Sesame Street Art Maker

Review by eFreeware

If you have a preschooler who already knows Elmo and Cookie Monster by name, Sesame Street Art Maker is the sort of app that fits naturally into their day. It comes from Sesame Workshop, the studio behind the television program, and it is built around drawing, decorating and coloring rather than lessons or puzzles. The pitch is simple: give a small child a set of tools that feel like the show, and let them make something.

The price is $3.99, paid once at download. There are no ads and no in-app purchases, which matters when the person holding the tablet may not understand what a pop-up is. For a parent weighing yet another children's app, that combination is the first thing worth noticing.

What a child actually does here

The core of the app is a canvas and a tray of tools. There are 24 canvases, each inspired by a Sesame Street character, and more than 100 art tools to work with. The developer lists finger paint, fur textures and Abby's magic wand among them, so the range runs from ordinary painting to effects a child could not produce with a box of crayons.

Stickers are part of the same workspace. Some of them are animated and talk, which turns a finished picture into something closer to a small scene. Sequins and similar decorations round out the set, and the whole thing is pitched as a way to encourage imagination rather than to teach a technique.

What I like about this framing is that it does not ask a four-year-old to be good at drawing. The tools do a lot of the work, and the characters provide the reason to keep going. A child who is proud of a scribble because Elmo is standing next to it is exactly the audience this was made for.

Faces, coloring pages and talking stickers

Two features stand out from the general drawing tools. The first is a photo canvas, where a child can put silly stickers over a face. In a household where the camera roll is already full of blurry self-portraits, that is likely to be the first thing tried and the one that gets shown to grandparents.

The second is a set of Sesame Street coloring pages. These give a child a defined shape to fill in, which is a gentler entry point than a blank canvas. For a younger sibling watching an older one draw, coloring pages are often the easier place to start.

The animated, talking character stickers tie the two together. They are the detail that makes the app feel connected to the show rather than like a generic paint program with licensed pictures dropped in.

Elmo reacts, and the canvases change

Elmo and Cookie Monster comment on what your child makes. That kind of running commentary sounds minor when you read about it, but it matters a lot for this age group, because it gives the drawing a response without requiring a parent to sit alongside the whole time.

The canvases also change with the seasons, and the developer says updates arrive through the year. A spring set of backgrounds will not stay on screen forever, which gives a child a reason to come back and look rather than treating the app as finished after the first week.

An Art Maker Challenge lets kids share their artwork with Sesame Street, according to the app. It is the one part of the experience that points outward, past the device, and it gives a finished picture somewhere to go.

The $3.99, the extras and the age range

The app costs $3.99 upfront, carries no advertising and has no in-app purchases. That is a clean arrangement, and it is the main reason I would consider it over a free drawing app with a banner across the top. Expansion Kits with additional themes are sold separately, so the initial price is not necessarily the last word if your child wants more than the built-in set.

The content rating is Everyone, but the design points clearly at early childhood. Canvases built around Sesame Street characters, talking stickers and a wand that produces magic effects are aimed at children who are still learning to hold a stylus or drag a finger deliberately. Older kids who want to draw seriously will find the toolset playful rather than precise, and that is a fair description of what it is rather than a fault.

The numbers are modest but reasonable for a paid title in this category: more than 10,000 installs and a 4.0 average from 50 ratings. A recent update shows the app is being looked after rather than left to sit.

A drawing app for the preschool crowd

The clearest fit is a household with a child roughly between three and six who already watches the show. For that child, the characters are the point, and the drawing tools are the excuse. A parent who wants a quiet, self-contained activity for a waiting room, a long car ride or the hour before dinner will find this does the job without needing supervision of what appears on screen.

It also suits families who would rather pay once than manage a free app full of prompts and purchases. The absence of ads is not a small convenience when the user cannot read yet.

Where I would pause is with a child who has already moved past the show. The appeal here rests heavily on recognizing the characters, and once that recognition fades, the toolset on its own is unlikely to hold attention for long.

Whether the one-time price is worth it

Sesame Street Art Maker does one thing and does it for a specific age. It gives young children a set of character-themed canvases, a large collection of playful tools, coloring pages, stickers that talk and a photo mode, all without ads or purchases interrupting them. At $3.99, that is a straightforward proposition, and the Expansion Kits let you decide later whether more themes are wanted.

My recommendation is for parents of preschoolers who are already fans of the show and who want a drawing app that feels like an extension of it. If your child is older, or if you are looking for a general-purpose art program, the character focus and the young target age will be the deciding factors. For the audience it names, it looks like a well-judged purchase.

What's new in version 1.6

This release includes an important security fix. Please download at your earliest convenience.