High-quality apps you can feel good about using with your child.
Librarians have been giving advice about how to make choices in media forever! Books, music, movies... Apps are simply another form of media to hit the market and for families that are choosing to use apps with their kids, it can feel overwhelming deciding which apps to choose.
There are a number of great resources about using apps with kids. Here are a few favorites:
- Family Time with Apps
- Apps en Familia
- iPad apps and your Pre-Reader
- Tips for using screen media with young children from Zero to Three
Read to start browsing apps? Check out our most recent app reviews below:
Welcome to the most complicated bakery ever! Choose a pastry to make, then it goes into the "oven" where players must move the pastry along a super long conveyor belt with ... complications. You might have to press a button that bounces the pastry from one spot to the next or spin a wheel that runs an escalator slope or even get the timing just right for a swinging magnet to…
Minibombo's newest app is all about opposites. In this app, appropriate for even the youngest players, you first choose which animal you'd like to play with. Each animal then has a series of opposite options. Players can choose whether the animal might be tall or short, for example, or far or near. Your choice will change the appearance of the animal on the screen and then they…
Note: This app is only available on Apple Arcade. A new game from the makers of "Love you to Bits" and "Bring You Home" this app continues on the theme of CUTE cartoony characters on a search for loved ones. In this case, it's a hapless mother hen searching for her lost chicks. Also like the previous two games, this app has a unique gameplay. Players must help guide the hen through a…
A trading game for one or two players. In this game, you need to buy supplies for your castle. There are many options to choose from that change up the details of the game, but the basics are the same. A boat pulls up to the dock with items for sale. You choose the items you want to buy and sell, then send the boat over to the other castle. You can play against the app or two…
A clever word-building game! The main story in this app is that 7 swords have been stolen and need to be recovered. The majority of the game play consists of one-on-one battles against either an automatically generated opponent OR another player (with a pass-and-play option). The way that you battle is by spelling words. Each player has a set of letters to choose from (similar to…
Logic puzzles of increasing difficulty and a build-your-own Thinkrolls maze make this an excellent addition to (or introduction to) your Thinkrolls collection. If you've played Thinkrolls games before, you know the basics of how they work -- a small round character rolls around a maze and players must decide which order to do things in order to get through the maze (do I need to move this box…
An app that asks kids to explore who they are, how they feel, their hopes and dreams and all of their favorite things. This app is like a diary with prompts. Some of the questions are ones you might have herad before like, "What's your favorite color?" or "What does your dream house look like?" and some are a little more unusual like "This color makes me think of hope." Sometimes…
Here are a few apps that might help you connect with each other from afar, in order from youngest users to oldest. The first four are ones that would work well during a video call.
A "whodunit" type game that involves one player "killing" one or more other players or sabotaging the ship and killing all of the other players was NOT an app I would have expected to be reviewing and recommending here, but after my 10 year old convinced me to play it during a family game night.... I can definitely see the appeal of this game, so let's talk about it. First of all, you…
If you've ever played the board game "Guess Who" then you know how this game works -- except this version is way better. FIrst of all, it features photos (not caricature cartoon drawings) and quotes from the real people in the photos. It also includes each person's self-identified race along with tips about how to talk about race with your children and with other people. Each time…
A collection of 48 wordless comic strips, featuring the cute characters from Studio Pango. Being able to read pictures is an important early literacy skill, as is sequencing (knowing which parts of a story come first, second, third, etc.). This app is a great way to practice both of those skills! Your child can explore these comics on their own, or you can invite your child to narrate the…
Have you ever wanted to dress up as a character from Sesame Street? Now you can do that on a screen! You can "dress up" as one of 6 different Sesame Street characters through the magic of Augmented Reality (AR), just look into your device's camera and suddenly, you'll appear on the screen with Elmo's head (or whichever character you've chosen)! You can also sing as that character,…