Older explorers aged 7–12 can subscribe to Ranger Rick’s Tree House, an app that invites kids to explore Ranger Rick’s tree house home, a place filled with intriguing rooms and all kinds of wildlife fun.

Still not convinced? Here are five great reasons to get your paws on these apps:

Left: Ranger Rick Jr. Appventures; Right: Ranger Rick’s Tree House

1. They’re on sale right now for Earth Day

This one’s a no brainer. Since Ranger Rick is Earth’s best friend, we’re celebrating his favorite holiday with a sale on his apps. Both Tree House and Appventures are 60% off all week long, from April 22–29. That means they’re $1.99 instead of $4.99! See, I told you, no brainer.

2. They teach kids about animals and nature

If your kids are fascinated by the animals on the pages of the magazines, they’ll love all the ways that animals come alive in our apps.

In Appventures: Lions, kids discover videos, photos, animation, and illustrated factoids as they wind their way through a tale about lions told by their friendly guides, Lars and Ricky. It’s impossible to get bored when there’s so much to explore. In the Tree House, the experience of reading a fascinating Ranger Rick adventure story gets even richer. Wildlife articles spring to life with eye-popping photos, clickable facts, funny animations, wildlife sounds, and more.

A scene from the interactive photo story in Appventures: Lions

3. They encourage kids to get outside

Kids can open the back door of the Tree House to find ideas for nature crafts and outdoor activities. They can even log the time they spend outside in their own backyards. And Appventures will get kids so excited about wildlife that they’ll want to embark on a safari in their own backyard!

The backyard in Ranger Rick’s Tree House app

4. They’re winning raves

Appventures was named one of the top 10 kids’ apps of 2012 by Entertainment Weekly and earned a silver medal from the Parents’ Choice Foundation. Bloggers like Geeks with Juniors love the fun and innovative way that Appventures presents educational content and teaches kids about nature.

Parents’ Choice named Tree House a recommended mobile app, and the bloggers at Dandelion Moms said “no other digital children’s magazine is more innovative, interactive, or just plain fun!”

5. They’re FUN!

Do you want to compose a tune with the soothing sounds of a lion roaring and an elephant trumpeting? Or create an animal with a cheetah’s tail, zebra’s body, and giraffe’s neck and head? The answer is yes, of course, and with Appventures you can do that and have a lot of other silly animal fun. You can even go on a photo safari: pick up the iPad and move it all around to snap shots of all the lions in the pride.

For more of a challenge, stop into the Tree House and play games like Ribbit Rodeo, where you lasso up a tasty meal of bugs for a hungry frog, or Manta Mission, where you help Manta Ray race through underwater roadblocks to get to the Manta Party on time. You can also venture into the “bFunny” room to laugh at comic gems like, “What do kangaroos eat for breakfast?” (Pouched eggs.)

Left: The “Make an Animal” game from Appventures; Right: “Ribbit Rodeo” game from Tree House

We’ve also teamed up with some great bloggers who are giving away download codes for the apps. Head over for your chance to win:

• Mommy Maestra
• Wee Share
• Babies Gotta Have It

Thanks to all the bloggers who have already reviewed our apps and hosted awesome giveaways!

• Momma D Jane
• Inspired by Savannah
• The IE Mommy
• 5 Minutes for Books
• Special Needs Orange County
• For Kids Entertainment
• Dandelion Moms
• iGameMom
• the iPhone mom
• Crafty Garden Mama
• Raising Them Green
• Curriculum Choice
• iHeartThisApp
• Geeks with Juniors
• BabyCenter
• NBC Latino

We learn in different ways and these apps appeal to the type of learner who learns by doing – or a kinesthetic learner. Instead of reading or listening to facts, you LIVE the facts!

In most of these apps, you move through a world by tapping or dragging your finger. Often you can play these games without the ability to read, making them appealing to younger children.

