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:
High quality educational videos for kids, with new shows added weekly! Unlike other kid video apps that usually curate videos that were made for YouTube or another site, the videos for All the World are all made by their own team. They are all on sorts of topics from DIY instructional videos to science explanations to explorations about emotions and everything in between!
All of the Toca Life apps gathered into one big world, plus way more elements that don't exist in stand-alone apps. If you already own some of the Toca Life apps (like Toca Life: School or Toca Life: Farm), those sets will show up in this app. You can play with any of the characters from any of the sets and bring them into other worlds. There are also other elements that you…
Outdoor photo, counting and scavenger hunt challenges to spark exploration! This app (inspired by the PBS Kids show, Plum Landing) gives players a "mission of the day" to complete. Missions include photo challenges (e.g. "take a picture of light coming through leaves") or a counting challenge (e.g. "how many storm drains do you see?") or scavenger hunts (like "find things that are brown!").…
Would you like to see more people of color in your children's books? Diversity in the things we read benefits EVERYONE.
If you've been following my reviews for any amount of time, you know that I'm a big fan of the Sago Mini apps because they feature open-ended play and are perfectly suited to younger users but still entertaining enough to attract older kids as well. I was a little concerned when they unveiled this new subscripiton based app called Sago Mini School, but I am pleasantly surprised. …
Dress up Baby Harvey, Baby Robin, Baby Jinja and Baby Jack in this classic Sago Mini app. Choose an outfit and accessories and watch each baby's reaction. Do they love it or hate it? Will you make them wear it even if they make a sour face?
Follow PBS character, Molly of Denali, an Alaskan Native, as she explores her fictional community, Qyah, introducing users to her culture through harvesting natural resources ("we only take what we need!"), beading activities, dog sledding and more! Navigate through the town using arrows and your map-reading skills. Throughout the app, the characters sprinkle in words in the…
A short and enigmatic little app with beautiful artwork. In this (basically) wordless app, users first encounter a ball dangling from a thread in the middle of the string. Tapping and swiping on the ball bring results that seem realistic, but what's the point? Keep playing with this app, trying different motions and exploring every option you can think of. Tiny hints…