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:
Great open-ended gameplay! You choose the food to feed your monster, then choose from five different ways to prep the food (and it actually visually changes depending on how you cook it. Except for boiling. That doesn’t turn the broccoli brown or anything), then feed it to your monster and enjoy their reaction. (…
Also Toca Birthday Party and Toca Store. I love these because you can put your device on the ground (or a table) between 2-3 players and actually interact with each other in almost the same way as these pretend games are played in real life. They are as close to open-ended toy…
This app features three songs (Old MacDonald, London Bridge and Evening Song). For each song, you can either listen to the recorded voices singing OR record yourself or your child singing the song OR choose the "Karaoke" option on the main page and just listen to the instrumental version. While you listen (or sing along) you can interact with some small, silly animations on the screen…
Parents old enough to remember old-school Electric Company will find something very familiar about this app. It's got a great catchy tune and fun graphics that give kids a chance to learn about letter blends. Choose one of the two-letter blends on the first page, learn four words that use that letter blend and then use those words in a little mini-game. Nicely designed and fun to…
If you don’t know this app already and if you DO know a child, go get this immediately. It teaches letter names, letter sounds, spelling and vocabulary words with the most charming and hilarious monster illustrations and animations. I especially love that the vocabulary words they choose to include aren’t always everyday words, but are often "rare" words like quarrel, demolish, gargantuan and…
Endless Alphabet has developed a sequel that is (if possible) even better than the first. Or at least an excellent successor. Endless Reader incorporates both spelling simple words (letter-by-letter) and then building sight-word skills by reconstructing a sentence that the wacky monsters have scattered. Players are then rewarded with humorous animations that illustrate the…
Hilarious little animations surprise and delight both you and your baby (or toddler or preschooler) as you explore this app together. Swipe up, down, left and right or tap the screen to see the different reactions. A great way to reinforce cause and effect with no time limits, no plot, just simple fun.
A unique app from the creators of Sesame Street. This app suggests "off-screen" games for you to play with your child. It starts by asking a few simple questions (what kind of play do you want (move your body? calm down?) where you are (kitchen? bathroom? in a video chat?), how many kids are playing and what common household materials you might have close at hand) then it chooses a…
Beautifully simple design by a highly respected app-developer. This one is actually REALLY easy to use (even babies just tapping randomly on the screen will produce delightful results) but also interesting enough to engage adults (depending on where you tap the screen, the pitches may be higher or lower, so you can work on playing a scale or even a song if you want to!). The balls also roll to…
Just like a real geoboard, but without the fear of getting snapped by a rubberband! Geoboard's simple, clean design is intuitive to use and easy to learn. In addition to creating the outline of shapes with the colored bands, the app has the added feature of being able to fill a shape with color, making it easier to see and compare to other shapes. There are two different sized pegboards to…
The Allen County Public Library created this excellent free app, full of helpful literacy-based information for families with young children in a fun, kid-friendly package. The app includes librarian-recommended, themed booklists; a reading timer (useful if you need to track how many minutes or hours you're reading); tips and facts arranged by age (babies through 5th grade); and library…
Scribbling is an important pre-writing skill. This app gives simple drawing prompts that allow kids to try their scribbling skills on pre-illustrated scenes. When they're done scribbling with their finger, they press the "GO!" button and their drawings come to life! With a nice variety of pre-illustrated scenes as well as a variety of colors and drawing "tools" to choose from…