Here are my kids’ favorite apps of this type:

• BeBee the Bee - This was my son’s favorite app of ALL the apps we tested. You are Bebee flying around gathering pollen and nectar. When you see a flower, you tap above it and pollinate the flower. You also have to avoid obstacles such as other bees, thorns and dragonflies. My son was already familiar with the concept of pollination so I don’t know if he really learned a lot by playing this game, but he kept asking to play it because he enjoys games where he moves through a world gathering points. My daughter enjoyed this game as well. There is a free version of this app and you can unlock more levels for $1.99 or $2.99.

BeBee the Bee app

• Great Migrations HD – In this app, you learn about migrations of species such as monarchs, salmon, zebras and red crabs. You start with monarchs. One somewhat humorous aspect of this app is that if you have your sound on, the whole time it is playing some very dramatic scary music, like you might hear at the most dramatic moment of a movie. While migrations are definitely dramatic, that gets tiring and in fact, at one point, Nora got so stressed when her monarchs started to die that she said, “I just can’t do this!” I suggested we turn off the sound and then she enjoyed the game very much. She would take the role of the lead monarch, and she would experiment with the wind patterns, predators such as spiders and other obstacles to move her monarch friends to safety. She really enjoyed this game. This app costs $0.99.

Great Migrations app

• Isopod: The Roly Poly Science Game  – You are a “roly poly,” one of those tiny bugs that rolls into a ball when threatened. To play, you hold your iPad in two hands and slowly manipulate it back and forth as if the roly poly was a marble on the surface of the iPad, and you were trying to roll it back and forth. You have goals to bump into some types of insects to win, and avoid others to lose. The insects in the game are realistically drawn and their real Latin names are given. The predator/prey relationships are shown, although some insects have special powers like giving you more health. I found this game exciting because I don’t normally use an iPad this way, and it took practice. My son liked it more than my daughter. Both my kids love bugs, but it would not be a good choice if you are scared of spiders or find it creepy to listen to them chomping on insects. This app costs $1.99.

Isopod: The Roly Poly Science Game app

• Pocket Frogs – This was my daughter’s favorite app of all the ones we tested. It took us a minute to figure this out, but then she was collecting frogs, breeding them and making eggs in her frog nursery. She was completely excited about learning about frogs and managing her froggy world. The sound that the frogs make when they hop around in the pond is completely adorable, and this is coming from a parent who listened to it for a very long time. As Nora got more advanced with the game, she was strategizing which frogs to breed to create the cutest frog possible. This is a free app.

Pocket Frogs app

• Wild Kratts Creature Power – My son is a huge Wild Kratts fan. A few years ago, he became so interested that he and his dad designed costumes like the ones in this show out of cardboard and ribbon, so he could be a cheetah and have super powers. So I was quite sure the app would be a huge hit for him. Sure enough, he loved it. Even though it is not designed for iPad yet, we downloaded it to the iPad and it just didn’t fill the screen. But that didn’t stop Russell. By putting on his creature power suits, he could live like a bee, raccoon and elephant. This app costs $2.99.

Wild Kratts Creatures App – Bee

One feature he loved was that I could take his photo with the iPad and his face would be put into a graphic so it looked like he was wearing one of the power suits.

Wild Kratts Creatures App – My son’s face with the bee body

Which Wildlife and Nature Apps Does Your Family Enjoy?

We’d love to hear about your experiences with these apps or others. Of course nothing connects children with nature and wildlife more than time outside, so be sure to balance your screen time and green time today.

Also, I want to put in a plug for National Wildlife Federation’s award-winning kids’ magazines, because my kids love them. When you subscribe to our magazines, it helps National Wildlife Federation continue our work of engaging children to care about nature! Subscribe to Ranger Rick and Ranger Rick Jr. magazines today!

And be sure to check out National Wildlife Federation’s animal and nature apps for kids!

I want apps with the following qualities:

• Appealing to my kids – They want to interact with it.
• Appropriate reading – The reading level works for a six-year-old and a nine-year-old.
• Good wildlife content – After they play, they have new information about wildlife.
• Inspirational – After they play, this app comes up in conversation. They build on the concepts they learned either in their art or creative play.

We tested apps on an iPad2.

Meet Nora and Russell

Their profiles might help you know which games would appeal to your kids.

