Tag Archives: educational apps for kids

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Squiggles, Let’s Color, Miku’s Picnic, and Lazoo Zoo

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The FAB 4 (for young kids) – FREE and fabulously creative apps from Lazoo.

Squiggles is a FREE educational app for the iPad and it is ADORABLE!  Kids are encouraged to draw squiggles to create: rain clouds (to water flowers), waves (to help fish swim), wool (on sheep), cotton candy, etc. Once the squiggles are drawn, they press GO and the drawings come alive. The app includes an interactive storybook and an animated short which introduces the characters – Bobu, the monkey & Miku, the rabbit. It also includes 14 squiggle-ready drawing pages as well as a blank page for your child to create his/her own pictures. Tools included are stickers, markers, paint, chalk, a ketchup bottle, as well as 10 colors & a mystery color wheel. Work can be saved into the gallery of the parents’ section by pressing the piggy bank. This app is super cute!! It encourages children to be imaginative & creative – it’s one of my favorites! 🙂

Highly recommended!

Squiggles! - Lazoo Worldwide, Inc

FREE for a limited time – Let’s Color, another educational app that encourages creativity! The app includes an animated short in which the characters – Bobu, the monkey & Miku, the rabbit use their imaginations to turn triangles into a strawberry, a dog, a mountain, etc. Then kids are encouraged to color different things to complete a page: what is coming out of a hose, who is riding in the train, etc. Once the coloring is completed, they press GO and the drawings come alive. There are 17 coloring pages as well as a blank page for your child to create his/her own pictures. Additional coloring pages can be purchased within the app. Tools included are stickers, markers, paint, chalk, a ketchup bottle, as well as 10 colors & a mystery color wheel. Work can be saved into the gallery of the parents’ section by pressing the piggy bank. Another super cute app from Lazoo, a developer that encourages imagination and creativity. :)

Highly recommended!

Let's Color! - Lazoo Worldwide, Inc

Miku's Picnic

Also FREE for a limited time – Miku’s Picnic, an adorable interactive story designed to support creative thinking. Kids join Bobu, the monkey & Miku, the rabbit on a chase after some jumping beans. The two need help capturing the beans before they bounce away! Along the way kids learn about using their imaginations and creative problem solving as the Bobu & Moku use “Squiggles” to… make a car go faster, make springs to get to the top of a tree, make binoculars to look for the beans, make a rocket zoom to the moon, and more. This educational app has 2 reading modes – “Read to Me” and “Read it Myself” as well as an option to record your own voice as the narrator. The story ends with a link to the FREE Squiggles app for kids so kids can “take a turn” drawing. I love the way Miku’s Picnic encourages kids to use their imaginations to solve problems!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lazoo-mikus-picnic/id652945863?mt=8&uo=4

Lazoo ZooFREE for a limited time  – Lazoo Zoo, another fabulous educational app from the developers of Squiggles. KIds help out with snack time at the zoo where there are 10 animals (lion, ape, chameleon, giraffe, hippo, whale, crocodile, crab, bird, & penguins) to feed. But Lazoo Zoo is not your ordinary zoo, so its animals react in extraordinary ways – the giraffe’s spots change according to what it’s fed, the ape tosses the food it doesn’t like to others, and more! Kids can even create their own foods to feed the animals. And, Lazoo Zoo has a photo booth where kids can snap their picture with their favorite animals. How cute is that?! 🙂 Check out the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L564yPHM3No&feature=youtu.be

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lazoo-zoo/id727786503?mt=8&uo=4

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Sago Mini Doodlecast

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On sale for $.99 – Sago Mini Doodlecast, an adorable drawing app for kids. This educational app is unique in several ways. First of all, it features 30+ open-ended drawing prompts that inspire creativity. Kids draw pictures to answer questions such as: Who lives on this planet? What is wet? What makes you happy? As your child draws, short videos of the entire drawing process are created, with accompanying audio. The app encourages parent/child play – recording your child’s creation (stroke by stroke) along with your conversation about his/her drawing. And, the app supports more than 14 languages. Parents can use the app as a teaching tool or to encourage kids to express their feelings. Finished videos can be shared with friends and family – perfect for grandparents who live far away! Super sweet app!!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sago-mini-doodlecast/id469487373?mt=8&uo=4

