10 Best iPhone Apps for Toddlers and Kids
Back in the day, parents handed fussy toddlers their keys, a teething toy or maybe a rattle. Now, we hand over the iPhone. The most common question asked by parents who look for travel advice isn’t about what highway to travel or even about kid-friendly luggage. It’s about iPhone apps. So, we decided to do some research and let our fingers do the downloading as we tried out some of the top contenders and a few more obscure apps. Here are our recommendations for the apps worth downloading. Let the happy road trips begin!
Disney’s Fairies Fly
$4.99
Gets high marks from parents for being easy enough for younger kids but interesting enough for parents. The $4.99 price tag says Disney, but apparently Pixie Hollow is worth the hefty price tag. The graphics are worthy of the Disney name, where the goal is to learn to fly like a fairy and then soar thru various obstacles. Like all memory-intensive apps, some users report problems with crashing.
ABC’s
Free
This app is free because it’s ad sponsored, so user beware. But, if you need a quick distraction and don’t want to make an investment, this might be worth it. It’s beyond simple, you press a key and move thru the alphabet. Toddlers will find it fun to push the button and see what happens, older kids might be interested in reciting the alphabet.
Virtual Zippo Lighter
Free
Whether you’re secretly reliving your Bon Jovi concert days or just keeping your kids occupied in the car, the app is very cool. It’s been downloaded over 3 million times, and averages about 100,00 downloads per week. Doesn’t that make you feel popular? The app is eearily accurate, with a flame that always points up and very realistic clicking noises.
Wheels on the Bus
$.99
Imagine an interactive book for toddlers, using the iPhone as the medium. Five languages are included and you can record your own voice and learn about musical instruments while keeping a toddler entertained easily. Parents give the app high marks and this is consistently one of the top downloaded apps in iTunes. Your child can even create a duet with one of the narrators. There are quite a few options for customizing the flow of the app, so kids don’t tire of it after just a few minutes.
Teach Me: Kindergarten
$.99
Teaches sight words, addition, subtraction and spelling to Kindergarten-aged children. Parents select the subjects, difficulty levels or even choose specific questions then review performance to track how your child is learning. Kids earn coins for every three correct answers which can then be used to buy stickers to place in fun sticker scenes that can be exported as wallpaper or emailed to family and friends.
Balloonimals
$1.99
Inflate the balloon by blowing into the microphone (iPod Touch users can touch the screen), then give the phone a shake to construct an animal. Each shake gives your animal a bit more detail. When your animal is fully formed, he’s ready to play (you tap the screen to get him to do various tricks). The animals cycle randomly and when you’re done playing you can blow the animal up until it pops, and create another.
Bugdom 2
$3.99
You’re Skip, tracking down the Bully Bee that stole his backpack. Expect action adventure of the preschool variety. The premise is familiar: you want to keep from being exterminated, squashed, or canned while making friends and beating the bad guys. Very few controls make this easy to learn — you tilt the phone to move and a harder tilt makes Skip move faster. The graphics are awesome but Skip can be hard to control. For a long road trip this would be a great buy.
Toddler Teasers
$1.99
A series of about a dozen simple themes, all focused on teaching colors, letters, animals or something similar to toddlers. You can purchase a topic individually or buy a bundle of several together. Virtual stickers act as rewards. Spoken words ask the child to pick out the correct shape or letter and then give positive reinforcement for the correct answer. An incorrect answer causes that option to disappear from the screen. All in all, it’s so simple that you might not be tempted, but for the two year-old set, it’s pure gold.
Peekaboo Barn
$1.99
Inside the barn, play peekaboo by tapping on the doors, guess who the animal is by the sound they make and get excited by who pops out. Animal names in both English and Spanish. Another simple is better concept, start with English (or Spanish) and then advance to the other language once you have mastered whatever is primarly spoken at home. Fantastic for younger kids, the app is simple to use and doesn’t require supervision — perfect for the back seat.
Wordex
$.99
See a real world photograph of an object and then drag letter tiles to properly spell the name of the object. You can’t spell a word wrong, and for a more advance form of play, choose to hide any number of letters. The app is available in about 10 languages, so it’s perfect for the family that travels. There’s no score, so kids can play cooperatively in the back seat. Three and four letter words are available, so children as young as three or four can probaby enjoy the app easily.
Great list of iPhone recommends for kids. We’ve also come across some good apps the kids enjoy. The apps are WordGirl, Be Big (Clifford), Let’s Color, Hangman, and Addition Coach.
Those sound perfect. My daughter still thinks WordGirl is entertaining enough to watch occasionally and she’s 10.
Have you checked out Monkey Preschool Lunchbox? I’m the developer of the app, and it’s actually one of the most popular games for preschoolers (2 to 5ish). It’s a collection of 6 minigames that cover colors, counting, matching, differences, puzzles, etc. Always love to hear what people think.
Thanks Peter. How does the game differ from the Toddler Teasers?
Sheri: Sure, be glad to talk about the differences.