Nora is nine. Nora enjoys playing outside. She knows every inch of the stream behind our house. She wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up. She has phone calls with her cousin where they exchange interesting fish facts. In Ranger Rick and Ranger Rick Jr. magazines, she wants to read the animal articles and jokes. Nora prefers apps where she learns about animals and creates a world for them to live in.

Russell is six. He does not go outside to play on his own steam, although once he is outside, he loves to climb trees and act out dramas with his sister and friends. In Ranger Rick and Ranger Rick Jr. magazines, he goes for the games and jokes.  Russell prefers apps that test his skill with the device, such as how fast can he move through a virtual world. He is a good reader for his age, but would rather explore a game through trial and error than by reading. He likes learning the rules and explaining them in detail to the rest of the family.

Even though they have different interests, they often like to look at apps together. So the best apps make sense to both their learning styles and reading levels.

Our Favorite Kid-Friendly Nature and Wildlife Apps

I searched for “best kids nature apps” and most apps I found did not teach about wildlife or nature. Most had a cute animal as the main character teaching how to read, do math or make art. While those are great goals, I was looking specifically for apps that increased my kids’ knowledge of wildlife and nature.

These apps reward you for learning facts about animals or nature. They usually require the ability to read.

These apps are listed in alphabetical order.

Click the Birdie – This is a National Wildlife Federation app where you take photos of birds in various habitats to fill out your scrapbook. I don’t feel I can rate this app because it was made by my family! I say my family because my husband coded the app, and kids tested it every step of the way. Of course we love this app, but check it out for yourself! The little girl in the Southwest habitat is named Nora in honor of our Nora. This app costs $0.99.

Click the Birdie app – “Nora” in the Southwest

Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence – I thought my fish-loving daughter might enjoy this app, even though it is not particularly designed for children. It is about a exhibition that was at the American Museum of Natural History. My guess was correct. The subject matter caught her attention, and while slideshows or video of typical animals would not interest her, we are talking about species that glow in the dark! She also liked the video about how they made the models for the museum exhibit. This app is free.

Meet the Insects: Forest Edition – Did I mention how much my daughter loves bugs? This app looks quite formal and a bit like a text book, but I have a daughter whose favorite books are field guides, so she loved it. We joked that most of the videos show males fighting over females because hey, what else could you videotape about an insect’s life and keep audiences interested? We loved the style which is a mix of cartoon and realistic art. Nora commented more than once, “These are really nice pictures.” She made the insect videos more exciting by adding her own dialogue. Russell was not interested in this one. This app cost $3.99.

A sample screen from the app “Meet the Insects”

Nature Tap – You are shown four species. Then you hear a bird call and you guess which bird is making the sound. With the insect module, you are shown the name of an insect, and you have to guess which insect matches the name. My daughter loved this app and wanted me to buy a lot more modules. The bird module is free and the insect module is free if you register. Other modules cost $1.99 or $2.99 each.

A girl playing the app “Nature Tap” on her iPad

Ranger Rick’s Appventures – What I find with most kid-oriented apps is that they contain one game or one concept, and so the kids “get it” quickly. What’s different about Appventures (and Tree House, below) is that they are multi-layered apps. It takes time to find all the parts. So the first time they each visited these apps, they looked around quickly, played one game and left. But what I found was each time they opened this app, they discovered a new thing. My son’s favorite parts were the puzzle utility, where you can put together simple or complex puzzles made from animal photos. He also liked the game which was like Photo Safari where you look through a habitat for animals and take photos of them. You hold your iPad with two hands and tilt it to see all sorts of nooks and crannies in the lion’s habitat. I won’t spill the beans, but make sure you look up in the sky when playing this game. Nora’s experience was different because really this app is designed for children younger than her. But what I found was that she enjoyed this app when playing with her brother. She would make him laugh by acting out dramas on the Sticker page or adding color commentary to the music area (where the keyboard keys sound like a lion, elephant or baboon.) This app brought my kids together. This app costs $4.99. This app is made by National Wildlife Federation.

