BakingFun for Kids

In the past couple of months, Levi has shown a greater interest in playing games on the iPhone and iPad now that his ability to concentrate and his dexterity with the touch screen have both improved. That’s not to say he has free reign of our devices! We try to limit his smartphone screen time at home and in the car, but he sometimes manages to squeeze a few extra minutes out of us if he’s being especially needy in the backseat.

I recently had the opportunity to review BakingFun, a new educational app about how bread is made, from planting the seeds to putting the dough in the oven. Now, teaching Levi the traditional way of making bread in the countryside was not necessarily on my to-do list at his age (or ever), but since he loves helping in the kitchen and playing with his own pretend kitchen, I thought he also might enjoy a kitchen-based app.

BakingFun features five mini-games, each focusing on a different step in the bread-making process: seeding, harvesting, milling, mixing, and baking. Levi doesn’t necessarily play them in chronological order; his favorites are planting and growing the crops, mixing the ingredients, and baking the bread in the oven.

For the most part, BakingFun — or “the baking game,” as Levi calls it — is intuitive enough for a two year old to figure out. There have been just a couple of instances when Levi looked at me for help, unsure as to what he was supposed to do. For example, it wasn’t obvious to him how to make the tractor move or that he needed to spin the windmill to turn the grain into flour.

Spinning the wooden spoon around in the mixing bowl has also been challenging for his little hands, but he loves dumping the ingredients and forming the bread. And it’s pretty adorable when he ticks and tocks along with the timer during the baking scene.

(I should probably also mention that the truck has an absurdly realistic car horn that annoys JB every time it honks.)

If you’re looking to add a new educational game to your children’s apps folder, I’d recommend BakingFun. The cartoons are bright and cheery, the sounds are engaging, and — who knows — your preschooler may come to understand the life cycle of bread.

P.S. — Toddler-proofing your iPad and my favorite baby tracking app.