Prancing, Dancing Lily App Review

I was pretty excited to be contacted by Fat Red Couch to receive a free promo copy and review their new app Prancing, Dancing Lily which is based on the children's book by Marsha Diane Arnold. They have versions available from Itunes, Google Play, and the one I chose at the Amazon Kindle Store.

In order to have a good app you must first start with good content. The story is about a dairy cow that doesn't quite fit in with her herd and travels the world to find her dance before she returns to the farm. The app begins by giving you the choice of reading the book to yourself or having some very talented voices read it to you. When the book reads to you the words are highlighted as they are read.


                           

The graphics are delightful and some move, as you can see in the above video, bringing the story to life. Music also punctuates the story and delighted my children. The app also has puzzles of different levels for your child to work.

I liked the way you could easily advance the pages, click on items in the story, as well as the scene selection tab at the top. Ease of use for this app is very kid friendly. My only fault would be that, at least on my Kindle Fire tablet, some of the words on the page would be cut off and you could not see them. I have emailed the makers and they are already submitting updates to take care of these issues. Glad to know they support their product!

One of the most interesting things about it for me as a dairy farmer was finding out that the author grew up on a dairy farm herself. Marsha Diane Arnold not only worked on her father's farm in Kansas, but also was once a Kansas Dairy Princess. I was very glad to see dairy farming shown in a positive light in the app.

All in all, this was a fun app for small kids to read and play with and I would recommend Prancing, Dancing Lily as a fun app for them to have.

If Cows Ran For President Then.....

With the help of Darrie Carrie and her cow Norma, I've been having much fun on my Udder Side blog writing about dairy cows running for president. I even ran a couple of campaign commercials for them.



My friend Mark enjoyed this one so much he sent me some of his thoughts about a dairy cow administration:

No Bull  -  I cast my write-in vote today for Shirley and Norma!! 

I’m hopeful that everyone will have a steak in the new government.

Do you think they will support free government cheese for all?   Keeps us happy and keeps their sisters employed!

If elected, will they make a big stink about reducing methane emissions?   Or don’t they give a crap?

A lot of candidates are just in it to milk the government for all they can.   Shirley and Norma may have a different perspective.

Hope they are considering a horse for secretary of State.   You know, the administration will need some horse sense.   Already have too many jack----- and elephants!!!!

Beaver for secretary of Interior.  They really do give a d--!

Will Gilmer has also been tying the presidential election to dairy farming with his promotion of #TeamDairy. I think it is easy to see he is a big backer of the pro-dairy platform.

What do you think about the dairy platform or a dairy cow for president?

2012 Starts With a Bang

I hope we're getting all of the bad of 2012 over with on the first day.  It sure would be nice, but I don't have high expectations.  It started on New Year's Eve when a shaft broke on the silo unloader's blower.  This morning a cow fell down and the grain auger that goes in the barn had problems.

The good news was the cow, who fell while fighting another cow, got up all on her own. We're keeping her separated from the other cows for a while to make she didn't hurt herself. The grain auger only had one bolt that broke and we fixed that in about 15 minutes.  The silo unloader will have to wait until tomorrow and we do have some spare parts ready.

Maybe the worst isn't over yet for 2012, but maybe the problems we have won't be hard to solve.