We hope you’ve been enjoying diving into The Human Body! If you or your kids are anything like us, you’re always hungry for more facts and information. Our handbook is a great resource for learning more, but the amount of information we gathered was busting at its virtual seams. So, following our roundup of skeletal system links, here’s what you need to know about muscles!

• Always a helpful jumping-off point, Wikipedia’s entry on the muscular system is extremely thorough. It’s also a bit more technical, so it’s perfect for kids looking to flex their impressive memorization skills.
• There are over 30 muscles in your face that help you show emotions—something we learned from Discovery Kids’ resource on “Your Muscle System.”
• Asking the question, “What is the strongest muscle in the human body?,” has a few answers as Kyle Hill, author of Science-Based Life, teaches us.
• Between our 206 bones and 650 muscles working together, there’s still plenty that can go wrong. This article by KidsHealth looks at the changes that can affect these two systems in our teenage years.
• If your muscles didn’t work in pairs, you’d move once and then be stuck forever! Here’s a fun interactive GIF by the BBC that demonstrates the importance of muscular pairs.

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The last few weeks have been so wild and wonderful. We’ve enjoyed glowing write-ups in Fast Company and Wired. We hit the #1 spot in the education section on the App Store in 63 countries. And now, we’re honored to announce that Apple has selected The Human Body as App of the Week.

As App of the Week, The Human Body is prominently featured on App Stores around the world. (We love the way our banners look in all those languages!) And, the app is free but only until end of day, September 25th, 2013. If you haven’t downloaded The Human Body yet, now’s the time.

We’re thrilled to offer so many more of you a chance to play the app. If you’ve already purchased the app, we can’t thank you enough for being an early supporter.

To get the best deals and important updates on our apps in the future, sign up for our newsletter. (Subscribers always get first dibs on new apps at introductory prices).

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We’ve been listening closely to your feedback over the last few weeks. And we’re pee-leased to let you know, you can now add the urogenital system to The Human Body for $.99, from the Parent’s Dashboard.

Stylized illustrations and interactions include the kidneys, bladder, and genitals, letting you and your child see the truth about tinkles with this in-app purchase.

While building The Human Body, we thought long and hard about the best way to present this system. It was the most polarizing among parents, and from the start, we knew we wanted to give parents the choice to add the layer or not. This is one of the reasons you can decide to add the system from the Parent’s Dashboard. It’s also there because we’ll never market directly toward your kids (that’s something we take seriously).

What else is new? For easy access to facts and discussion prompts, The Human Body Handbook can now be downloaded directly from the Parent’s Dashboard. While The Human Body is designed to encourage unguided exploration, we know some people like having a bit more information at hand, so we’ve made it more easily accessible. We’ve also made a few smaller improvements and greatly improved the app’s stability. Go to the App Store on your device to download 1.05 if you haven’t already.

As ever, if you like what we’re doing, we’d greatly appreciate it if you let us know what you think about the newest version by posting a review on the App Store. Thank you!

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When we set out to create The Human Body, we wanted it to be the jumping off point for discovery, exploration, and most importantly—tons of questions. Luckily, from what we've heard from our community, the app has become just that and we're learning about the many ways The Human Body is used by kids (and adults) of all ages.

In addition to the app, we created The Human Body Handbook to arm parents and teachers (and older siblings and grandparents) with extra resources to support kids in their learning. During our research phase, we discovered oodles of great resources—too many to print! So, we've decided to share them, moving system by system, as a round up on the blog every week.

First up: the skeletal system.

- Medulla oblonga…what? A deep dive into the human skeleton, Britannica has a thorough article full of interesting facts. This one is definitely for kids interested in the science of the skeleton, what it's made of, and plan on winning a human body trivia competition in the future.

- Here's a crazy idea to consider: What if all animals had human skeletons? This video exposes how complicated our skeleton is, and also, just how freaky it would be if everything in the animal kingdom had our bone structures.

- What, exactly, is the knee bone connected to? In Them Not So Dry Bones, Schoolhouse Rock! performs a fun song to help us remember how all of those bones stay connected (and provides super nostalgic learning moments for some of us at Tinybop HQ).

- Growing pains? Bones, Muscles, and Joints by KidsHealth takes a distinctively kids-eye view on all of the changes a skeleton will go through as it grows.

We'll be back very soon with more about the muscular system.

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One of the many fun things about my job at Tinybop is building up an arsenal of colorful patterns and illustrations, which we use throughout our branding and in our apps. I’ve been using some of these patterns as my iPhone home and lock screens ever since I started, eliciting many oohs and ahhs from friends.

