Curious About Shapes and Colors is Curious George's newest iPhone and iPad app that helps teach kids about shapes, colors, sorting, tracing, and more. The entire app is narrated and directed by The Man With The Yellow Hat while George cheers you on.

The premise of the game is that you're helping George build toys by putting all the shapes where they belong. There are 5 different toys (or levels) that you help George with. The activities include matching shapes with cutouts, tracing shapes, organizing based on color, and more.

At the end of each level, you get to play with the toy that you helped George built in a little mini game. These include helping a robot with a jetpack collect falling bananas, sorting fish that are various colors and shapes into groups, a traditional Simon Says memory game with a train, shooting arrows (or plungers) at balloons to gather bananas, and controlling an astronaut car on the ground to collect bananas.

The good

  • Teaches kids about basic shapes like circles, squares, and triangles, as well as more complex shapes like diamonds, ovals, and hexagons
  • Includes primary and secondary colors, along with varying tones
  • Introduces pattern recognition and sequencing, and builds skills like sorting, construction, tracing, and coloring
  • Narrated by "The Man With The Yellow Hat"
  • Includes fun, short 30 second video
  • 5 different "levels" with fun game at the end of each one
  • No in-app purchases
  • Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

  • The controls for some of the games are a bit difficult for children in the targeted age group

The bottom line

If you have a little kid who likes Curious George, you can't go wrong with Curious About Shapes and Colors for iPhone and iPad. It's well made, does a great job at teaching about shapes and colors, and is just plain fun! It's also designed in a way that can be fun to sit and play with your child -- this is always a plus!