Best iPad Apps for Preschoolers

The Top iPad Apps for your two, three, and four-year-olds

Once your toddlers become preschoolers, their ability to understand the apps their playing with increases to such a degree you might feel pressured to head to the Genius bar and schedule your appaphilia loading time. Don’t sweat it – just remember that a lot of these apps want to both educate and entertain your child. Here’s a mix of apps that do both – no matter if you have a boy or a girl.

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Got older kids?  Check out our Best iPad Apps for Kids.  Got younger kids?  Check out our Best iPad Apps for Toddlers.

2. BUILD A WORD

Age rating: 2+ | Price $1.99

Don’t let the name of the app lead you to believe that this is a homework assignment. Sure, it’s highly educational, but it’s colorful and fun too. Little kids’ voices guide you through the creation of a word. Kids can find the letters for animals like Frog and Duck, then they push the letters together to turn the word into an animated animal. Finally, shake the iPad to move on to the next word.

2. DORA THE EXPLORER COLORING ADVENTURES

Age rating: 2+ | Price $4.99

Take a break from Dora the Explorer on TV and sit down and color with the whole gang including Boots, Backpack and Swiper. Learn Spanish while you’re choosing scenes, adding characters to your setting and then touching colors to sections on the iPad to fill it in as you would on a coloring book. If your child is addicted to all things Dora, you won’t want to miss out on this accessory either.

3. TRUCK MODZ BUILD AND DRIVE

Age rating: 3+ | Price: $1.99

Your child can build and paint their own cement mixers, fire trucks, dump trucks and then cruise them down the highway past an ever-changing landscape. It’s fun and kinda silly with crazy sound effects and trucker banter. Don’t forget to shake the screen to view your truck from different camera angles. Not just for boys, girls like vehicles too!

4. FIRSTWORDS: DELUXE

Age rating: 2+ | Price $4.99

If your child liked FirstWords: Animals, they’ll get a lot more out of FirstWords: Deluxe too. More animals, vehicles, colors, shapes and familiar words to spell. Bright graphics, cute sounds and overall impressive when your child matches the letters to the word. A great teaching tool that they will choose on their own because its fun.

5. MISS SPIDER’S TEA PARTY FOR THE IPAD

Age rating: 2+ | Price $9.99

This might be the most expensive app you’ve ever bought for your child unless you have older kids who love board games. But from the moment you open it up, you’ll see it’s worth every penny. Especially if your child is having a tough time making the jump from game and puzzle apps to storybooks. The book can be “watched” as a mini-movie, it can be read to you, has a coloring book feature, matching game and more.

6. 123 COLOR HD TALKING COLORING BOOK FOR IPAD

Age rating: 2+ | Price $1.99

Take a break from all the word games and get in touch with your artist side. Color, color, color! There are pages upon pages of animals, shapes, scenes and world maps. As a bonus, you can hear adult voice overs in English, Spanish, French and German. If your child has the attention span to color for long lengths of time, why not turn on some familiar kids’ music like “Wheels on the Bus” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

7. SUPER WHY FOR IPAD

Age rating: 3+ | Price: $2.99

Fans of the hit PBS Kids TV show will love this app. Kids play by finding missing words and rhyming words and also by spelling words and tracing letters.

8. COLORFUL AQUARIUM FOR IPAD LITE

Age rating: 2+ | Price FREE

Create your own aquarium with fish, sand, bubbles and plant life. True to the name, it is indeed colorful and the tips are helpful for parents who want to show their kids all the options like feeding your fish, adding bubbles or cleaning the tank (if you have the patience to wait for it to get dirty). The free version of Colorful Aquarium for iPad seems good enough to start with. I have not tested the paid version ($2.99). A little more zen than your child might be used to.

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Draw with Stars!

Create celestial art with twinkling stars on the iPhone and iPad

Grade: B | Age rating: 2+ | Price: $0.99

Draw with Stars is exactly what it sounds like: a mellow, creative drawing app where the medium is stars.  Simply touch a dark part of the night sky, then drag your finger across the screen to add stars.  Touch them again and they become shooting stars and fly away.

Unlike some drawing apps, this one’s multi-touch.  So you can draw with more than one finger at a time.  Pretty!



What’s Hot:
The cricket sounds in the background.  The plinking harp sounds that accompany drawing.  The zen-like experience of goofing around with this open-ended app.

Don’t know how to take a screenshot on the iPhone or iPad?  Not to worry.  Just go to the moon menu and touch “Snapshot”.  Now you can email your masterpiece to a friend. Read more…

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Fruit Ninja

A juicy action game for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Grade: A+ | Age rating: 3+ | Price: $0.99

Fruit Ninja is the best iPhone and iPad game we have discovered in a long, long time.  It’s a lot like Doodle Jump (the most downloaded game in the iTunes store) because it’s fun, easy, and very hard to put down.

Using your finger as a blade, you swipe various pieces of fruit that fly up in the air, chopping them in half.   In classic mode, you also have to avoid the bombs.

It’s very simple, but the best things often are.

What’s Hot:
We love the fabulous fruit-slicing sound effects and the splattering juice—you get all the violence without the gore and questionable ethics!  At the end of every round, you are served a Sensei’s Fruit Fact such as “In some parts of the world, trained monkeys are used to harvest coconuts!”  Sweet.

For a lower stress experience, play in Zen mode.  You won’t lose any lives if you drop fruit or blow up if you accidentally slice a bomb.  For a more competitive experience, compete on the leaderboards. Read more…

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Best family travel iPhone apps for road trips

If you’re planning a summer road trip with your family, you might want to load up on apps—not just for your kids—but for you too. This short list of iPhone apps will be helpful for tech savvy moms and dads that want to make their road trip travel experiences more fun (and efficient).

SitOrSquat: Bathroom Finder
Price: Free

Does little Susie gotta go? SitOrSquat helps you find clean bathrooms (and changing tables). This app not only shows you a map of rated bathrooms around you, but gives you pictures too. Great for avoiding bathrooms as much as finding them! Note: This app has an “Open Now” feature.

Roadside America
Price: $2.99

The fact that you don’t have access to the entire U.S. unless you spend more money ($5.99) is pretty lame. But it has some fantastically weird and helpful features that you could get pretty addicted to. In addition to locating and mapping out all the totally weird places, museums and odd statues in the U.S. your kids will be laughing at for years—Roadside America also helps parents with a sunset alarm so you don’t miss that crucial family photo. I like that some of the attractions have photos you can look at ahead of time – saving you a lengthy drive for something your kids might consider a dud. Another favorite tool is the “Touristus Interruptus” that sends you a call in case you’re stuck in a boring museum!

Read more…

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BrainShake

An iPad game that tests kids’ reflexes and coordination

Grade: B | Age rating: 5+ | Price: $2.99

BrainShake is an electronic hand-held action game that challenges kids to think fast and act faster.

If  you were born before the millennium, think Simon Says.  If you were born after the millennium, think Bop-It.

What’s Hot:
While this game is bewildering at first since you have to squeeze, switch, pull, and twist the controls, kids will master it quickly.  Just when things are getting easy, the whole console spins around and things get more challenging. Read more…

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