Ranger Rick’s Appventures app

Ranger Rick’s Treehouse - Nora liked the dolphin book where she could learn facts and get more wildlife jokes. She also liked the outdoor time journal in the backyard area, recording all her outdoor time with the goal of earning a badge. She liked that at the end of the leopard game, the leopard finds its kitten. My son liked the dolphin flip game, especially when it got up to the two and three dolphins at one time. For some reason, my son found the video of the “dancing wallabies” to be completely hilarious and proceeded to watch it about twenty times. There is a free version of the app as an intro. Then this app costs $4.99 for one issue or $19.99 for an annual subscription that sends new content quarterly.

Ranger Rick Treehouse app

Survival - There are a lot of apps called Survival, so when you are searching, look for the one with the icon of the orange frog. You answer quiz questions about animals in rapid succession. The longer you “survive,” i.e. answer correctly, the more photos of an endangered species you get to see at the end. It takes practice because the method of answering the questions changes from one question to the next. At first, it was too difficult for my son, but he liked the bright colors and competing against his dad to survive longer. My daughter struggled with the “pinch” feature which is one way of answering questions, but figured it out. You really learn a lot about wildlife facts with this app, and you learn to answer fast! This app is free.

Survival app – sample screen

Tick Bait’s Universe – I would not have guessed that my kids would enjoy this app because it seems like too simple of a concept. However, it was recommended by Warren Buckleitner who reviews children’s apps, so I downloaded the free version. The app starts with a dog named “Tick Bait” and you can zoom in on his skin or out to outerspace. In the free version, you get to zoom about 13 levels, and with the paid version, you get more levels. The graphics are all hand drawn, not photographs. My kids got really excited about this app, even though it required lots of reading. This app is free and the paid version costs $4.99.

Tick Bait’s Universe App

Weird But True – Not all the facts in this app are about wildlife or nature, but many are. You are shown one interesting fact after another, and you rate how weird you find the fact. One bummer about this app is that every time you start it, it shows you the same facts. It is free and made by National Geographic.

Weird But True app

Which Wildlife and Nature Apps Does Your Family Enjoy?

We’d love to hear about your experiences with these apps or others. Of course nothing connects children with nature and wildlife more than time outside, so be sure to balance your screen time and green time today.

Update on March 7:

Check out our next app review blog – Apps where you get to pretend to be animals or naturalists – LIVE like wildlife in these apps!

Welcome to Ranger Rick’s Tree House!

But I finally found a way to wow my two toughest critics. I brought home an iPad loaded with Ranger Rick’s Tree House, a brand new interactive version of Ranger Rick magazine. And, according to my kids, it is really, really cool.

Open the app, and you find yourself inside Ranger Rick’s cozy tree house. With a tap of a finger, you can move to a video screening room to watch leopards run and dolphins dive. You can read articles, complete with gorgeous photos and fun pop-ups, and follow the comic adventures of Rick, Scarlett, and the rest of the gang. Or play games and catch up on animal riddles and jokes. At the end, you can take a quiz to earn a badge.

My kids are 5 and 3—technically a little young for the Tree House, which is aimed at children ages 7-12. But they love scrolling through the pages of the articles as I read along. They watch the videos with rapt attention (and ask a million questions). And they don’t seem to mind that their little fingers can’t quite master the games yet—they are fascinated anyway.

I grew up reading Ranger Rick, and I am proud that the magazine is just as well done as it was almost 30 years ago. I’m also glad that it is adapting to its readership. Kids still read print magazines, thank goodness. But e-readers, smart phones, and tablets aren’t going anywhere, and I think that’s probably a good thing. Kids will still read that leopards can drag a whole antelope up into a tree (it’s true!). But now they can also watch it happen—plus hear the leopard roar. Isn’t that what we want: something that encourages our kids to explore and be curious?

That’s what I want. Well, that—and for them to realize just how cool my job is. And thanks to Ranger Rick’s Tree House, now they do.

Ranger Rick’s Tree House is available by subscription for $14.99 per year or by the single issue for $4.99.

