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In this edition of Happy Hatchling, Heather – mom and CheapTweet blogger – shares a few tips for developers of iPhone and iPad applications for kids. Be sure to follow Heather on Twitter and please share your tips in the comments.

I married into a technologically-savvy family. Family get-togethers involve quality time with laptops, iPads, and iPhones. Therefore, my kiddo has been exposed to Apple products her entire life and she’s been able to navigate my iPhone since she could crawl. Early on, my husband and I had to password-protect our phones so she wouldn’t inadvertently call our friends, send mass emails, or tweet!

When she was a little older we started downloading some kid-friendly apps for her to use. Although apps are innocently priced, with most only being $0.99, I’ve bought 4 or 5 bad apps for every good one I’ve found. Some are so awful that I feel like I have been scammed. Since I am a consumer and close observer of how my child plays these games, I feel entitled to give some advice. Here are my free (and unsolicited) consulting tips to kid app developers.

By the way, you can see my favorite iPad and iPhone apps in two previous posts: Baby’s First iPhone Apps and Best Toddler iPad and iPhone Apps.

1) Load fast, or don’t load at all.

There are lots of good apps out there (say hello to Elmo’s Monster maker and There’s a Monster at the End of this Book), but unless it loads quickly my toddler is not going to play them. Period. Do what you’ve got to do, but instantaneous play is key. If your game is not quick to load, then add in a fun progress bar that lets a kiddo know that the game is working and something is about to happen (for example, see Dora Ballet Adventure app).

2) Be more than a one note app.

Apps that have only one game or one element get old quickly for little kids. While a game like Dinosaur Stickers has cute graphics, it seldom gets played because the only option is dragging stickers around a page. This rule applies to book apps as well, which are typically formulated to move in one direction with minimal variation in the story. The apps that my child likes the most are those that are interactive and can change from one play to the next. See the book feature in Fun with Thadros (pictured) for a good quality book where you get to pick what is going to happen next.

3) If you’re going to offer a free app, don’t be a jerk.

I like free apps but I also realize that nothing is truly free. I understand that to make a free app worthwhile, the producers may have to include ads or another source of income. However, for games designed specifically for children, I expect a little bit of discernment about appropriate advertising. For example, I am not a fan of free apps for little kids that have advertisements in the middle of the game or book (e.g., look at this Shaun the Sheep screencap), or games that contain advertisements that if clicked on send you to an external Internet site. By the way, this isn’t only a problem with free apps (for example, Winnie the Pooh Puzzle Book).

I like the idea of having a free app with limited functionality compared to the full-priced version so you can test it out and decide if you want more. However, when the free app is only the first 10 pages from a complete book (Dr. Seuss), that is lame.

4) Have a good narrator.

This rule applies to flash cards, games, and book apps. The game Toddler Teasers Food is a decent game, but the narrator’s robotic female voice is grating. But my child loves and responds well to the kids’ voices in the Peekaboo Wild games.

5) Don’t make your application too large.

Most kids don’t have their own iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. Instead they have to share with their parents who have their own set of applications, songs, videos, and games. Thus, competition for space should be a real concern for app developers. We downloaded a game called My Stuffy Bunny, which is another decent game, but it has long since been removed from all our Apple products because of its size (95.8 MB!). We’re unlikely to keep a game that takes up so much space, when we could have 3-8 smaller games in its place (most games range from 4 MB – 40 MB).

In this edition of Happy Hatchling, Heather – mom and CheapTweet blogger – shares some of her favorite iPhone and iPad apps for kids. Last summer, she wrote a roundup of baby-friendly iPhone and iPad apps, and it’s time for an update. Be sure follow Heather on Twitter and please share your tips in the comments.

Yes, I confess, my daughter has her own iTouch. We didn’t purposely get her one, but it came with another purchase so we thought we’d load some toddler-friendly games on it. She gets to use the iTouch when we go on vacation or eat out. I now wonder how I would live without one! She loves to play the games, it keeps her quietly entertained, and many of the apps are educational as well.

