Lumosity Labs has been putting a big focus on their LumiKids division. LumiKids Park was the first outing for the science-focused brain-training company. They released their second game, LumiKids Beach, back in April. Just like the first game, LumiKids Beach uses cute art and little instruction to keep kids engaged and challenged.
LumiKids Beach
In LumiKids Beach, kids interact in a variety of ocean-related games that are designed to help children develop core skills. In the first game, kids click on crabs holding sand buckets in order to build a sand castle. Eventually crabs holding water balloons will pop up along with the sand buckets. If you click a water balloon, it will remove part of your sand castle. This helps kids develop response inhibition. Sometimes kids, and even adults, get into a mode of just repeating the same thing over and over again without consciously realizing it. The crab game makes kids pay attention to what they’re clicking and learn to stop when needed.
Next up is the coloring game, which is designed to develop fine-motor and planning skills. In the game, kids use their fingers to color in fish. Once the fish is colored in, it begins to swim around. Then you must color in the subsequent fish without the color touching any completed fish. This can be tricky if the fish are close together, so you have to pick the best fish to color at specific times to avoid the fish running into each other.
The third game features singing turtles. You click on the turtles to hear them sing a note. Then you must match turtles with the same sound and put them together on groups of islands. The turtle game is designed to develop auditory-processing and memory skills. The musical-pitch aspect of this game wasn’t something I was expecting. I didn’t even know what auditory processing was; I certainly didn’t know it was a core skill.
Between the games are a few simple interactions with pairs of people. You have to pick one of two items that the person wants. These interactions are designed to develop emotional response and visual matching.
Cost
Like LumiKids Park, LumiKids Beach is free.
I really like the LumiKids apps. They have a great look and the fact that the difficulty changes dynamically based on how well your child is doing in the game is a big plus in my book.
