Jump Up and Join In – a brand new app #juji – AD gifted item

disclosure:  we were given free access to this app for the purpose of review, our comments however, remain our own honest thoughts.

As you know we were very lucky to get an exclusive sneak preview of the Jump Up and Join In app last week, when we met Carrie and David Grant at Egmont in London.

The app was officially launched yesterday and is now available to buy from the Apple store as Jump Up and Join In – Lion’s Speedy Sauce for £2.49 for Ipad and iPhone users.  The app is aimed at 4-8-year-olds, so my son is coming into the bottom end of the age group at just over 3 and half.

We were given early access to this app so we could have a play, but as with all the best plans, it didn’t quite work.  I’m a techno dinosaur, only got my iPhone two weeks ago (I was very attached to my old Blackberry until I started blogging and realised how slow it was) and have kept him away from computers.  So this was our first app download, I don’t have an Ipad so we were trying to download to my iPhone late on Friday night.  Uuum, the file size was too large for the phone, needed to go through our home wifi, uuum, that is all sorted through Daddy P’s business, we didn’t know the ‘unlock’ key for the wifi – no help available until Monday  – oh well, just as well I hadn’t told my son about his new toy!!  A learning curve for Mummy 🙂

So, finally, yesterday afternoon I could link up with our home wifi, so that’s sorted now! My son had had a long day already, so I decided to wait until this morning before seeing what he thought to a bit of app time with #juji.

I was really intrigued to see what would happen when I told him about playing the #juji app on my iPhone.  This would be a first for him.  He remembered our visit to London immediately, and that the Lion plays Bongos!  A good start.

Basically, this app, is based on the first book and CD in the #juji series – called Lion’s Speedy Sauce about a Lion who needs some speedy curry sauce to liven him and his beats up!

You start the app and you can listen and watch the story, he was captivated, even with the small iPhone screen.  At the end of the story, you can try playing the Bongo’s yourself – either freestyle – my son liked this option the best, or you can try to repeat the drum sequence, and earn stars for each level completed. He struggled a little to select the different levels, due to the size of things on the iPhone screen, then again, he is a novice.

You can then play musical stairs, again he prefered the freestyle approach today – going up and down the musical scales – he played this for ages with no instruction from me.

Then he remembered the fun he had last week dressing his Lion ready to sing and dance with David and Carrie and wanted to try this again.

You can add your own face photo to your character, Monkey was camera-shy today, so I used one stored on the iPhone, you size the face into the frame (again he would have struggled to do this himself at the moment, with the size of the iPhone screen) and then can add different hair/hats, body and legs.  My son did find this a bit trickier on the iPhone screen as opposed to the Ipad we had seen at the preview – but this was also his first-ever go, so he did rather well really.

I had zero chance of getting him to sing today, but you can sing along with Carrie and David and record yourself, and they play a clip with your character dancing along to the song, you can also pick a background.  We didn’t get that far today, but he still had lots of fun.

If you do get to record your little masterpiece you can share it on the JUJI series Facebook page here and you never know, you might get spotted by Carrie and David themselves.

So what did we think?  This was his first experience of any app and of using my sacred iPhone!  He was entertained and it held his attention through the various activities – no mean thing when there isn’t a tractor or digger involved.  He liked it.

As for me, I have nothing to compare this app to as this was also my first experience with an app.  What I do like, is that there is a story, your child is learning about music and singing whilst having fun.  Nothing is getting zapped! I can see an educational background to the app which pleases me.

Will we be playing #juji again? Yes 🙂  Are we looking forward to more app’s to go with the rest of the book series? Definitely.