Their First Bus

Their First Words

About this app

Fill the bus. Choose a place. Ring the bell, and everybody off!

Their First Bus is a sing-along bus toy for toddlers and preschoolers ages two to five. A painted bus waits on Home Street in the morning, and your child fills it: tap someone and they walk on, or drag them to a window. Then tap the sign on the stop post to choose where the bus goes, pull the bus there, and ring the big red bell to let everybody off.

A VERSE FOR EVERY PART

The song is our own: new words written for this bus, sung by Hope, the app's friendly voice, on the traditional tune “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush”. Tap the horn, the wheels, the wipers or the door, and that part's verse plays next. Some riders bring a verse of their own, so who your child puts aboard changes what you hear. The bus answers every tap straight away, and the song goes at your child's pace.

TWENTY PLACES AROUND THE WORLD

Paris, Tokyo, Lagos, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and fourteen more, each one painted for this bus. The sign on the stop post shows one place at a time, and a tap rolls it to the next of three. Drag the bus like a wagon and its wheels roll with your finger, or tap the driver and off you go. At every stop, two people who live there are waiting to hop on, and they hop off again to wave goodbye when the bus leaves.

EVERYONE HAS A FAVORITE PLACE

A grandma, a grandpa and his dog, a mom with a balloon girl, a dad with a baby, a mother duck with three ducklings, and a baker with a very long loaf wait on Home Street every morning, and there is room for everyone. Let them off where they love to go: the dog splashes into the water, Grandma comes back with a loaf, and the girl has a turn on the swing.

COUNT ALONG

Three ducklings hop onto the open top and are counted, one, two, three. At night every house lights up and is counted, all the way to six.

GOODNIGHT, BUS

After two places the sign shows Home, and the bus drives back to Home Street for the night. Everyone walks home and goes in at their own front door. One more tap closes the bus's headlights like sleepy eyes. The day ends with a quiet goodnight. Next time, the bus wakes up to a fresh morning.

MADE FOR LITTLE HANDS

For children of about two to five. There is nothing to read, nothing to get wrong and no way to lose. No scores, timers, quizzes or streaks. Every tap does something, the things to touch are big, and play never needs a hold or a pinch. Bouncy and silly, never nagging. The bus plays sideways, in landscape, on phones and tablets.

FOR GROWN-UPS

Press and hold the little bus-stop sign in the top left corner for two seconds to switch the sounds and the voice on or off, choose a tune-only version so you can sing it yourself, start the day again, and read the words of the song. The paintings are AI-generated watercolor illustrations, made by us with OpenAI image models. Hope's voice, the band's notes and the sound effects are made with ElevenLabs, and the words are our own. We check every picture and recording before it ships, and the credits in the app say how each was made.

A HAPPY RIDE, ANYWHERE

Everything is included for offline play. No ads, in-app purchases, subscriptions or accounts. Nothing is collected and nothing is tracked. The device remembers the grown-up switches and the last few places your child chose; nothing leaves it.

Designed for toddlers and preschoolers ages two to five. Ride along together, or let them take the wheel.

From Their First, made by parents.

Privacy policy: https://theirfirstwords.org/bus/privacy
Support: [e-mail]

What’s new

The bus rolls out of one town and into the next, and each place's people are already waiting at their stop.