Source: USA TODAY

As we head into summer, family tablets and phones may get more of a workout. For parents looking for ways to tickle their kids’ creativity, here are some engaging apps that encourage drawing and creating with art.

IdentiKat

Ovolab, best for ages 4-up, $.99, iPad

Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)

For animal-lovers, this handsome app features artistic cats created from craft items, including buttons, old brooches, fancy fabrics, zippers, pipe cleaners and such. The app offers two modes of play: cat puzzles and cat design. In the puzzle mode, known as Kat Cut, an elaborate cat made out of rich fabrics and bric-a-brac appears. When kids touch it, it breaks apart into its individual components. Kids experiment with recombining the items to recreate the dramatic-looking cat. A hint button can provide you with a reminder of what the finished feline looks like. There are six elegant cats to reassemble. Playing with the cats in the puzzles primes kids to start creating their own pets. The app provides heads, bodies, arms, paws and facial features to allow you to create your own one-of-a-kind feline. Similar in design to “Faces iMake,” kids learn to create cats from collage materials. Once a cat is finished, kids can photograph it in a frame of their choosing to share over email and such.

SquiggleFish

Stripey Design, best for age 3-7, $1.99, iPad

Rating: 3.5 stars

The magic of this simple app is that kids draw a fish on real paper and then use this app to scan their artwork into a virtual aquarium. Their hand drawn fish appears inside of the iPad, swimming around as if it were alive. This is a great hook to get kids drawing all kinds of aquatic animals. In order for drawings to scan well into this app, kids need to use a thick black marker to outline their fish, and they must be careful that the outline has no broken lines. This app would be fun to use at a birthday party or sleepover where each guest creates a fish for the community tank.

Drawdle

One Side Software, best for ages 7-up, Free, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android (called Drawdle Lite), Amazon

Rating: 3.5 stars

Riding the wave of popular physics puzzlers, “Drawdle” adds a drawing element into the mix of making things move. This free version offers 14 puzzles where you draw an object to fling at a paint-filled balloon in hopes of sending it careening over the puzzle-ending object to fill it with color. Your goal is to earn three stars for completely coloring in the object. In some of the puzzles you will need to draw something pointed to cut through a rubber band, but must be careful that it doesn’t pop the balloon. This app provides great motivation for kids to draw a variety of objects to help them solve the puzzles. If you like the first 14 puzzles, you can unlock the remaining 46 for $.99 as an in-app purchase in iOS or purchase the full 60 levels in Android by downloading “Drawdle” for $.99.

Drawnimal

Lucas Zanotto, best for ages 4-6, $1.99, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 4 stars

This ingenious app shows kids how to think of the device’s screen as an animal’s face, and it teaches them to draw the bodies of animals on paper placed underneath your device. After kids draw the animal’s body, the app rewards their efforts by animating the animal’s face and having it do something silly. “Drawnimal” is a whimsical experience like none other in iTunes.

When providing kids with animated instructions of how to draw an animal that corresponds to a letter of the alphabet, “Drawnimal” is careful not to reveal the mystery animal. After kids complete their drawing around the outside edges of the device, using real paper and crayons or markers, they tap the onscreen arrow. The screen then transforms into the animated face of the animal — and tells you what it is. For example, for the letter “C,” the app shows kids how to draw pointy ears, whiskers and a tail. After drawing the requested body parts, the screen switches to the face of the cat. If you tap again, you will hear and see a funny animation. The cat meows, the koala bear sneezes and the gorilla whistles a tune.

While “Drawnimal” works on an iPad, you have to have pretty large paper to have room to draw around it. It is easier to use this app on an iPad mini, an iPhone or an iPod Touch because standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper works just fine. The app is playable in four different languages. It is sure to produce some giggles while also encouraging kids to think outside of the box and teaching them how to draw. Kids could benefit from seeing the word of the animal they are drawing — perhaps that will come in an update.

