3 Creative Apps for Kids That You’ll Want to Keep for Yourself

I think we’ve already established that I’m slightly retarded, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that some of my favorite apps are actually programs meant for kids.  Here are three I’m particularly fond of:

1. Toonworks Deluxe

Toonworks Deluxe is a comprehensive multimedia drawing program that mixes learning with laughter. As your masterpieces develop, you’ll be delighted by the zany graphics and sound effects that follow you every step of the way.

Unlike first generation drawing applications, Toonworks Deluxe includes easy-to-use features that are found only in professional illustration and publishing tools:

• Hundreds of clipart images that can be used to create billions of character combinations
• 100 professionally-designed, original cartoon characters to help get you started
• 50 project wizards to instantly create posters, calendars, greeting cards, placemats and  pages
• “Distort-O-Matic” tools that twist, turn and stretch characters for hilarious effects
• Special effects drawing tools for electrifying, exploding, squashing, spinning and splatting cartoon masterpieces
• Options for saving projects to industry standard formats for use in other applications and on the web including BMP, EMF, EMF+, JPEG, PNG & WMF
• Support for importing image file formats used by digital cameras, scanners and the web
• An e-mail facility for sending creations to friends & family
• Format support for IKE’s Inkshop Design Studio

2. Knowledge Adventure: Books by You

Knowledge Adventure Books by You™ is a make-your-own-book experience that inspires the love of reading in children as they create and publish their own books.

Award-winning actor and author John Lithgow guides children every step of the way as they choose a story line and transform it with their own ideas. Kids can add pictures, design a cover and dedicate the book to someone special. When done, you can publish a real book that your child will love to read and your family will treasure for years to come.

• Choose from four exciting story lines
• Answer John Lithgow’s thought provoking questions to transform the stories
• Change and edit each chapter of your book
• Import digital photos and drawings to personalize the book
• Publish a hard or soft cover book (for an additional fee)

3. MagicBook

MagicBook is an electronic coloring book application that allows children of all ages to develop their artistic and computer abilities in a fun way.

The application includes a picture management window that makes adding, viewing, and removing pictures easier, and the drawing tools have recently been redesigned to work (and look) better with the colored mouse icons.

MagicBook features:

• Clean interface with graphical buttons suitable for children of all ages.
• Fun way to select colors for painting with (they will have hours of fun with this feature!).
• Four different tools (crayons, paint brush, pencil and marker pen) that produce the results like real mediums.
• Unique image processing engine ensures that all painted images turn out perfect, every time!
• Child-friendly error messages that will allow them to alert you of problems.
• Parental lock feature which means that you can go away and let children explore at their own pace.
• Print images directly from The MagicBook. They will be automatically resized to fit onto the page.
• Options to switch sounds off, hide the parental buttons and to apply parental lock.
• Colored images are saved as compressed pictures so they don’t take up too much space.

Hope your kids (or umm.. you) enjoy these apps as much as I do!