Splash Brush Colorbook app beats the mess of a real one
Splash Brush Colorbook is an educational coloring book app for pre-schoolers and Kindergarten kids that incorporates letters and numbers into the coloring. Each letter and number is linked with a visual representation, like A for ant, and it's up to the child to color in the entire page. Splash Brush Colorbook is available for both iPhone and iPad universally and is free with in-app purchases.
The app offers two coloring "books," one containing the alphabet and the other containing a number pack. The alphabet pack has an image representative of a word beginning with every letter, plus the letter placed within the image. Everything is in black and white and in need of color. Luckily, Splash Brush Colorbook offers a generous assortment of 35 different paintbrush colors for kids to scroll through and tap to select. This is a big plus as it allows kids to get really creative with the coloring.
There's three brush sizes to work with and three eraser sizes. Even the smallest brush size seemed a bit too big as it was hard to color into edges of borders. Additionally, the app seems to be more tailored for iPad use. Even drawing on my iPhone 6 feels cramped. Underneath the paintbrush and eraser are buttons to save and share the colorful creation or clear all progress and start from scratch. Parents be warned: the sharing feature means your children can share their paintings to your social networks if they're using your iOS device.
An ant accompanies the letter A, a bear accompanies the letter B, a cat is with the letter C, so on and so forth. For free, the app gives you six different canvas: A, B, C, D, E and F. To unlock the rest of the alphabet requires an in-app purchase for US$0.99. The numbers pack is also a separate purchase for the same price.
The app lets kids to save their work to the camera roll, but there isn't a way to save it within the app or even just save progress to return and complete later. That's a bit disappointing. Kids will have to complete their work within one shot. It'd be nice if Splash Brush Colorbook offered a save-progress feature, but I could also see the alphabet pack being a 26-day project for kids to complete, assuming you're willing to shell out a buck to unlock the full set of letters.
I also took my iPhone off silent to discover the app apparently plays music too. It's no Bach or Beethoven, though thankfully it's no Nicki MInaj either - just your average clichéd but always pleasant ice cream truck songs.
My biggest feature request is actually smaller brush sizes to make coloring easier, especially on an iPhone's comparatively small screen real estate. Still, Splash Brush Colorbook is definitely worth a download in my book. Even if you opt to spend the $2 for both in-app purchases, that's likely cheaper than buying an physical, educational coloring book...and it's much less messier too. Get Splash Brush Colorbook for free in the App Store.