There are a couple similar minigames (the colors and letters), but Monkey Preschool Lunchbox offers more games overall as well as a puzzle game, a matching game, a spot the difference game, and a counting game which are unlike teasers. Lunchbox is also cheaper.
I don’t want to put down Teasers, as it’s a fine app, but Monkey Preschool Lunchbox is a much more animated game. Our stickers are animated, our interface is animated, and most appealing to kids our game features an animated monkey character who responds to the game as it is played.
I think the animation is really the big reason our app is more popular with parents than Teasers.
A very nice list; we have quite a few of them and Disney Fairies is a favorite. Going to look into WordGirl as my girls love that, and Monkey Preschool Lunchbox. I wonder if WordWorld has an app?
WordWorld does have an app! It’s $3 and is available in iTunes or on the website here: http://www.wordworld.com/. It looks great!
I would add our app, Weetwoo! which has thousands of safe, parent screened YouTube videos, filtered by age for kids 3+. It’s super simple to use for young kids to use.
http://http://bit.ly/weetwoo
Also of possible interest to your readers : I wrote a ‘top tips to make iPhone better for traveling with kids’
http://weetwoo.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/traveling-with-the-iphoneitouch/
thanks again for your great post!
Oooo, definitely check out Tales2Go!
I’m Tracey, Chief Mom at Tales2Go. Tales2Go is like Pandora for great kids “books on tape” . . . stories stream to your iPhone/iTouch — unlimited and on-demand.
Now you can travel with a audio story library of 1,000+ in your back pocket. No more schlepping CDs or downloading/syncing prep.
Perfect for kids ages 3 up to pre-teen, Tales2Go has something for everyone: best sellers, kids’ favorite characters, mysteries, history, folktales, classics, and so much more!
Don’t take it from me . . . CNET’s Rick Broida called Tales2Go his single favorite app of 2010 (so far) (February ’10) http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10449961-1.html
Check it out:
itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tales2go/id343948867?mt=8
Thanks for your great list!
Check out Once Upon An App’s newest app . . . just in time for Easter!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-tale-peter-rabbit-illustrated/id360653856?mt=8
That is a great list. Balloon Animals is a family favourite – kids and adults xx
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Great list! I would like to add a handy app my husband created for me – it is a random seat assigner for the car called iCall Shotgun. http://mysite.verizon.net/reswygo5/icallshotgun/index.htm is where you can check out more details or find it in the iTunes app store.
It has definitely helped stop fighting over who is sitting where in the car both on road trips and trips around town.
I love Juicebox Software! They have GREAT kid-friendly apps that I can put on my iPhone and use to entertain my toddler for hours. These apps are great quality and designed very well. They just launched the Animal Coloring Book app for Android mobile devices, which my daughter is obsessed with. This simple, digital coloring book offers an array of themed pages to color. You can choose Farm, Jungle, Marine or Insect themed pages, and color and save to the Gallery for printing or fine-tuning at a later time. It’s so great! Animal Coloring Book entertains children with its simplicity and endless possibilities of creations. Definitely check it out! http://www.juiceboxsoftware.com Company email for questions and comment: android_apps@juiceboxsoftware.com
Also try Baa Baa Black Sheep (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baa-baa-black-sheep-by-duck/id377665229?mt=8) by Duck Duck Moose it is by the same makers that did Wheels on the Bus. Very cute!
Baby Animal World it’s a great game for kids.
Clik here:
free version:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baby-animal-world-free/id423755398?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2
paid version:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baby-animal-world/id420899240?mt=8
Try this new game: Snail Alphabet.It is an educational and engaging app for kids, which helps them to learn while they play! Not just one game, but four in one. A lot of games, so your child wont get bored.
Features:
-Alphabet recognition
-Visual and auditory memory skils
-Color identification
-Sound recorded audio for each letter of the alphabet and word
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZLD8-woOgs
http://brainzsolutions.com/mobile/snailalphabet/
http://itunes.apple.com/md/app/snail-alphabet-free/id430547750?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/md/app/snail-alphabet/id430539358?mt=8
Tried most of the games out there. My 2 yr old boy enjoyed some more then others. Here are his favorites
-Kids Song Machine (a song is played while a vehicle moves on the screen. You can tap stuff to make something happen)
-tozzle (a puzzle game, each piece makes a sound)
-monkey preschool lunchbox (it has the usual games but there is a monkey on the side doing commentary)
-monkey preschool when I grow up (dress up a monkey)
-Preschool music (4 different games with singing birds, fish and sheep)
-preschool arcade (pinball and some other stuff)
Another app that is simple and helps kids with monster fears, or likes to play and catch monsters, is Go Away Monster 3000. Designed by kids between 4 and 8. Parents control when a monster can be found, this app becomes part of your bed time routine and your kids can make a room monster free. During the day, your kids will run around looking for monster in places you never knew they existed.
Website http://www.goawaymonster.com
or on iTunes http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/go-away-monster-3000/id381349793?mt=8
My daughter loves the Disney’s Fairies Fly you listed. She also likes to color Fairies like
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fables-coloring-book-by-thecolor.com/id450402711?ls=1&mt=8