Which might lead kids to wonder what snakes REALLY eat. Take our quiz below to test what you already know, then read the fun facts below to wow the children in your life with your snake smarts.

And download What Did Snakey Eat?, which is available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch — and is coming soon on other devices.

7 Amazing Facts About Snakes

Garter Snake by Paul Marsh

Here’s some more info on snakes and their diets for those who are extra curious about the quiz answers:

1. The heaviest snake is the green anaconda. It can weigh more than 500 pounds—as much as a black bear or a lion!
2. The longest captured snake on record was almost as long as a school bus. The 32-foot python was discovered in Indonesia in 1912.
3. All snakes eat meat, including animals like lizards, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails, or insects.
4. The size of a snake’s prey depends on how big it is. The smallest snake in the world, the Barbados thread snake, eats ant and termite eggs.
5. The menu for bigger snakes, like pythons and anacondas, includes animals like deer, pigs, goats, and even jaguars and crocodiles.
6. Snakes must swallow their prey whole because they can’t use their teeth to chew or tear their food. They have very flexible lower jaws that allow them to do this, even if the meal is bigger than their own head!
7. How often a snake eats depends on how big it is, what kind of food it eats, how old it is, and when food is available. The emerald tree boa only eats once every few months. Other snakes eat once or twice a week.

A peaceful scene, sure, but look at that crest: This blue jay is angry! Photo by Dawn Huczek

It’s against company policy.

BUT. . . when we were working on Click the Birdie, our new iPad game app for kids, a certain other app involving birds came up a few times. It’s popular. Okay, maybe even addictive. (Does playing during work hours count as research? No? Darn.)

But we wanted our own bird app to be fun AND educational AND non-violent. So our app lets players capture birds on camera—no slingshots necessary.

Still, even the animal lovers at Ranger Rick can appreciate the fun in Angry Birds—and REAL angry birds. So here are a few of our favorite avian toughies.

Cardinal.  Ever seen a cardinal attack a window? Or a car’s side-view mirror? That bird doesn’t have anything against your house or car. It sees its own reflection and thinks it is a rival for territory.

American crow. Crows are famously smart birds. But they can also hold a grudge. A recent study found that crows remember people who have bugged them in the past—even years later. A researcher wore a distinctive mask while trapping and banding several crows. Crows HATE being banded. So right after the birds were released, they gathered around, scolding and mobbing the researcher. Five years later, a scientist in that same mask got the same angry reaction.

Blue jay. This bright blue bird is known for the crest on top of its head—and its feisty attitude. If you ever wonder what the blue jay in your yard is thinking, that crest gives a pretty good clue: The higher the crest, the higher the jay’s level of aggression.

Mockingbird. Mockingbirds are notoriously aggressive and protective of their nests. Exhibit A: In 2007, the Postal Service sent letters to some Tulsa, Oklahoma, customers, warning them that a local mockingbird had repeatedly attacked postal workers on their block. The Postal Service deals with aggressive dogs all the time—but rarely with birds. So the service used its usual form letter for owners of aggressive dogs. But in the letter, the words “your dog” were crossed off—and replaced with “a mockingbird.” Beware of bird!

Of course, these birds aren’t exactly angry—they are protecting their nests or their territory or trying to fend off an attacker.

If you or your kids would like to learn more about native birds from Hawaii to the East Coast—while playing a fun game!—check out Click the Birdie at the App Store. You can also test your bird knowledge with our quiz “Are You a Bird Brainiac?” Also, we’d like to tip our hat to this attempt to link the characters from Angry Birds to real bird species.

All aboard! Amtrak's new kids' website offers fun games that test memory, problem-solving, and knowledge of the environment.

Hey, parents! Gas prices are sky-high and it’s almost time to make summer travel plans. But if you’d like to avoid all the hassles of car travel—pricey fuel, bad traffic, and (worst of all?) bored kids—maybe you should consider going by train.

While you ponder your options, get your kids excited about rail travel by steering them to Amtrak’s new Kids Depot, an interactive website where kids of all ages can learn about the history of rail travel, geography, and the environment. There are also some fun memory and problem-solving games—a few of them featuring art from Ranger Rick! (Check out the “Park” section.)

