123 Color HD: Premium Edition | an outstanding & educative Coloring-book app for kids

Every now and again you can find some beautiful pearls, if you fish in the blurry waters of the AppStore.

I have tested and seen many apps for kids and i am always glad to be sharing only the special and greatest ones with you!
It is therefore a delight to be introducing you to one of the prime coloring and learning apps for kids (our shining pearl): “123Color”!
123 Color is the number 1 kids app in Education and for being the best drawing and painting apps on the AppStore.

123 Color is a Coloring book app, which doesn’t only set new standards in quantity and size, but also shines with the profession of it’s programming. Yes, i have to admit, i literally adore this app and i will let you know why.

Let’s start off by looking at the screenshot below:

The goregeously animated start screen devides the app into 4 different subject areas:

* Balloon: painting by numbers

* Star: creative free-hand drawing

* Flower: Learning capital letters + drawing with letters

* Tree: Learning small letters + drawing with letters

We are mostly amazed by the freestyle finger painting with perfect paint, a patent-pending technology that makes it impossible for kids to paint outside the lines – fantastic!
This technology is perfect for kids aged 3+ or even for those who aren’t yet so familiar with the iPad & iPhone. It’s the best way to learn how to finger-paint on a screen. Basically, the first area that is touched on the screen, is the area which can be colored-in with a chosen color, until the finger meets the outlines of that area.
If the finger slips over the outline, it won’t matter and won’t affect the rest of the picture, as the paint is stopped by the perfect paint mode. That way, even the younger children can have a perfectly painted picture, which you just want to print out straight away and which of course, you can too!
What’s also great about this functionality, is that even smaller, more detailed drawings can be colored in nicely, without going over the lines, which happens mostly with other drawing apps for kids. It is also a pro, as you can use this app on your iPhone without troubles and even while you’re on the move, we therefore really appreciate this painting and drawing app.

As you can see on this screenshot of the fairies and princesses colouring book, the background was painted without affecting the little fairy or butterflies.
You can also use the bucket as an alternative to using your finger, which will fill-in the areas straight away and it saves time but, it is not as much fun as swiping with your finger across the screen and watching the progress your’re making.

You only need to select a color field and the area which you want coloring-in to fill with the paint, once you selected the bucket on the menu at the top of your screen.

Another Coloring mode is the paintbrush, which is also more suitable for older kids, who are able to freely operate with a virtual paintbrush. They will need to take care of the outlines themselves.

The Coloring pallet has a wide range of 30 colors and you can scroll through them, by sliding the bottom color bar from left to right.
“123 Color” is a real contrast to other drawing and painting apps, as the colours, numbers and letters are being named by an audio response, once they’re selected.
That way, younger kids learn the pronunciation of various colors, letters and numbers, loud and clearly, but also older children learn colors such as ‘olive-green’ etc.

There is a huge range of coloring books inside this 123 Color “premium” app.
There are 35 coloring books all together. If you buy the standard 123 Color app, you’d need to buy each individual coloring book via in-app purchase.
123 Color HD Premium Edition includes more than 350 iPhone and iPad cartoons, drawings, photos, world maps (iPad only), and handwriting guides in all, to be painted by freestyle finger painting or touch-to-fill, along with voice-overs of letters, numbers, and colors in 6 languages, and much more!

(excerpt of iTunes below for extra information about the premium package)
123 Color HD is jam packed with features and teaches the following skills:
• Numbers, letters (upper and lower case) and colors.
• Spelling of numbers and colors in all six languages
• Basic shapes including squares, triangles, circles, ovals, parallelograms, and trapezoids,
• Compound shapes including cubes, pyramids, cones, wedges, concentric circles, and more
• World maps (iPad only) teach the shapes of our world
• Artistic expression, drawing and painting skills

Here’s an overall list of the types of Coloring books that are included:

Winter motives
Spring motives
Autumn motives
Fairies and princesses motives
Shapes
Cosmic space and robots
Patterns coloring book
Back to school coloring book
funny caricatures
Dinosaurs motives etc.
* Hint: You can select and chhose the different coloring books in the main menu.

In another Coloring book called “photo & picture”, you can decorate your photos with some lovely stickers, which can be scaled and rotated. You can also add different kinds of frames to your picture. Some really nice greeting cards can be created and kids can freely experiment.

I should have told you from the start that this app is pretty enormous, and it really has so much to offer! it really shows that it is also worth every penny!

If you haven’t already read enough of this kids app, i would like to carry on with yet another fabulous function:

“A writing guidance for numbers and letters”
Kids get encouraged to trace numbers and letters, in which they will learn how to write them, also with the help of voice-overs so they can perceive by hearing the letters and numbers. This is also fantastic, if kids need to learn a foreign language.

The balloon, tree and flower modes:

Learning numbers, letters and Capital letters in a creative and fun way, basically with painting by numbers and letters.
This concept was beautifully converted by 123 Colors. Each color from the pallet was allocated with a number or letter and so was each area of the picture. Kids can therefore match the numbers and letters with the appropriate color.
If the choice was correct and the numbers or letters match, an audio response will confirm this and sparkling stars will appear on the screen as a little reward, which motivates and encourages the children.

Have i mentioned the sound effects and various songs of this kids app yet?
Well, there are many different songs to choose from, which you can freely switch on or off. There are about 25 rewarding songs available. Do you even expect this in a Coloring-book app? I was very impressed by this, there is just so much to discover in this great app.

Songs included:
• London Bridges
• Wheels On The Bus
• Mary Had A Little Lamb
• Oh Susanna
• I’ve Been Working On The Railroad
• Minuet by Beethoven
• Ode To Joy
* plus 16 others

All options, songs and audio responses are available in these languages:

English (American, UK + Australian), Chinese, Arabic, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

If you like to teach your child one ore more languages, you should really use this app to help kids learn fast and in a fun way. The possible combinations are great and learning other languages can be so entertaining and worthwhile with 123 Color!

Top best apps for kids rating: 5 stars

kids app developer: Steve Glinberg
kids app test based on app version 2.0.17