Review: Nighty Night! HD iPad Bedtime App for Kids

As the dad of a one-year old who seriously dislikes going to bed, I thought I would take this bestselling app for a spin. Nighty Night! HD is essentially an interactive bedtime book for toddlers aged 1-4.

The app built especially for the Apple iPad helps kids learn about your run-of-the-mill farm animals as well as preps them to go to bed by ‘helping’ the app turn off the lights, all the while, the 7 different animals make their noises and move around.

Unfortunately, my daughter doesn’t quite get the whole concept of pressing the light switch to turn off the light just yet. In fact, I initially found it hard to find the lightswitch the first time around, but I probably wasn’t paying enough attention. The graphics are simply gorgeous, and there is a playful nature to the way the animals are drawn, animated and sounded.

Nighty Night has both lullaby music and narration by English actor Alistair Findlay. If your kid is like mine and only wants to slap your iPad, there is an autoplay mode that walks through the entire sequence unaided.

As a new father, I still don’t get that kids love repetition, and immediately thought that I wouldn’t want to pay $1.99 for an app for which they may lose all interest in after a few months, but on second thought, $2 for an interactive story is actually a lot cheaper than many other children’s books out there. For that and the care with which this app was put together, I heartily recommend it.