Lilly gives the Doc McStuffins Pet Vet app two thumbs up and paws up, too, from the animals that she’s helping!

With this app, little ones can heal, groom, and train your toy pets with all your favorite Doc McStuffins characters. Collect fun badges by caring for your pets, and level them up to earn Doc’s special Pet Vet stethoscope.

The badges were a big hit with Lilly, and she said, “I like fixing the animals!” My brother’s favorite quote from her was, “Daddy, I want to use the tweezers again to fix Fido.”

He reports that it was very easy for Lilly to start using on her own, just a few minutes with her and she was off and running without any assistance.

The app lets little users perform a variety of tasks.

·         Diagnose, prescribe, and take care of all your toy pets – Findo, Squibbles, Whispers, Carrots, Marla, Wilma, and Tallulah!

·         Heal the toy pets by removing thorns, changing batteries, giving x-rays, tooth brushing or grooming!

·         Join Lambie in the Nap Corner, where your toy pets can dream up a feast, chase their tails, and play catch!

·         Help Stuffy improve your toy pets’ agility and guide them through zany obstacle courses!

·         Train pets to perform tricks and earn fun badges for your personalized Pet Vet scrubs!

Check out the cute video of the app here:

Are your kids Doc McStuffin fans?

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After using the app for a few minutes, my daughter asked, “Can I play this some more?” Safe to say, the app was a big hit at our house with all ages. Here’s our Frozen: Story Theater app review.

There are endless possibilities of how to put together different stories, which my daughter said was her favorite part of the app because “no two stories ever have to be the same.” As a parent, I appreciated that this app walks kids through the elements of a story, with big focus on both setting and characters, and the chance to be as creative as they like with all of them. The parents section offers ideas and activities for promoting early literacy skills. And I’ll admit, I had fun playing on it, too!

There are two different ways to use the app. “Story Play” is a more structured, guided option that walks little users through the process with step by step and keeps choices pretty limited. My daughter liked that it wasn’t overwhelming. She didn’t love the narrator in this section, but I think it would be great for kids who are beginning readers.
The “Free Play” option is more open-ended, giving more room for creativity but might be a little trickier for younger users, too. For older kids, though, it’s great, and offers a lot more characters. My daughter made this image with many of the available characters. Anyone else excited to see the Duke of Weselton?

The characters aren’t static. I liked that they they blink and their faces move, making them seem less like paper dolls and far more like truly animated characters, the ones we know and love. It was a fun conversation starter about different traits of the characters, protagonists and antagonists, their conversions, the idea of primary and secondary characters, etc.

What really makes this app for my family are the sound elements of the app. They really mesmerized my daughter. She loved that she could record her voice for all the characters. (For this to work, the microphone on your device must be enabled.) I have to say, I was surprised at how good her Anna impression was.  Her Olaf may need a little work but was still cute. It would be fun to play as a family and have different people do different voices.

Parents should know that kids can save their completed story and email it. While I’m a big fan of little ones being able to share their work, parents may want to keep close tabs on that part of the process, both to make sure they know how to do it (my daughter needed a bit of help) and to make sure they don’t send it to your boss. Than again, if your boss is an Olaf fan, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

Another thing parents should know is that the app contains advertising for the Walt Disney Family of Companies. Probably not a big issue, but always good to know what your kiddos are seeing.

Frozen Story Theater is a premium app that costs $5.99. The App Store says it is intended for ages 6-8 and that seems right, though my daughter is a bit older and loved it. It is available across iOS platforms. Get it on the App Store: iPhone | iPad.

Speaking of iOS platforms, my one tip would be to download prior to announcing the app to your kiddo. It’s possible that we needed to update our iOS (hangs head in shame) and that downloading the app took far longer than I anticipated, leaving my child to wonder why I’m so technologically inept. I assured her I wonder that myself. The fact that I can use this app without issue is a great sign that it will work for pretty much everyone!

This is a great way to tide Frozen fans over until the animated short “Frozen Fever” comes out in a few weeks and to let kids get creative and use these well-loved characters to tell new stories from their imagination.

Disclaimer:  I was given a code for this app free of charge so that we could test it out and see what we thought.  I received no other compensation from the app provider. The opinions expressed are my own or my child’s.

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