On my ipad, I have three pages to the kids' education folder. The first has their favorites.
The first is Peekaboo Barn. This app has a free trial but it isn't worth it. The real app costs $1.99. It is a barn that shakes and makes knocking sounds until the baby pokes it, then the door opens up and an animal appears. It makes the animal sound and a little girl's voice says the name of the animal. Then the baby pokes it and the barn closed and it starts over again. It is a simple app and goes through about 15 animals. It is really cute and it keeps Raylan occupied for awhile. Now my DF and I agree that we don't want Raylan to depend on electronics. We won't be buying him his own tablet or portable game system for awhile because we want him to focus on reading. But there are times when he wants my phone or ipad and so I let him play one of his games. I try to make sure they are educational. And he loves this one.
The next is my niece's favorite. It is called Endless Reader. This app is free but only comes with about half the alphabet. You can buy the rest. This game is similar to Endless Alphabet but that one costs money and we have it on our Kindle Fire. This game features a word and has the kid spell it by matching letters to their part in the word chosen. As the kid moves the letter, the letter animates and says the sound the letter makes. Once you're done, it comes up with a sentence using that word and has the kid match the word to the sentence. It sounds advanced but it isn't. The app is fun, cute, and teaches the kid how to spell, what sounds letters make, and how it use them in a sentence.
I am going to go through a few of these quickly because they aren't favorites but they are still nice. The sorting game is free and has levels to it where the child can sort objects by color or shape or can be more advanced. The game has the first three levels free but then you have to buy them. Kynzee loves it. PBS kids is a free app that has episodes of PBS shows like Caillou or Daniel Tigers Neighborhood. Squiggles is a fun free app that allows kids to draw and animate their drawings. So for example it has one with three cars on a road. Your kid draws something behind the car, like swirly lines or hearts or whatever and then pushes the go button and the cars zoom around the page with the kids drawing attached and moving as well. It is cute and keeps Kynzee occupied. The last three are Lego Duplo play worlds. In this, their is a story being told with lego duplo people or animals and has fun scenes for the kids to play with. Kynzee loves the zoo one. These are all free.
I skipped Sign and Sing for a reason, this is both of the kids' favorite app. It is free but only comes with one song. You can buy a pack of about 8 songs for $2.99. In this app, animated children sing songs and use simple sign language while they do it. So the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star comes free with the app. A girl sits on a swing and sings the song while doing signs for the song. These signs aren't complete, they dont cover every word/phrase of the song, but it is enough for little kids to understand. This app is weird with the animations but it is a great learning app. It has helped Raylan completely learn the signs for duck and dog, which are ones I have worked on but he never really got them until he played the Old Mcdonald song. He also can do the entire Itsy Bitsy Little Spider song, because it is his favorite song and he watches that one about twenty times a day. There is also an option to watch a real person sing and sign the song, which is a great way for the parents to learn the signs in their true formso they can work on it with the kids.
The next page of apps is just for Fisher Price apps. The great thing about these apps are that they are free. All of them. And they cover a variety of things. From ABC's and 123's. Shapes and colors. Music. There are ones for smaller babies where they just touch the screen and little giggling characters pop up and move around the screen. There are storytelling ones where they have common nursery rhymes and they tell the story and then sing the songs as well. So these are great for all around play.
There are only two apps on the last page. The first is Wheels on the Bus. This app is free and has many parts to it. You can sing the song with animation, race things, color pictures, or drive the bus. It is pretty entertaining for Kynzee and Raylan loves the song. This is a free app. The last one is the Learning Academy app. This is a companion app to the website ABCMouse.com. The app is free but you have to have an account for the website to make it work. There is a three month free trial available, if you want to try it without paying, and then it is a pay monthly type service. But it has a million different things to do that goes with your child's age. Raylan is too young right now for it, but my neice started the program at 2 1/2 years old. So you don't have to have an older child for this.
So that is it for my iPad apps for toddlers. I will show you my iPhone apps really quick, but most are the same.
Phone4Kids is a free app that mimics a phone for kids and lets them talk to voices and rings like a phone. It is good if your kids like the call China on your phone. The Towers game is made by the same people as the sorting game. But it just has them stacking different things. This is good for both ages of babies. Duolingo is a foreign language learning system. It is more for adults but I let the kids look at it so they can get used to other languages. It is a free app and supposed to be good like Rosetta Stone. The Relax Music is like a white noise machine for my phone. It has like 20 different sounds you can choose from and you can even mix some together to make different soothing sounds for kids to sleep to. I love this app and it is free. The last is a sign language dictionary so that when I want to know how to say something in sign language, I don't have to google it.
And that is it! These are the apps we like, some that we love, and some that you should definitely buy. I will work on getting a list together of these apps with the links so you can get to them easily.
Make sure you check out my instagram for quick mini reviews that don't make it into a blog. Right now I have a pic up of a new nail polish from Maybelline's new Bleached Neons collection. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Instagram camera. Thanks!!
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