Zayn & Zayna's Little Farm

Zayn & Zayna’s Little Farm is set in a small multicultural town, it introduces preschool children to the values of family, community and cultural diversity in a clever and meaningful way.

The programme loads up quickly and takes up a relatively small space on the drive of your phone. Unfortunately the application has not been optimised for the iPad, which could be helpful for some of the activities. However there is plenty of choice, ranging from ‘Z&Z shows’ which include some virtuous videos on hard work, being a good neighbour and helping hands, to a game centre where the child has to distinguish the odd one out.

Whilst watching the neighbours video I was pleasantly surprised at the script and presentation. The graphics are really very good as is the music, but the characters and scripting are excellent. Sometimes worthy virtues can be presented in a stale and uninteresting way these videos are far from it. The message is conveyed implicitly and not in an explicit judgemental way which is really quite refreshing.

The sing along section carries on in the same way, where for example the Bismillah song, sings about cleaning your hands after playing, a useful way of presenting an obvious hygiene message. But unlike a public service broadcast this message is delivered with the correct amount of fun and seriousness, perhaps a call to our government on the delivering of messages effectively would not go amiss!

The Episode Teacher section is a series of worksheets that can be printed off and relate to the Z&Z shows. These worksheets are carefully designed to prompt extra thought and could be used in conjunction with parent discussions about the video they have watched. This is a good use of a resource and could definitely extend the way children think about things related to the subjects offered.

The creative garden section includes suggested activities for children and some great colouring in sheets and my favourite is creating a fort or cave, always a staple with my grandchildren.

Further sections include Good Food (which unfortunately exited me from the app), a Fan Base, Parents and Special Needs, Shopping and doing a good blog. The parent section provides some good resources on mindfulness and self care.

Overall the application is well presented with some excellent graphics, clearly the animations are of a very high order and the scripting of the characters through the themes lends itself well to the target audience. Technically I am not sure that printing off worksheets is the best use of a iPhone app and I must admit that some of the games are not suited to the smaller screens of my rather dated iPhone! Perhaps the games are more suited to a larger iPad format?

I understand the aim of the application and I think, in the main this has been delivered, which is a remarkable achievement in itself, there are so many applications on the market that profess a worthy aim, many do not deliver, but this programme does. Clearly one to watch out for as they enhance their already large fan base.

You can download Zayn & Zayna's Little Farm on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the Zayn & Zayna's Little Farm app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.