With Presidents’ Day in the United States approaching on February 16, my wife Mandi prepared a unit on the US Presidents for my son Lincoln. Mandi gathered up all kinds of great materials including work books, videos and hands on materials. As we were chatting about the materials, I took a look at some of the options for iPhone and iPad apps in the App Store. We found a couple options, but nothing seemed to be what I had in mind. I had gathered up the official Presidential portraits about a year ago for a game idea I had, but never executed on. Seeing an opportunity to make an app that my son would use in a pretty short amount of time, off I went to develop a simple flash cards app. I ran some of my ideas by Mandi and she helped me quickly work out a design and app flow. Hey… this development effort is a family affair :).

After a few long nights, I had version 1.0 put together. The next morning, as Lincoln worked on his Presidents unit, I brought out the app for him to verify. He went through each President verifying the name, photo, and years in office against his materials. He reported in with me each time I “got one right” - happy that I had put the cards together correctly for him.

We added the ability to “tap to reveal” the information so you can test yourself and a shuffle mode that shuffles the cards out of order for even more challenge. I also added the ability to flip the card over and view some more information on each President. There’s always room for more ideas, but that’s a great start for version 1.0.

The Presidents was approved by Apple and released in the App Store on Saturday. Complete a Welbes Family app? Check.