Multi-Award Winning Wooden Toy Goes Digital

Dec. 3, 2012 - PRLog -- Educational toy – Circa Calendar – has leapt into the digital space crossing the great divide with its new iPad app.

“Young children are so tech savvy nowadays that it was only natural to provide them with an interactive version of the actual calendar,” says Circa Calendar inventor Melinda Holohan.

Melinda continues,“The new iPad app has captured the essence of the toy – visually engaging, learning through play, and encourages parent-child interaction. The app and the physical toy complement each other.”

Crossing the digital divide seemed like an impossible feat for Melinda, but the power of social media brought her an opportunity that she couldn’t miss.

“I was on Twitter one day and I noticed that someone had tweeted about Circa Calendar and its potential educational benefits. The tweeter up was a design studio based in Scandinavia,” she explains. “I grew up in Denmark, so it felt like serendipity.”

Design studio owner and co-founder Mikkel Kroijer adds, “Oy Ahoy is all about bringing cool and playful ideas to life. So we were excited when asked to bring such an awesome success like the Circa Calendar to the iOS platform.”

Mikkel continues, “We wanted to keep it simple, almost as simple as the physical toy, but adding useful features optimized for the iPad. We want all our productions to be both fun and great learning experience for kids. I believe we succeeded with that with the Circa Calendar app.”

Like the actual toy, the Circa Calendar app is designed to help children understand the cycles of the calendar using an innovative circular format and design.

Circa is to time, as the abacus is to numbers. Like the abacus, Circa uses the same principles of breaking down learning into bite size chunks, allowing children to learn at their own pace.

App features include:

      ●  Cool countdown function icons to emphasise an important event (Birthday, Halloween, Christmas, New Year) – up to a year in advance
      ●  Movable markers to highlight a highlight a day, month or date
      ●  Colour coded days of the week to separate between weekend and week days  
      ● Colour coded months of the year to correspond with the number of days in each month (the app automatically only shows the number of days in a given month)  
      ●  Seasons icons
      ●  Voice over for days of the week and months of the year

* To download the app, please visit the iTunes store and search for ‘circa calendar’, currently priced at Tier 1.*


Toy Awards:

       ● Winner - Best Educational Toy - My Family Magazine 2012
       ● Highly Commended - Puzzle Category - Right Start Awards 2012
       ● Bronze Award - Classic Toys Category - Practical Preschool Awards 2012
        ● Highly Commended - Toys that Help Communications Category - Talking Tots Awards 2011
       ● Winner - Inventors Category - British Female Inventors & Innovators Awards (BFIIN) 2011
        ● Highly Commended - Wooden Toy Category - Rainbow Toy Awards 2011
        ● Winner - Best New Children's Product - Top Drawer 2011 September

For more information about Circa Calendar, including trade enquiries, please visit http://www.circacalendar.com