Tiggly Shapes: Learning toys for iPads

Tiggly Shapes is a product for children 18 months to 4 years-old. It’s learning about shapes right out of the box.

Tiggly Shapes by Tiggly is a product designed as a spacial learning tool for the Apple iPad designed to improve motor skills, creativity and language development of toddlers between the ages of 18 months to 4 years of age. We, at Windy Pinwheel, were approached by a representative at Tiggly to try out a set of these shapes for ourselves. Our children are just about in the right age range for this product (we have a 5 year-old daughter, 3 year-old son and a newborn daughter born December 31, 2013), so we agreed to test out Tiggly Shapes for ourselves. We certainly know we will absolutely get a good deal of use out of this product.

Tiggly Shapes sells for about $29.95 at places like Amazon.com, The Apple Store, The Grommett, Grand St., and Nordstrom.

The package includes four shapes: triangle, circle, star, and square. Each of the shapes are coated with a textured rubber for easy gripping of the shape and on the bottom are contact points to touch to the iPad itself. Each of the shapes has its own contact points set a certain distance apart and along the shape to tell the iPad what shape is being pressed against the screen.

Each of the shapes come in a vibrant color as well. A yellow triangle, red square, green circle, and blue star.

At the time of this posting, there are four apps that pair with the physical Tiggly Shapes. Tiggly provided Windy Pinwheel with the Tiggly Christmas app for us to review and we will follow up this post with a review of that app. Each app has vibrant colors and as you can see in the video below, a child can interact by using a specific shape to find out what animal will be revealed after matching a given shape or used to create a picture of their own creation to either save and share with friends and family (with mom and dad’s help, of course to send/save the image) or just make picture after picture using each of the four shapes.

As it is mentioned below in the Amazon.com video review, the entertainment potential for someone over the specified age range for the Tiggly Shapes product can be “limited”. However, a young toddler can have a lot of fun playing with these shapes. The educational value is there for the parent as well; so that’s a win for the parent.

There is only one drawback that I could find about this product, which I discussed with Tiggly; the shapes don’t interact well when there is a cover on the iPad like the Griffin Survivor Case. This is an important touch point for me because I tend to leave my toddler with some juice or something like that to drink and the case helps to protect against spills. Also, having to remove the case for each use of the Tiggly Shapes can be a cumbersome chore, since the case is spill-proof and hard to get on in the first place. The representative at Tiggly assured me that this is something that they are working diligently to address in future iterations of the product, so we should see something soon from them that will interact nicely with any iPad whether or not there is a case covering the iPad.

Overall, for the price of what you would pay for a toy (without interaction potential for the iPad), you can pick up Tiggly Shapes for your budding toddler to interact with on a digital iPad platform. I feel it is definitely worth the investment.

Here is a video review on Amazon.com about Tiggly Shapes:

Where: Amazon.com, The Apple Store, The Grommett, Grand St., and Nordstrom.

What: Tiggly Shapes

Need to know: Tiggly Shapes is rated for kids 18 months-4 year-olds. Any older and the entertainment value is “limited”.

Extra Extra: Tiggly has a great blog discussing a wide variety of topics related to children, the parent’s role in educating their children, and the intersection of technology and education.

Website/Contact Information: tiggly.com.