Sally & Friends: The Birthday

What is Sally & Friends app?

Sally & Friends is an American app that has been designed to encourage a love of reading in young children and to help them to improve upon their reading as well as hoping to improve their reading comprehension and understanding too.

What we love about Sally & Friends

There are several elements that I really like about the app. One of these is certainly the quality of the artwork in the app. These pictures are right out of an award-winning children’s book and the fact that they move around and make sounds when touched really adds to the fun interactive element of the app. I also really like that users can record themselves withing the app reading the stories. This really adds a personal touch to the app, and I can see parents being able to use this in a wide variety of different ways.

What skills does it improve?

Sally & Friends app allows users to improve their reading skills by working through the books available in the app. They are then challenged to answer questions hoping to improve their comprehension too. As the app is also one that reads aloud the story a knock-on skill that users can get from this is to also improve their listening skills.

What age is it appropriate for?

Sally & Friends is aimed at children up to the age of 5. However, the younger the child the more support they are likely to need from a parent to access the app and there is also a need for a certain level of reading skills to access the most from the app. I would suggest that due to this older children could also get a lot from the app.

Is Sally & Friends easy to use?

For both the learner and the parent the app is incredibly easy to use and access.

How will students benefit?

Students will benefit from having access to a number of fun interactive books that they can read for enjoyment and to help improve their reading abilities. There are number of different elements within the books to support students, such as a narration but also other interactive elements in the books to help engage students.

How will teachers benefit?

Teachers can benefit from suggesting parents and children use the app at home. They can personalise the learning but suggesting certain titles to use.

How will parents benefit?

Parents, especially if they encourage their child to use the app will be able to see them expanding their reading abilities and their love for reading. They may also decide to use this in collaboration with their child’s school.

What Sally & Friends can improve on?

There aren’t too many things I would suggest improving upon however, the one thing for me that didn’t feel as good as it could be, was the text overlay on the screen. With the pictures being of such high quality the text definitely stood out was not being the most attractive on the screen. It felt a little clunky in places.

How much does Sally & Friends cost?

Sally & Friends costs 99c to download.

What is included with the free version vs. paid?

There is only a paid for version.

Is Sally & Friends safe to use

Sally & Friends app content is completely child-friendly and contains no content that could be considered inappropriate or unsafe for children.

Overall rating of the app

Sally & Friends app has received a 5 star EAS rating and this is due to the premise of the app the learning within it and how it goes about teaching the users. I was very much impressed by a number of aspects of Sally & Friends.

You can download Sally & Friends: The Birthday on your iOS devices from the Apple App Store.