for children from 2 years to about 6 or 7 years old. Each scene has interactive activities and games to get involved in such as cleaning up a spilled bowl of flour (Lara's most favourite part of the entire game) or preparing pancakes for breakfast. There is a map to explore and puzzles to solve such as simple hide and seek.
The app features fun sound effects and great comedy voices supplied by comedy genius Simon Pegg. The story through the scenes is narrated and also features text across the bottom of the screen for young readers. It took Lara a few tries with the game to realise that there was a story to follow, but i think her epic play session this weekend was the point when she realised that there was a goal to the game. It took me quite some time to realise that there is a tab in the top-right of the screen which allows you to navigate straight to any point in the game you wish... even so, I still think that it would be nice to have a feature that allowed your child to re-start the game directly at the point they left off.
Lara loves fruit and vegetables, she cooks a meal with me at least once a week and loves to cook and eat meals with us so I don't think she NEEDS an app like Henri Le Worm to encourage an interest in food but I think she enjoys the app even more because of this love. Lara was really eager to try out some of the recipes in the app after our visit to London this week but I feel like this part of the app was a little bit of an afterthought - the recipes could do with more photos and more of a focus on cooking with kids, rather than for kids... I'd also like to see MORE of them and to have more direct references and links from the games into the recipes.
That said, I think Henri Le Worm is a great app and i can't wait to see more Henri adventures in the future.
Henri Le Worm : The Missing Cookbook costs £2.99 in the app store. It is currently available on iPad but will be coming to iPhone soon.
