Just when you thought it was safe to go out in the internet – weird apps pop up out of nowhere. From prevention of drunk dialing to learning to play piano, and from arranging your furniture to engaging in a toilet paper war, you can find just about anything in the app store. With over a million apps on the market, there are some really cool, weird, and curious ones available that can entertain and educate you for just a small fee.

Ikea 3-D App

The Ikea 3-D app will help you to place virtual furniture in your virtual home. Confused about whether or not that “perfect” sofa will fit into your small living room? It’s simple! You take a picture of the symbol on the page of the Ikea catalogue, and place the catalogue in the spot where you want the piece of furniture. Your device will show you the item in the very spot where you laid the catalogue. This is possibly one of the most useful furniture apps, and it can also demonstrate what non-ikea items might look like, for instance if you found a hifi cabinet in one furniture store, just find something similar in the app and you can see what it looks like.

Piano Maestro

Have you always regretted dropping piano lessons? Are you tired of making your children drag themselves to the piano to practice? The, Piano Maestro by Joytunes is the app for you. You can touch the keys on the virtual keyboard to play piano, or it will actually respond to an acoustic or digital keyboard! Not only that, Joytunes has recently made the app FREE to music teachers, and to students who sign up under their teachers’ accounts. Some of the most popular piano methods are included in the app, so you can take lessons from your teacher, and practice at home using the app in a game format.

Paper Racing

Ready for something that is just silly? Try Paper Racing. That’s right, you can race a friend in trying to get all of the paper off of a virtual toilet paper roll. Hmm…I wonder if the cat would settle for an app?

Drunk Dial No!

Do you have numbers in your phone that you should never, under any circumstances, call? Maybe you have them there just so the name shows up if they call you, and you can ignore the call. Maybe you just can’t let go. However, problems arise when you have one – or two – too many, and think this is a great time to give that person a call. With Drunk Dial No! you can block those numbers while you are still sober. Then, when you lose your mind and try to give that person a call in the wee, drunk hours of the morning, your phone tells you NO WAY! You will have to wait a few more hours before you can dial that number.

Apps can entertain, amuse, educate, and communicate. There are plenty of them out there, too, and many have multiple games from which to choose. The Joytunes app, for instance, has Dustbuster attached, which is a non-musicians’ version of Piano Maestro.

We want the best for our little ones. We select allergen and dye-free diaper and detergent, we use PBA free sunscreen, and even make our own baby food to make sure there are no additives that could harm our children. However, what about toys? We want to give our babies every opportunity to develop their brains, so are tablets the future of our children’s’ toys?

Eye/Hand Coordination

Granted, there is a certain eye-hand coordination that takes place with tablets technology. Touch-screen technology makes interaction with computers amazingly simple, and there is certainly a place for this with our babies. As soon as a baby learns what his hands are for, and learns to reach for an item he or she wants, he is able to interact with a LeapFrog or Kurio. However, there is much more at stake here than touching something he sees. Babies still don’t have a dimensional understanding of objects, so they must manipulate items. Every time a baby grasps his pacifier, his blanket, his baby toys, a rubber ball, neurons are being formed in his brain that register the concept of weight, texture, smell, size, and many other elements that make up the item. Simply being in a different room when they pick up that item will create a whole different set of neurons.
This is all part of eye-hand coordination. It’s not just touching something you’re looking at. It’s predicting what you’re going to feel when you do touch it. Have you ever picked up a full gallon of milk, only to find that it is nearly empty? The result is often hysterical as it looks like the jug is rocket propelled. There is a lot involved in looking at an item and preparing to handle it.

Cause and Effect

The milk jug gives us, also, an example of cause and effect. Analysis of the situation will tell us that the jug was empty, and we didn’t know it, so our muscles and the effort we exerted into lifting the jug were too much for the situation. But the experience of cause and effect makes us analyse the event in more subjective ways. The surprise, sometimes embarrassment, and physical imbalance of the event register far more in our senses and brain function than the mere logic of what caused the effect.
This is what a baby encounters many times every day. This is why we love babies, and learn to see the world in a new light through their eyes. And, this is why tablets cannot ever replace toys, and mommy’s necklace, and daddy’s cell phone as training for our children. Tablets offer untold education to children, but only through one window – the window of the screen on the tablet. Children grow through exploring every possibility, and to limit them to only one is foolish.

So, don’t worry that your child won’t be as smart as others if he doesn’t have a tablet. Chances are, he may be smarter.