We’ve decided to package up a few of our cheerful patterns and illustrations to make them available to your iPhone and iPad home screens too, just in time for the release of the iPhone 5S, 5C, and iOS 7. Don’t worry, our lock-screen wallpapers are parallax compatible!

Each pack comes with a set of seven background patterns for your homescreen, and an additional two illustrations of our DUMBO office for your lockscreen (one during the day and one at night). Enjoy!

iPhone 5 Wallpapers:

• Brooklyn (day)
• Brooklyn (night)
• Bubbles
• Hexagons
• Circles
• Raindrops
• Starburst
• Triangles
• Yippee!

iPhone 4 Wallpapers:

• Brooklyn (day)
• Brooklyn (night)
• Bubbles
• Hexagons
• Circles
• Raindrops
• Starburst
• Triangles
• Yippee!

iPad:

• Brooklyn (day)
• Brooklyn (night)
• Bubbles
• Hexagons
• Circles
• Raindrops
• Starburst
• Triangles
• Yippee!

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Kelli Anderson, the illustrator and designer we worked with to create The Human Body makes magical things out of paper. We thought we should share this one with all of you.

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When we first started talking about The Human Body, one of the first big discussions we had was: who is going to illustrate the app? The scope of the project was massive, scientific, and required an illustrator with an approach to design that would consider complex systems – of the body, that would apply to the UI, and that would make sense for a children's app. Kelli Anderson was always the first name on our list, so we approached her both as old friends and as great admirers. We knew her approach to design was often very tactile, considered the importance of simplifying when possible, and that she would always be rigorously thoughtful about her decisions. We presented her with a very long list of illustrations, from the heart to the stomach, blood vessels, to the eyeball (and yes, vomit and poop, too!). She plowed through that list with great aplomb, delivering incredibly complex files to us that perpetually elevated the quality of the app. She also stepped in with UI notes, animations, and, as a side project, whipped up this incredible 3D paper stop-motion of the human body, cut to mirror the silhouettes she'd created for the app.

The Human Body (stop-motion!) from kellianderson on Vimeo.

As the illustrator and artist for our first app, we knew Kelli's work would set an important precedent. She was with us, every step of the way, keenly aware of our values as a company, in addition to bringing the mission of the app alive. She writes, in a fantastic blog post outlining her experience working with us,

…the reason I really wanted to work on this app (aside from friendship) is because of the somewhat radical stance that Tinybop takes in promoting intrinsic curiosity and creative play. The app is intentionally non-linear—eschewing a goal-oriented rewards system (familiar to anyone who has racked-up points a video game) for freeform exploration. In the app there is no next-level, no chiming sounds-of-affirmations, no-counter-of-victory. It steers clear of “the peril of gold stars” (as I recently heard Jack Hitt describe it) —the way in which external approval seems to interfere with the development of natural creativity and curiosity. (It is a classic psychological experiment: in lab settings, intrinsic interest in an activity has been shown to decline when the same activity is framed as a means to some extrinsic goal—either a tangible reward or adult approval…otherwise recognized in the adult world as the phenomenon of “once it’s a job, it’s no longer fun.”) In its very structure, it imparts this idea that learning is fun—a reward unto itself. Kids are encouraged to ask questions about everything, and act on their own agency in choosing a route through the app. There is no “right way” to move through this app.

Kelli, it was a pleasure to collaborate on this app and we look forward to lots more magic-making in the future.

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We’re thrilled to introduce our first app, The Human Body, for the iPhone®, iPad®, and iPod touch®;.

Get it on the App Store® today. It’s only $.99 for a limited time (regularly $2.99).

Children ages 4+ can dive deep and interact with six of the body’s major systems: skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory, and digestive. Play alongside your kids by leaving questions and answers with our one-tap recording device, or use our free, downloadable Human Body Handbook.

We’re a brand new company and know we need your help to make our apps the best they can be. If you have suggestions, comments, or if something doesn’t work quite the way you expect, email us at hi@tinybop.com. We’ll be listening closely. If you like what you see, please help us get the word out by sharing with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or email. Or, leave feedback on the App Store. It really helps.

Thanks so much for your early support. We have lots of great things planned.

– Raul + the Tinybop team

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Hi. We're Tinybop and this is what we're all about.

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Reason #957 we love working with Kelli Anderson? Sometimes she just shows up with a 3D paper model of the Tinybop logo.

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