App Review: Shelby's Quest - Interactive Activities for Fine Motor and Visual Perceptual Development

Shelby’s Quest – Interactive Activities for Fine Motor and Visual Perceptual Development

Posted on September 25, 2012

Shelby’s Quest is an interactive game and activity app designed for teachers and parents to guide and teach their children specific motor and visual perception skills. Children will surely enjoy the stimulating and challenging activities contained in the app while the parents and teachers will appreciate the different tools given to them to help their children learn and improve.

Details

Shelby’s Quest is an interactive game and activity app that gives children a fun way to practice fine motor and visual perceptual skills. This app is made for occupational therapists, teachers, and parents as an aid for them to help and guide their children or students as they improve their skills.

There are three quests with different challenges that involve a certain motor and visual perception skill that children will have to go through. There are also different levels of difficulty within each quest that will test and practice the children. The activities include helping a salmon get home by guiding it through the maze-like rivers with a finger, pinching and holding acorns to collect them in a basket, and tracing shapes with the pointer finger. Scores are then computed based on how well a child has done each activity.

Since the app is designed for teachers or parents, it allows them to have a PIN protected admin account to ensure that children do not accidentally play the games without the proper supervision. The app gives the option of creating multiple user accounts and also tracks and records scores and statistics for each. There is also the “Admin” button which presents all the collected data from all users in organized and easy to understand formats. It also allows the admin to email these scores from within the app.

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This app is different from the other educational apps because this one promotes the interaction between parent/teacher and children/student. The app is designed for parents or teachers to hold their students’ hands and guide them through the different activities contained within it. The recording and easy to understand presentation of data also helps them to keep track of their children or students’ progress. The ability to email the scores and statistics also help promote the relationship between teacher and parent or parent and parent to help each other guide their children or students.

Although what I have described so far sounds very formal and classroom-like, the games and activities that children will be doing are actually very simple, fun, and stimulating. The visuals are colourful and will certainly grab children’s attentions. There is no music because it wants users to focus on the game and the teachers’ instructions but it contains some sound effects that enhance the experience.