In my search for fun iPhone and iPad apps for kids, I have come across MANY duds, but my husband and I have also found several our daughter really likes. So for parents looking for fun apps that are easy enough for babies and toddlers to use, look no further! You can review my iPhone apps post from last year, and below is an all-new, updated list of my preferred kid-friendly iPad and iPhone apps.

1) My Coloring Book Free

This fabulous app is designed to be very similar to a regular coloring book with more than 30 pages/scenes to choose from. The best part is that you cannot color outside the lines. To play, select a color from the palette and then touch the part of the picture you want in the desired color. My daughter loves this game, but plays it by coloring in all pages in one identical color.  Although she has not grasped the idea of using multiple colors, this game keeps her attention for long spans of time.

Download My Coloring Book Free here, free for iPad and iPhone

2) Fish School

Another amazing iPhone app for kids is by Duck Duck Moose, whose Itsy Bitsy Spider game is still my favorite kids app (previously featured in my first iPhone apps post). Even if you only ever purchased iPhone/iPad games made by this company, then your kids would be highly entertained. This particular Fish School game has everything from free play (guiding fish around a tank), to ABCs, numbers, shapes, and more. I love the cute fish and it is easy for toddlers to navigate.

Download Fish School here, $1.99 iPad and iPhone

3)  MixMe-FixMe

This game is simple – you match three puzzle pieces (a head, mid section, and legs) together to create a person. Even if your child does not understand the objective of the puzzle, it’s still fun to use your fingers to slide different heads on to different bodies. When you do line up the correct person (ex. fireman), you get rewarded with a colorful scene (ex. fireman fighting a fire). I love this game because it is a puzzle with attractive graphics, but not overly complicated so little ones can play. This app is great on airplanes or in restaurants because it’s still understandable and fun when silenced.
Download MixMe-FixMe here, $0.99 for iPad and iPhone

4) Doodle Buddy

This app (not pictured) is essentially a drawing canvas with many color options as well as stamps. You draw by tracing your finger over the paper and you can clear the drawing by shaking the iPhone or iPad.  My daughter started playing this game at 18 months and still enjoys it at 30 months. She loves the stamp feature, which includes pictures of ladybugs, fire, smiley faces, and more. The newer versions of this app appear to be getting more complicated by adding more features. The older versions are a bit easier to use; nevertheless, you can’t beat this free app.

Download Doodle Buddy here, free for iPad and iPhone

5) C is for Cow

C is for Cow is an educational iPhone app with beautiful artwork. This app goes through the ABCs, featuring animals for each letter. You slide your finger to go to the next letter and tap the buttons to hear the letter sound or the animal name. If you love the pictures, this company has a similar app that with animal sounds called Speak, Piggy.

Download C is for Cow here, $0.99 iPad and iPhone

6) Little Uzu

The makers of the Little Uzu app explain this game as “a kinetic multitouch particle visualizer.” My toddler just thinks it’s cool. It requires no skill, but encourages kids (and adults) to explore and discover how the colors react to your touch. The colors and motion changes as your hand moves across the screen and the more places you touch the more complex the designs become. Kids like it because there are no rules and no specific buttons to push; however, it is not a game that commands a long attention span.

Download Little Uzu here, $0.99 iPad and iPhone

7) Dora’s Ballet Adventure

This game barely squeezed onto this list because my daughter loves Dora and spends lots of time on this game. But it has a few downsides.

Pros: the graphics are great, the game is set up exactly like an episode so it is a familiar format, the game is long so it feels worth the higher price tag, and the words highlight as the story is read so it can help new readers.

Cons: this game takes parental guidance to teach young ones how to play, the game never changes or has alternate routes so it could get boring after several plays, you have to click through lots of text to get to the next objective, and it cannot be played easily while on silent.

Download Dora’s Ballet Adventure here, $2.99 iPhone and $3.99 iPad

These are some of Heather’s favorite iPhone and iPad apps for kids – what are you some of your favorites?