[gpm]

I notice the app does actually use text, e.g. whenever a tool is selected it seems to describe what it does (with a few words).

This doesn't seem obviously wrong? If you make not being able to read blocking - children who can't read won't use it. If you make reading merely enhance the experience, now there's motivation to learn how to read?

I'm not a child psychologist or anything, or even a parent, I don't know what's best. But it's seems possible to me that this is the right balance.

[mapotofu]

I’m a parent and agree with the assertion that text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children. I’ve read to my kid (pre K) a lot (a lot), and he can read (a little), but he took more interest in learning to read through an app-based game that applied this principle, in teaching reading skills (Poio read).

It’s not that they can’t, it’s just not fun. Like when I play video games and not liking too much text before the action starts, but with shorter attention spans.

The age group included also has a lot of innocence that should be protected/balanced against future expectations, depending on where they are. There’s a lot of space and utility to letting kids be kids, they trust you more IMO when you do, making later lessons stick better. YMMV

[card_zero]

I notice sometimes that there's a feedback loop where children like things that look like toys. Sometimes they say it out loud - look, it's for kids! - and they like these objects because of a sense of automatic ownership. So the whole brightly-colored-sparkly-smiley-plastic aesthetic might have only slight inherent interest for them, and more interest as a signal saying "this is yours, you have permission to play with it". Being covered in writing is the opposite signal.

It's a feedback loop because then of course toys are designed to look more and more like toys.