Our solar system has always been an interesting topic for kids. By observing the night sky and learning about the moon and the stars, kids can quickly absorb fascinating facts about the universe.
Puppet Life, the developer of Explorium - Ocean for Kids recently released a brand new app that can help our kids learn about these facts. Called Explorium - Space for Kids, it's an app in which kids get to freely explore our solar system.
Travel, Explore, and Play
You start by choosing a character that you want to bring along the journey: Alex or Alice. Next, you spin a wheel to determine your first destination.
At each location, you can learn various facts about the solar system. Simply move your character around the screen to find all the exclamation points. You can tap on an exclamation point to evoke a popup containing the information related to its anchor object.
Additionally, you need to find four crystals, a treasure chest, and a hidden item. The treasure chest lets you play with a random mini game, which has been adapted from classic puzzles such as jigsaw puzzles, connect-the-dots, memory matching, and whack-an-alien. Meanwhile, the hidden item can be used to decorate the planets that you find.
Once you have completed a location, you get to spin the wheel for your next destination. The journey continues until you reach your final destination: a new planet located just outside of our solar system, one step further than Pluto.
Parents Need to Know
Explorium - Space for Kids is suitable for kids ages 5+ who are eager to learn more about our solar system. The objects and facts are not limited to the major planets. Instead, they also include satellites such as Titan (the largest moon of Saturn), asteroids, and comets.
There are four difficulty levels that you can choose for the mini games, from easy to hard. You can also change the default language from English to any of these supported languages: French, German, Spanish, and Russian.
Things I Like
Each fact that you unlock in the app is stored in the in-app Encyclopedia. When completed, the encyclopedia contains 73 entries of astronomical facts. This offers a high replay value because you’re going to replay the game over and over again trying to unlock all the facts.
I haven’t unlocked all the facts yet, but I know that my kids would learn a lot from them. Here’s one sample fact they learnt from the app:
Venus spins slowly and in the opposite direction. Two days on Venus is one year on earth
One thing I'm really happy about is that the app includes my favorite game from Ocean for Kids, Memory Star. This game will briefly reveal a number of stars randomly placed in a grid of tiles. Once the revealed tiles have been flipped, the entire grid will rotate 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise. Then, you need to identify where the stars are located after the rotation. It's a simple but challenging game to test your math skills.
Explorium - Space for Kids is a space exploration app designed to keep kids ages 5+ engaged in learning the hard facts about our solar system. The app has a great replay value with its 73 encyclopedia entries, eight mini games, and four difficulty levels. Any kid who is eager to learn more about our solar system would love this app.
App was provided for our honest review.