Child’s play: App encourages kids to use their imagination

Plants engages children’s natural curiosity to educate them. There are no instructions. Players are merely invited into two separate biomes – a desert and a forest – to interact with the environment and see what happens. Tapping a cloud will cause rain to fall and if a child chooses to bump clouds together, lightening strikes.

It is the hidden treats and the element of discovery that appeal to children. ‘We don’t tell anyone that you can burn the forest down,’ Raul Gutierrez, the company’s founder told Wired. ‘So when kids find it, they feel like it’s something really special that they discovered themselves.’

Members of Generation I have grown up with a screen in front of their face. Tinybop shows how to combine that technology with age-old childish curiosity to combine the best of old and new play.