Who says iPhone and iPad games for kids have to be a mindless waste of time? Not us. Here are some of our favorite educational apps for kids:
1. Monkey Preschool LunchboxA fun and funny educational app with colors, letters, and numbers for the preschool set. There are some simple written instructions, but games are intuitive enough for the pre-reading crowd. And silly enough. And fun enough.
2. PopMath Basic MathWhy weren’t flashcards this fun when we were kids? Match pairs of floating bubbles such as “7×8″ and “56″ in timed and untimed modes to sharpen elementary school level arithmetic skills.
Choose from addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Not quite as challenging as flashcards, but not quite as boring either.
3. WurdleExactly like Boggle, but a solitaire version without all that earsplitting shaking of the letter cubes and the annoying upside letters.
You trace the words with your fingertip by sliding it over them sequentially. So, for example, if you want to make T-O-P then T-O-P-S then T-O-P-S-Y, you just pause before adding the next letter. Cool!
4. Touch Physics LiteIt’s never too early for gravity, friction, acceleration, and energy. A word of warning: this educational app is not for the easily frustrated.
I played it for fifteen minutes before throwing in the towel, but my infinitely more patient 7-year-old son stuck with it quite a bit longer.
5. BookwormA fun, vocabulary-building word search game for all ages with great sound effects and graphics and enough options and challenges to keep it fresh for wordsmiths of all ages.
Make the longest words you can from the interconnecting tiles. Avoid short words which get you flaming tiles that can burn down the whole library. One of our all-time favorites!
6. Interactive AlphabetA fun, sweet alphabet app that will have young kids wanting to go from A-Z over and over and over again.
This app has just the right amount of music, animation, and interactivity for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. We really love it.
7. Grover’s Number SpecialAn endearing educational counting and cooking game for the iPhone and iPod touch with a sneaky side of good nutrition.
A friendly waiter (Grover, assisted by your child) takes a grouchy customer’s order and then prepares it, but something always seems to go wrong to great comic effect. A really first-rate app—just what you’d expect from Sesame Street.
8. GeocachingA global treasure-hunting game where participants (i.e. your kids) locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors by following clues and using WiFi, 3G, and GPS readings.
There are thousands of these containers hidden in cities, suburbs, and the countryside all over the world. An added bonus? Sometimes your kids can take a trinket and leave a trinket when they find them. Learning was never this fun when we were kids!
9. WeetWooOne-stop parent-curated video browsing for kids. And before you tell me that watching videos isn’t educational, may I just point out the mini-biographies of Ludwig von Beethoven and Joan of Arc? Lots of good and fun content for younger kids too.
10. Sums StackerA sneaky educational app that’s so fun your kids won’t notice their practicing math. Ha! Take that kid!
Match the numeric value of the stacks to the numbers underneath using dice, coins, and numbers of various styles.
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Thanks for the review. Great that there`re such educational games for children. I think they are really funny and developing at the same time. As for me, an adult person, I liked the Bookworm and that one with bubbles to sharpen the arithmetics skills. I pretty need these 2 games for myself, just to train my brain)
Thanks for the list! I just downloaded most of them for our epic journey across the West. It would be helpful if you listed them in order of age. e.g. the first apps listed are for preschoolers, the next for early elementary-school-aged, the apps listed towards the bottom for older kids. kind-of like how Kepler’s lists children’s books in their email messages. Thanks again. Already M is loving the chicktionary game! :-)
We downloaded these for our 10 day journey out West as well~ We were looking for educational ones to refresh what they learned last year in school etc..and even challenge them for next year…you should add smartyshortz, iearnedthat and starwalk to your list
thank you!
daisy
Great list of the best educational iPhone apps for kids. As a teacher myself, I have my own suggestion for parents and their children. It is also an educational iPhone game that can be added to this list. It is Kinder Hangman iPhone app that is one of the best educational iPhone applications that helps kids not only entertain themselves, but also learn new words and expands vocabulary signifficantly. Very useful iPhone application that helps parents keep kids busy.
Thank you for the recommendations- we got all the Smarty stuff and used the Starwalk app in Arizona to do some star gazing…and with Smarty Thank You, kids sent thank you’s along trip to all the hospitable people we met!
Who Am I Animals. A great educational app for little kids that can be played in english, spanish and portuguese. This educational trivia will teach toddlers about animals and their sounds. http://www.technolio.com/who-am-i-animals/
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great games im a ki but im redesigning an iphone for school and the games are perfect for it
Great a list of app reviews. It’s very helpful as in the iTunes store is quite hard to find something without any advanced filtering. It would be greta if you could even break it down more by preschoolers, etc. Do you know how different is a 2 year old kid from a 3 or 4, huge!
amazing collection. Loved it, because now there is no need to search on appstore which is a time consuming process, i find few more, let it for kids learning and paintings by paintLLChttp://bit.ly/xfSQDS. Do not forget to check these out. Kids always love colorful apps :)
oh the Interactive Alphabet looks great my son will love this!!
thanks so much :)
liked the review, we are alos having a lot of fun with My Big World, massive content, easy to use and always find something new. Comes from a small company called aDad.
You can find a lot of good apps at http://momswithapps.com/ or if you are the hunt for that fabulous new app on the horizon, Kickstarter has a lot of great independents like ‘My Beastly ABCs’. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/461592703/duncan-studio-my-beastly-abcs-interactive-storyboo-0