Shiny Picnic

Join Charlie the Monkey and his friends Alice and Ralph as they prepare for a picnic in the jungle!

✮ Shiny Picnic is a funky learning app for preschool children with very cool graphics [that] bridges the gap between informal learning and formal maths instruction - Apps In Education ✮

Shiny Picnic is a fun and colourful learning app for children aged 2 - 4 years. Children can listen and read along with the story, and then help Charlie and his friends in three embedded games. As they play, children develop their early mathematics skills through practicing matching, sorting and one-to-one correspondence.

With fun games, engaging characters and familiar objects and themes, Shiny Picnic bridges the gap between informal learning and formal mathematics instruction and prepares children for the development of further numeracy skills.

EDUCATIONAL CONTENT

MATCHING
is the ability to classify and pair like objects. Shiny Picnic helps children to develop this skill by encouraging them to recognise the shared characteristics of already familiar objects, including colour, shape and theme, with increasing complexity as the game progresses.

SORTING
is a progression from matching, involving sorting matched items into new groups. Shiny Picnic scaffolds the development from matching to sorting and teaches children to group like-objects in sets. Shiny Picnic includes sorting by colour and shape, as well as free-sorting, which encourages the development of problem-solving skills.

ONE-TO-ONE CORRESPONDENCE
is fundamental to the development of numeracy and, in particular, to the concept of quantity. Children need practice with one-to-one correspondence before they can develop meaningful counting skills; without this concept, children are simply rote-learning a number sequence rather than understanding that “two” implies a quantity more than “one”. Shiny Picnic encourages the development of this skill as children share items ‘one-to-one’ among characters.

LITERACY
The games and activities are embedded within a fun and engaging narrative that children can follow as they play. With highlighted text as the story is read aloud, Shiny Picnic assists the development of essential literacy skills. In particular, Shiny Picnic promotes whole word recognition through the use of key sight-words and press-and-recognise text.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS
Shiny Picnic encourages the development of fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as children catch, grab, drag and swipe on-screen items.