Tiggly Story Maker: Build Words and Record Your Own Tales

Whether kids have the toys or not, they are intimately involved in exploring just how important that middle vowel is in simple consonant-vowel-consonant words. Since it can be disappointing when your vowel choice doesn’t work, the best word set is "b-g," as it is the only one for which every vowel makes a real word and produces a picture or animation. Those images nicely bring the words to life, and random interactions add a heap of silliness that's bound to delight young kids. It would be nice, however, if kids had more control over what the animations do. There's also only a small set of word groups, which limits gameplay a bit. The story option is fun but not entirely tied in to the word-building exercise. A "start recording" button would give kids more time to process their new task by giving them control over when to start recording. At the time of this review, there were some technical difficulties with the audio lining up correctly on playback. Though the game can be easily played without them, the toys do add a unique dimension of interactivity. And, in combination with the other apps that use the toys, Tiggly Story Maker: Build Words and Record Your Own Tales is a fun way to explore vowels.