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Disney American Presidents

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presidents

Happy Presidents’ Day! Disney American Presidents, an award-winning educational app is free for a limited time only! Kids flip through the Unofficial Oval Office Scrapbook to learn about the American Presidency. The app includes more than 2 hours of presidential profiles which are entertainingly funny and historically accurate. Kids can flip through the app in chronological order or they can look at the presidents by era. The music, art styles, etc. of each era are also included to help kids gain a greater understanding of each time period. Each President (from Washington to Obama) has his own two-page spread, with fun interactive elements that link to interesting facts about his presidency. The app features presidential historians from the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress as well as experts/White House insiders like Wesley Clark & Sam Donaldson. It’s Airplay enabled – perfect for classrooms presentations. The app was listed as: Parent’s Choice Award Winner, Entertainment Weekly’s Best of 2012: The 10 Best Apps Of The Year, Scholastic Instructor – 50 Best Apps for Teachers. Highly recommended for a fun and factual look at history!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disney-american-presidents/id559557889?mt=8&uo=4

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Beck and Bo by Avokiddo

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Beck & Bo

FREE today only – Beck and Bo by Avokiddo, a beautifully designed educational app for toddlers. The app consists of 12 interactive scenes that come to life – one piece at a time. Kids build animated scenes by dragging & dropping items to their proper places. As they do so, they learn the name & sound of each item. The multi-sensory scene comes alive – piece by piece! After each scene is completed, kids gain access to an interactive album for that scene. In that album they can view all the scene’s items, listen to their names & sounds, and see how the words are spelled. Kids will love the adventures of Beck and Bo as they join them on a beach, in the city, on a safari, for a swim in the ocean, at a theme park, and more. As they play, they will be learning vocabulary, making associations, and recognizing cause & effect. Beck and Bo is digital play at its best!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beck-and-bo-by-avokiddo/id557624393?mt=8&uo=4

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Nighty Night

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nighty night

Over 5 million downloads and counting… Nighty Night was recently updated and is FREE again for a limited time. This interactive bedtime app (for kids 1 – 4) has it all – cute animals, sleepy lullaby music, great narration, and fabulous artwork. The artwork is beautifully done by Heidi Wittlinger, an Oscar nominated artist. The story is perfect for your child’s bedtime ritual. Kids help to put 7 sleepy animals to bed by clicking off the lights around the farm thus setting the mood for their own bedtime. 🙂 Six additional animals can be added to the story with in-app purchases. The story can be switched from the winter version to the summer version and it can be changed to 12 different languages – English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. This educational app is really lovely and it has been successful internationally.  It won App of the Year 2011 in the “books category” in Germany & the U.S. It also reached #1 in iPad books in the US, Brazil, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, South Africa, Australia Switzerland and Austria! Love this app!!

Nighty Night! HD – Bedtime stories – Story book for children - Shape Minds and Moving Images GmbH

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Star Rover HD – Stargazing and Night Sky Watching

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star rover

FREE for Valentine’s Day – Star Rover HD – Stargazing and Night Sky Watching. If you want to learn more about the sky, this is the app for you! Just hold your iPad up to the sky and Star Rover will identify what you are seeing – the stars, moons, planets, constellations in their proper place. Star Rover finds your location and updates your view of the sky as you move your iPad. The app features over 120,000 stars, 88 constellations, planets & their moons, moon phases, the Milky Way, and more. You’ll see twinkling stars, images of beautiful nebulae, eclipse simulations, sunrises and sunsets – a planetarium in your pocket. 🙂

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-rover-hd-stargazing-night/id437217048?mt=8&uo=4

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Strawberry Shortcake Berryfest Princess

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Strawberry

FREE for a limited time – Strawberry Shortcake Berryfest Princess from Cupcake Digital. Kids join Strawberry Shortcake & her friends as they plan the Berryfest Ball in this cute story about friendship and working together. The story is filled with fun animations and it has 3 after-reading activities: Tea Party, Crochet, and Coloring. The Tea Party game has kids helping to set the table and the Crochet game asks kids to complete words by finding the missing letter. There are 6 pictures and a blank page for kids to color in the app’s Coloring section. There is also a Grown Up’s Corner which has 2 sets of questions about the story. The questions address literal understanding of the story (thin questions) as well as extended meaning (fat questions). Also included in the Grown-Up Corner is information about the Common Core Standards addressed by this app which are predominately kindergarten standards. Print-outs and activities to supplement the story are available online at cupcakedigital.com.  This educational app is a must-have for Strawberry Shortcake fans!!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/strawberry-shortcake-berryfest/id735298184?mt=8&uo=4

