School Party Craft

My Experience with School Party Craft

I downloaded School Party Craft last fall because my daughter’s third-grade class needed last-minute decorations for their Halloween party. I’m not a crafty person, so I was hoping for simple, clear directions. The first project I tried—a paper pumpkin garland—was actually pretty fun. My daughter and I sat at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning and followed the steps. The instructions were mostly pictures, which helped. But after a few weeks, I started noticing the app was behaving like typical free kids’ games. It kept pushing me to “share” our finished projects on Facebook or Instagram before I even saved the photo to my phone. That bugged me. I just wanted the instructions, not the social media push. I also tried contacting support once when a tutorial video wouldn’t load on my Samsung Galaxy A54. I filled out their form and got an auto-reply three days later saying “we’ll look into it.” Never heard back. So while the basic idea is solid, the execution feels like it’s designed more to collect data than to actually help kids make party stuff.

Features Worth Noting

The app has a good variety of categories—holiday decorations, birthday party favors, classroom games. I liked that they sort projects by difficulty and estimated time, so I could skip anything that looked like it would take two hours. The step-by-step photos are clear, and most projects use basic supplies you probably already have at home: construction paper, glue sticks, markers, scissors. There’s also a shopping list feature that tells you exactly what you’re missing, which saved me from wandering the aisles at Michael’s on a Sunday afternoon. Another thing I appreciated was the “favorites” bookmark system. I saved about eight projects for the winter holiday party, and they stayed accessible even when my phone was offline. That was important because our school gym has terrible cell reception. However, the “customization” feature is mostly just picking between two pre-set color schemes. Don’t expect to truly design your own craft. And the “connect with other crafters” section felt like a ghost town—just one or two comments from months ago.

What Needs Work

First and biggest issue: the app asks for permissions that have nothing to do with making paper snowflakes. It wanted access to my location, contacts, and storage—and I don’t mean “read” storage, it wanted full read and write access. I turned off location immediately, but the app kept nagging me with a pop-up every time I opened it. Second, the video tutorials are hosted on some third-party site, and they buffered constantly on my A54 even with good Wi-Fi. Since the support team never actually fixed my video loading issue, I just stopped using those tutorials entirely. Third, there are no age filters for the crafts. Some projects say “suggested for ages 8+” but that’s based on nothing. I accidentally picked a project that required a hot glue gun—my daughter is 8, and I wasn’t comfortable with that. The app doesn’t warn you about unsafe materials or steps. Finally, the search function is bad. If I type “Valentine’s Day,” it shows me Christmas stuff too. The tagging is clearly automated and sloppy.

Pricing

The app is free to download, but it’s stuffed with ads. Every time you finish a step or switch to a new project, you get a full-screen video ad for some other mobile game. It’s disruptive when you’re trying to help a kid follow along. There’s a “premium” option that removes ads and unlocks a few extra projects. It costs $3.99 a month or $29.99 for a year. I didn’t subscribe because I don’t trust the privacy policy enough to give them my payment info. The free version is usable if you have patience for ads, but for a kids’ app, it feels like they’re targeting children with advertisements. That’s a red flag for me as a parent. Also, the premium features don’t include anything you can’t find on Pinterest for free. So honestly, unless you really hate ads, I’d skip the paid tier.

Developer Notes

The developer is Candy Room Games & RabbitCo. I looked them up because the app store page said “designed for kids aged 6-12” but the permissions and ad behavior made me suspicious. Candy Room Games has about a dozen other apps, mostly coloring books and soundboards. Their privacy policy is a wall of legal text that says they share data with “affiliates and analytics partners.” No specific names. It also says they collect “device identifiers for advertising purposes.” That’s concerning for a children’s app. Under COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), apps aimed at kids aren’t supposed to collect personal data without parental consent. I’m not sure they’re complying with that. The app’s support email is listed as a generic Gmail address, not a company domain. Combined with the slow response I got, it doesn’t inspire confidence. I’d feel better if they had a clear privacy policy written in plain English and a real support team.

Security & Privacy

This is the main reason I’m leaving a 2-star review instead of a higher one. I always check what apps request before I install them, and School Party Craft asks for a lot. On Android, it wanted: precise location, read and write external storage, camera, and microphone. For a craft app? That makes no sense. I denied everything except storage (needed to save photos of our projects), and the app still worked. But the constant request pop-ups and the fact that they mention “analytics partners” in their privacy policy tells me they’re harvesting data. I also found out that the app uses a third-party SDK for ads that can collect your device’s advertising ID. That means even if you don’t sign up for an account, they still track you. I uninstalled the app after about four months because I didn’t want my daughter’s device being profiled. If the developer stripped out the unnecessary permissions and limited the data collection, I’d consider coming back. Until then, I can’t recommend it to other parents who care about privacy.