Educational Preschool Songs ★ Hip Hop Kangaroo & Friends

Singing puppets and early years learning have been inextricably linked for decades.  At first, they appeared on scheduled television but now they can entertain and educate your child on demand using a mobile device.   

A few apps have recreated this classic learning experience and most have leant heavily on digital representations of the puppets.  This app, Hip Hop Kangaroo and Friends, returns to the charms and personalities of real puppets in real-world locations and is all the better for it.  Children are constantly exposed to cartoons and computer games that can only exist on a screen so it is nice to show them something tangible.

Not only does the app use this classic aesthetic but the puppets are lovely to look at and full of personality.  As you might expect, Hip Hop Kangaroo's pals are other creatures from the Australian landscape.  They're brought to life by a skilful matching of their movements with their singing and talking and they sit easily within their environmental sets and sometimes interact with them in surprising ways - even dipping underwater for Poppy Platypus.  The puppet presenters sing songs about themselves and their lives as the creatures they are, where they live, and teach the alphabet.  

Returning to the home screen follows the typical convention of an arrow in the top left of the screen and the app's icons use images from the activities to which their buttons lead and so the app is easy to navigate for children who are not yet readers.  

The app encourages children to join in and not just be a passive observer.  Each puppet has a  soundboard where children can hold pretend conversations with them.  A singalong section uses the device's forward-facing camera to bring children into the scene with the puppets as they sing the song.  Throughout the app, written lyrics can be toggled on or off.

Naturally, any app built around good-quality videos and songs is going to have a large memory footprint and Hip Hop Kangaroo and Friends is no exception but it is put to excellent use and is unavoidable.  It also ensures that Wi-Fi or data is not needed for streaming after the initial download so that there is never any disappointment at a signal being unavailable.

Hip Hop Kangaroo and Friends has a refreshingly straightforward purchase price.  Parents are not at the start of a continuous spending journey when they buy this app.  No subscriptions to forget to cancel, no in-app purchases to be nagged about - you get the whole thing for a single price.  Considering the quality of the content, the cost is very reasonable too.

For the price, there is an excellent amount of content in this app that will be used over and over again.  Young children love the repetition of things they enjoy and they are bound to find plenty to appreciate in this app and revisit it again and again.  Hip Hop Kangaroo and Friends is a high-quality and excellent-value app that deserves its place on any device used by a young child.