Cookie Monster’s Challenge

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Overview

Cookie Monster’s Challenge gives young children a healthy treat as they play with one of their favorite characters. The games will help your child learn important basic skills, and even practice self-control!

• Ten different games
• Nine levels of difficulty
• Crazy Cookie Contraption
• Up to three separate users
• Covers essential readiness skills

Quality

Cookie Monster’s Challenge is an outstandingly-produced app. It’s user friendly for its intended audience, runs smoothly and has enjoyable animations for the little ones. Developers have worked hard to make it attractive to the very young. Parents will be pleased with the ability to keep track of up to three users, and the app can be played again and again. It’s sure to become a favorite of any child that loves Cookie Monster.

Education

This app offers practice time on some vital readiness skills, such as memory, attention, following directions and other brain-builders. There are ten different games, but all are very quick and suitable for a toddler’s or preschooler’s attention span. The app also includes nine different levels of difficulty, so it will grow with your youngster, and yet kids can easily “go back” and play an easier level if they wish.

The app also has some built-in practice for self-control, which studies show is an important, and often underrated, part of academic success. For example, after several rounds of being instructed to touch a pig walking across the screen, Cookie will suddenly announce, “No touch pig!” The user has to leave the pig completely alone to be successful. Another example is in a “bop-it” sort of activity where players are challenged to touch the announced character as it appears in various places (“Touch all the cats”). At the higher levels, this becomes “Touch only cats with hats,” challenging children not only to follow the directive, but also to be quick observers and processors.

Error-handling is really important for this age group. If a player makes a mistake, Cookie will inform them, then immediately back the app up by two or three activities, to where the child was previously successful and hopefully confident.

It’s always great when app developers include suggestions for parents to engage the children offline, and Cookie Monster’s Challenge includes these, as well, in the Parents Section. There is an extensive list of seven offline games and ideas that support the same early learning skills as are the focus of the app.

Entertainment

Cookie Monster’s Challenge is hugely entertaining. It boasts the immediate draw of being MC’d by that perennial favorite, Cookie Monster. The colorful pictures and animations beckon users, and the games progress in difficulty at just the right pace for most toddlers and preschoolers. Best of all, when each level is completed, Cookie has a chance to get one of his favorite things: COOKIES!! On the reward screen, a cookie drops into a Rube Goldberg-esque machine and clatters its way towards Cookie Monster’s waiting mouth. Of course, the machine malfunctions (on each of the three tries per level) and disappoints Cookie, who quickly tells your child that the machine still needs more parts, which can be earned by playing more games. Each successive level adds another part to the machine, until at the final screen, the cookie rolls smoothly through a station where your child can add different colors of icing and another that plops sprinkles onto the confection, and finally bounces into Cookie Monster. What fun!

Value

This app is a great value for families with young children. The activities that develop self-control and following directions are particularly unique, and of course, Cookie Monster is a hugely motivating vehicle for teaching. The ten games and nine levels will keep youngsters occupied for quite a while, and little ones will want to play again and again. Adults can reset the app as needed so the fun can start all over.

Child Friendliness

Cookie Monster’s Challenge contains no outside advertising, no links to social media, email or the internet, and no in-app purchases. The links to the App Store and to the Parents’ Area are well-protected by an effective parent gate. To access either, a user must touch the button, then quickly read the instructions telling where to drag the button on the screen. These instructions are randomized, as well.