Finalists of Safaricom App Wiz challenge, Thirst Interactive, are set to launch an app dubbed Tichaa meant for teaching kids aged 3-7 years Swahili Language in a fun and engaging way using picture puzzles. Tichaa is said to help kids become familiar with Swahili names of various objects that they may come across in their daily activities.
Tichaa is not yet available for downloads but in under two days, at its launch on Friday 20th 2013, the down link will be active. The App’s Website is currently running informercials on Tichaa. Tichaa will come with more than 200 puzzles and 23 objects with Swahili names. The version to be available at launch will be beta and a fully paid version will be availed shortly thereafter.
Tichaa is also promising to help parents bond with their kids by playing together as it assists the kids develop spatial recognition abilities, matching skills, as well as improve on their fine-motor skills. A demo video shows how a kid can solve a window puzzle and at the end is shown the name of the object in Swahili as Dirisha.
I must say that the video proves that the App is simple and colourful and suitable for kids. However the video itself needs improvement has it runs too fast, doesn’t have sound neither does it offer additional information on what to expect from the App. Although the version to be launched on 20th will be a beta version, 23 objects seem inadequate for meaningful learning. We would like to know the number of objects that will be available for the fully paid version.
We can’t comment further until the App is launched and we are able to test it to give it a verdict. Otherwise we think it might turn out to be fun to teach kids Swahili using Tichaa