Jinny Gudmundsen is the author of the new book: iPad Apps for Kids, part of the For Dummies series. Contact her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her @JinnyGudmundsen.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

Between weekly spelling tests and looming SATs, kids need to increase their vocabularies while growing up. For families with iOS devices, here are three apps that make the process of learning new words fun.

Kids’ Vocab

Mindsnacks, best for ages 7-12, Free download (with in-app purchase of $4.99), iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)

This app puts vocabulary practice inside nine diverse, engaging games. When you first download the app, you get one set of 15 words. To unlock the rest of the 350 words taught in the app, you need to make an in-app purchase of $4.99. The additional words appear in 25 lessons with each set having a theme, such as baby animals, astronomy or fantasy.

Kids can study the words in the lesson before playing the games. The nine games slowly unlock over time. Players earn points by playing the games and can earn additional points by meeting certain challenges, such as correctly answering four questions in a row. The app tracks all of your points on a bar graph, and when the bar fills up, you are rewarded with a fresh new game.

The nine games present different ways to learn words. In one, you choose a word to complete a sentence. In another, you select images that represent the definition of a word. In a third, you try to match definitions and words in quick succession. The app tracks your progress; and once you have mastered a word, that word is cycled out of the games.

Unlike flashcards, where kids learn by staring at the card to memorize, with “Kids’ Vocab,” kids learn by playing fun games with kooky animals.

The Opposites

Mindshapes Limited, best for ages 7-12, $1.99, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 4 stars

Kids learn new words by playing a game of matching antonyms with a pair of snarky siblings. The two teens spout words which float out of their mouths and above their heads. Players match the words by tapping to see if they turn green and disappear. The goal is to match a target number of pairs before the time runs out or the room fills up with words. If you manage to hit the target of say, 12 pairs, you get to play a bonus round with more words floating to be matched; and then the next level opens up. The game offers 10 levels of words, with the easiest being words like night and day, and the hardest covering compulsory and voluntary.

The app contains a dictionary of the words used in the game; and kids can study each level’s word definitions before playing the humorous war-of-words game. If they don’t want to study first, the game encourages them to learn while playing, since you aren’t penalized for trying word pairs that don’t match — they just temporarily turn red to indicate that they are not antonyms.

With a simple premise of matching words that are opposite delivered by silly siblings with an attitude, this is in-your-face fun with words.

SAT Word Slam

Slammin Productions, best for ages 13-18, $3.99, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 4 stars

This is the cream of the crop among SAT study apps. By using humor, rhyming poems and clever mnemonic clues, this app makes learning 400 of the most used SAT words a breeze. Instead of being faced with static flashcards that run together in your mind, this app makes learning new words exciting. The app has professional voice actors read funny poems that explain the definition of words you want to learn. They are topical and silly, frequently including references to famous people.

For example, to learn the word “abase,” an actor reads: “To embarrass or to humble, To make one a disgrace.

Barry Bonds was blushing, When he couldn’t steal a base.”

This poetic definition is then followed up with the mnemonic: “A baseball player was abased when he couldn’t steal a base.” Teens next hear a funny throw-away comment about how hard can it be to steal a base? — all you need to do is toss the thing in the back of your truck.

After learning a set of words, kids can choose to be tested on what they learned. The test questions take the form of presenting a sentence with a blank word missing and then providing a list to choose from. Occasionally a question is simply the definition, and kids select the correct word from a list. If you get a word wrong during the testing, the app offers you the option to learn the word right then before continuing on with the test. Kids return to the section to hear the silly poem and mnemonic clue. This excellent feature reinforces the learning at the time when kids are thinking about it.

To see if your budding wordsmith will like this app, try the SAT Word Slam FREE first — it provides complete functionality of the app; but instead of getting 400 words to learn, you only get 25. For those that don’t have iOS, this fun app is based on a book of the same name by Jodi Fodor.

Jinny Gudmundsen is the author of the new book: iPad Apps for Kids, part of the For Dummies series. Contact her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her @JinnyGudmundsen.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.