The site also offers downloadable and printable activities, including coloring sheets, word searches, and matching games. So once you decide to travel by rail, your kids can be entertained on the train, too. Not that they’ll necessarily need it. If your kids are like mine, traveling by train is excitement enough!

ALSO: Whether you hit the rails or the road, be sure to check out our own travel activities to keep kids thinking about the great outdoors even while they are stuck inside a moving vehicle.

Photolibrary.com

Welcome to the Free Play Project, which celebrates the history of unstructured, spontaneous play for children in the United States by gathering audio recordings of people’s memories of stickball, marbles, and other outdoor games.

I was inspired by the Library of Congress’s Veterans’ History Project, which collects soldiers’ personal war stories, and by Bird Notes, a lovely podcast feature on National Public Radio that plays a bird song and then tells something about the bird, such as the shy wood thrush that calls at dusk in deciduous forests around my home in New England.

On the face of it, veterans’ tales and bird songs don’t have much in common, but in both instances we are recovering something that is lost, is becoming lost, or is no longer understood. Free play for children in America falls under all three categories.

We begin by interviewing people that grew up during the Great Depression, a generation that is quickly disappearing. Many faced financial hardships as children, and, when I interviewed them, they talked about playing with little to no resources, a lesson we could heed in our own hard economy.

Hear the stories of the outdoor games played by Connie Cain (b. 1924) and Nick Lavnikevish (b. 1920) during the Great Depression. Also, refresh your memory on the rules to your favorite outdoor games,

During the Depression, there were no jobs for kids. There were no jobs for adults. Almost all of the men and women I spoke with remember a father or mother losing a job after the great Stock Market Crash of 1929. As one man who grew up outside of Boston recalled, “My dad came home and said, ‘All done; no more work.’ And he didn’t get another regular job for many years. We moved many times, from house to flat to flat and then, finally, to a house again, when things improved.”

They all shared a collective sense of lacking as children that they assuaged with street play. Of course, not all of them achieved joy, especially those growing up in poor rural areas or harsh inner city neighborhoods. It’s easy to be nostalgic for what was, but much of what they experienced sprang from neglect and want. We can’t, won’t and probably shouldn’t reclaim what they knew in its entirety but we should preserve it (and maybe borrow a little!).

The spirit that carried Americans through the Great Depression and World War II sprang, in part, from the street play of their youth, which required creativity, resourcefulness and self-reliance.

For now, I am collecting tales from people who live near me in New England, but I hope to expand the project with help from readers like you. Share your own outdoor play memories on Facebook and Twitter!

One of the best ways families can celebrate is by helping kids develop a lifelong sense of responsibility to our planet. Starting with a few simple activities, your family can enjoy more time in nature and engage together in unstructured outdoor play, year-round.

Earth Day Activities

Make a worm compost bin: Red wigglers will devour banana peels, apple cores, lettuce, leftovers-gone-bad, and so forth, then the worms turn their meals into black castings that make great fertilizer for gardens and houseplants.

Show your kids the importance of conserving energy at home: Have your children turn off the lights in rooms they aren’t using. Let them help you change out old bulbs in exchange for compact fluorescent ones which can reduce energy use by up to 75 percent. If every home in America upgraded just one light bulb, collectively we would save about $700 million in annual energy costs.

Learn from Lanie: This year, NWF proudly partnered with American Girl’s 2010 Girl of the Year Lanie, who discovers the world in her own backyard. Lanie can inspire kids to connect with nature through fun outdoor activities, events and curriculum materials.

Get Outside

Help get 100,000 kids outside! Join the Be Out There movement and sign a pledge to spend time outside with the kids in your life.

Click here to read 8 Ways to Get Outside, Reduce Your Waste, and Have Fun!

This week, spend time with your family and friends to build a love of the environment, together.

Photo Credit: Charlie Archambault

They include:

• A fun activity guide for kids
• A guide for educators and parents
• An activity poster (pdf)

For more information on the NWF Be Out There parent’s education campaign please visit our website.