Bringing Animals to Life in 3D on Your iPad 2+

by Lori Cunningham (@wellconnectdmom)

The latest trend this past year has been using accessories with your iPad to enhance the tablet’s capabilities while making the iPad a more social experience, rather than personal experience.  We are reviewing several items like that now.  One of them includes a pack of large size cards you buy at the store and use with your iPad 2 or latest iPad (must have a camera).  The cards are made by Cypher Kids Club and are called i3D Interactive Cards which create an augmented reality right in front of your eyes.  Cypher Kids Club makes three 3D Interactive Learning Card sets that help children recognize:

1. Numbers
2. Letters
3. Wild Animal Adventures

How i3D Interactive Learning Cards Work

After buying the cards, download the corresponding app from the App Store.  We bought the Wild Animal Adventures Cards from Target* (see what we saw during our shopping trip) and downloaded the Wild Animal Adventures free app from the App Store when we got home.  Once we loaded the app, we chose one of the 18 interactive 3D cards (which had a picture of a parrot) and placed it in front of the iPad camera.  To our amazement a beautiful multicolored parrot was standing on top of the card.  As we moved the card around, the parrot moved.  We could see a top down view, a side view, and even behind the parrot as we moved the card around in front of the camera.

Here are the various wild animal cards available in the Wild Animal Adventures Cypher Kids Club Pack.  The cards include both land animals and sea animals.  Cypher Kids Club i3D Learning Cards work with the following Apple products:

• iPad 2
• iPad 3rd generation
• iPhone 4, 4S
• iPhone 4,
• iPod Touch, 4th generation +

To make it easy for you, Cypher Kids Club incorporated a QR code right on the packaging so you can scan it with your iPad 2+ or iPhone 4+ device and link right to the free app in the App Store.

Pros of Cypher Kids Club Learning Cards

• There are a lot of fun animals in the pack to learn about with a number of facts about each animal
• You can manipulate the direction of the animal by turning the animal card facing your camera
• Kids with an iPod Touch (4th generation +) can use the cards with their device
• You can use the cards with as many devices as you have at no extra cost since the app is free
• After the narration is over about each animal you can cause the animal to respond to you.  For example, by touching the parrot, he says various things
• The cards are thick and very sturdy, kids are unlikely to ruin them very easily

Cons of Cypher Kids Club Learning Cards

• The cards are a bit pricey at $29.99 per pack
• Sometimes it’s hard to manipulate the angles of the animal on the card, facing the camera.  Getting the animal to turn around can be difficult at times.
• The cards are singular.  I can see how kids might misplace a card.  They should come on a ring to help keep them all together

See For Yourself

*I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and  Cypher Kids Club #CBias #SocialFabric