Review: Poisson Rouge {Red Fish} Website and Apps

Poisson Rouge {Red Fish} is an innovative website for children.  I first discovered it about five years ago and it continues to be a firm favourite in our household.  

Self-described as a "playground", it has over 300 activities for children of all ages and a range of abilities. It is truly a wonderland of exploration.  
Children are encouraged to use the mouse to navigate through the various activities.  There are simple "single click" cause and affect activities, "click and drag" activities for sorting and matching, as well as more complicated numeracy and literacy activities. 

The activities have a range of appeal ... with music, colour, art and science elements.  There are a range of languages to engage in specific activities for an international audience or for those children who may be learning more than one language.

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Poisson Rouge Website

This picture collage is just a small sample of the games on offer at Poisson Rouge.  The alphabet is available in 6 languages with a mini-game represented with each letter of the alphabet.  As you can see there is a sorting game requiring a "click and drag" of the fruit placing them into the correct bowls.  There is a cake making game which requires some visual perceptual skills to match the item to the shadow.  Once the shadow is matched then it is added to the cake and finally the cake is baked.  The fish game asks the player to match colours whilst naming the colour.  The x-ray game is a fun activity moving the x-ray around the body.  The zebra game is a puzzle to be completed.

The creators describe their site like this "Poisson Rouge makes toys, that one can grab and manipulate and study and make one's own, within a privileged environment" and "Poisson Rouge doesn't try to teach, but offers a play-and-learn environment suitable for free exploration. There is no right or wrong way to play."

Whilst reviewing this blog, I have discovered that the creators of Poisson Rouge will be beginning a paid subscription to access this website.  It is unfortunate but understandable in this economic climate. This begins on February 15th 2014, so I suggest accessing the website now and giving it a test run whilst it is still free. http://www.poissonrouge.com/

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Poisson Rouge have also created some apps for Android and the iPad.  They are based on mini-games you can find on the website and are just as easy to navigate. Here is a quick summary of the English language apps.  I have included "Youtube" clips where available for you to see the apps in action.

Maths Bug $1.99
14 activities suitable for children 1-8 years. Games include number matching to dots, following a bug trail with your finger, matching shapes and patterns, drawing and musical bug activities. 

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Amos From Outer Space $1.99
Appealing to toddlers and preschoolers, this space themed app has games for simple cause and affect to play peekaboo, draw, dress up the astronaut as well as experiment with colour and muisic. 

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Maths Planets $1.99
This app has been designed for school aged children with 14 activities {ie. planets} of mathematic exploration. The games include multiplication, pattern matching, time recognition and more.

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Ten Green Bottles $0.99
The famous nursery rhyme has been turned into a delightful app for toddlers.

Musical Aquarium $1.99
An underwater adventure with a musical feature. Feed the stingrays, clean the whale, touch the starfish and much more.

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Magical Patterns $1.99
To be honest, this is my least preferred of the apps here today.  This app has a range of patterns which hide a picture.  The picture with the pattern imprint moves when touched.  A play of the visual perceptual skills here.

Word Castle {English} $1.99
An app for language and vocabulary recognition and development.  Topics include toys, body, kitchen, workshop, animals, bathroom, numbers, music, transport. 

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Visit Poisson Rouge and explore the website for yourself! Let me know what you and your children think of the website and apps.  I have 2 promo codes available for each of the apps featured here for the first 14 people to comment below {1 promo code per person}.  These codes are redeemable for the next month only.

I look forward to hearing from you!

This is not a sponsored post.  However, if you purchase the apps through the links here, I will receive a small commission.  All comments made are my own.