LumiKids Backyard (Lumosity Labs, 2015; iOS and Android) presents a variety of games set on an apparently warm evening with a purplish sky. (We’ve had negative-forty wind chills in Boston within the past week. Color me interested in this setting.)

The app alternates between fairly involved games and simple, tap-and-make-something-happen activities. It took me some time to make the connection that if a thought bubble with an asterisk appeared, that meant I could tap through that screen to a game, and if not, the screen’s activity would be much simpler. It's a nice mix: the games are fun ways to hone a variety of reasoning skills, and the simpler activities could serve as comforting bedtime rituals.

First, we meet a couple of raccoons with background music straight out of a caper movie. (Activities can be completed in any order, but this is the first one you’ll see if you don’t go looking around.) The raccoons’ goal: get onto a couple of platforms by a windowsill so they can steal a tasty-looking pie. At first, I thought this was just hand-eye coordination practice: the raccoons are reaching up and begging to be dragged to the platforms. But as the numbers of raccoons increased, it became clear that this exercise was about balance. Put equal numbers of raccoons on the platform, and they’ll be level with the window. Eventually, platforms start appearing from different heights so that they need different numbers of raccoons to balance them out. That took me a little more trial and error, but eventually the raccoons got their pie. Well, someone else’s pie.



The next exercise is more about creativity. There’s a fence and three cans of paint. Pick a color and drag your finger along the fence to paint on it. When you’re ready for a fresh canvas, just tap the sprinkler to wash everything away. (Why wasn’t this activity available in my childhood backyard?)

Next comes a spatial reasoning game. Leaves are arranged in patterns, and it’s your job to move groups of bugs, which are also in patterns, onto the leaves so they all fit. It’s a little like Tetris, but with bugs squealing buzzily at you. Like the raccoon-bandits game, this one progressively increases in difficulty.



In the following simple exercise, two one-eyed creatures are scared of the dark. Who can blame them? There are two pairs of beady eyes in the bushes. Tap the flashlight and then each pair of eyes, and you’ll see that the owners of the eyes aren’t so scary.

One painted mushroom appears at the outset of the third game. It’s your job to drag subsequent blank mushrooms over to a gnome, who will shove them into a vat of paint so they can continue the sequence. Again, this game gets progressively more challenging. The mushroom-painting becomes a two-step process (background and then stripes or polka dots); more options of vats appear; the sequence you’re trying to create goes from a simple row of matching mushrooms to a pattern.

Finally, it’s bedtime. Brush a squirrel’s teeth — not recommended IRL — and tap his light to turn it off. Good night...if you can tear yourself away from the addictive games, that is.

Available for iPad (requires iOS 7.0 or later) and Android devices (requires Android 4.0 and up); free. Recommended for preschool and early primary users. See our review of companion app LumiKids Snow.