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DinoBoy Adventures

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dinoboy

FREE for a limited time – DinoBoy Adventures, a unique interactive book. In this first adventure DinoBoy moves from the country to the big city. It’s his first night there and he notices a big yellow slide out his bedroom window. So… he sneaks out to try it. This app really gets kids involved in the story – in 3 unique ways. As the they read the story or have the story read to them, kids must discover the interactive element on each page that moves the story forward. They do things like: switch on a light, unzip a door, change the traffic lights to green, etc. Then they get to choose one of 3 pets (dog, cat or bird) to join DinoBoy on his adventure. Finally, kids get to choose the place for DinoBoy to visit – a museum, a toy store, or a playground. Kids will love choosing a different pet and/or place to change the story each time they read it. The artwork is also unique –  a fun combination of the drawings & photos. Kids will want to read and interact with this story over and over again! Get it today and look for DinoBoy’s next adventure.

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dinoboy-adventures/id455138887?mt=8&uo=4

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Phonics Tic Tac Toe Interactive Game

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tic tac toe

FREE for a limited time – Phonics Tic Tac Toe for the iPhone/iPad. This game reviews letter sounds (vowels, vowel combinations, consonant, consonant combinations) and syllables in a tic, tac, toe format. There is a lot of great phonics practice in this educational app. I really like that the app varies the placement of the missing sounds – at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the word. I also like how the app uses words with the same letters making different sounds. Since there is no sound, kindergarten/first graders might need help reading the questions. However, it would be perfect for independent practice for most second/third graders. Teachers could use it in a learning center, as independent seatwork with a friend, for small group intervention, etc. I only wish it had the option of having the questions read aloud for younger students. That being said, this app is definitely worth downloading!!

Common Core Standards met:

  • K. RF.3 – Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant. Associate the short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
  • 1.RF.3/2.RF.3/3.RF.3/4.RF.3/5.RF.3 – Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

Phonics Tic-Tac-Toe Interactive Game - Lakeshore Learning Materials

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PEEP and the Big Wide World apps

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FREE for a limited time – 6 PEEP and the Big Wide World apps from WGBH, the producers of the animated series of the same name. Major funding for these educational apps is provided by the National Science Foundation. These apps are designed to teach science to preschoolers (3 – 5 years) in a cute, fun way! The games begin simply but become more challenging as kids are successful. Each app also includes a “Try This Anywhere Activity” for you and your children to do together based on the lesson in the app. Your child will LOVE learning with Peep and friends. And you will too!

PEEP - House Hunt

PEEP and the Big Wide World House Hunt: Kids turn over leaves to pair animals with their homes in a match game that demonstrates that some habitats are home to many different animals.

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peep-big-wide-world-house/id536554271?mt=8&uo=4

PEEP - Hide & peep

PEEP and the Big Wide World Hide and Peep: Peep and friends are hiding in the tool shed. This app helps kids practice their observation and memory skills.

Download link:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peep-big-wide-world-hide-peep/id536312346?mt=8&uo=4

Peep - Paint Splat

PEEP and the Big Wide World Paint Splat: Kids join two quirky characters named Quack & Chirp to experiment with mixing colors in a fun, silly way!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peep-big-wide-world-paint/id536621786?mt=8&uo=4

Peep - Sounds

PEEP and the Big Wide World Sounds Like Fun!: Kids explore music and sounds as they mix and match sounds with this app. The characters represent different musical rhythms.

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peep-big-wide-world-sounds/id536623915?mt=8&uo=4

Peep - trash

PEEP and the Big Wide World Trash Stash: Kids practice their categorization skills by sorting objects using increasingly sophisticated criteria.

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peep-big-wide-world-trash/id536624731?mt=8&uo=4

Peep - Quack's Apples

PEEP and the Big Wide World Quack’s Apples: Kids roll Quack’s apples into a pond – testing and tweaking the design of their route as often as needed. As they play, they are practicing the engineering design process!

Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peep-big-wide-world-quacks/id536623428?mt=8&uo=4