the ikids blog

Top 10 Educational iPad Apps for Kids

Considering an iPad and interested in what kind of educational content is out there for kids? Here are some of the best and most popular apps – which, when taken as a whole, present a compelling case for the role of the device as an educational tool. Let us know what other apps your kids love in the comments — there’s a lot of great content out there, and not all of it ends up at the top of the App Store listings. But here are some of the apps that did…

 

Top Educational Kids iPad Apps in the App Store

Star Walk is one of those special apps that delivers upon the iPad’s promise of being a “magical” device. You may in fact have already seen this one — it won the Apple Design Awards in 2010 and was featured among the best iPhone apps of 2009.

The iPad version continues to provide great astronomical information — but the real “wow’ of this app is the fact that it delivers a full screen augmented reality view of the heavens that rotates as you move your iPad around — turning it into a super-powered virtual telescope.

Strongly recommended both for experienced star gazers and the youngest observers of the heavens. (Although the littlest Gallileo wannabes may need a bit of help..) You can get it from the App Store here.

Honorable Mention: If you’re looking for other fantastic astronomy apps, both Mars Globe HD and Solar Walk 3D Solar System are great.





Fish School HD continues Duck Duck Moose’s strong tradition of producing quality kids educational apps for the iOS platform. Like their previous iPhone mega-hits, Wheels on the Bus and Itsy Bitsy Spider, Fish School HD features strong animations that can help engage kids in a learning experience. This app features a dynamic school of fish that swims into place to display letters, numbers and shapes — and, like a well-trained aquatic marching band, the fish are perfectly synced with the accompanying music. Fish School HD guides kids through different learning modes and periodically rewards them with free play with the fish. If you’re looking to help kids learn letters, numbers, and shapes, it’s hard to go wrong with this one.
You can get it from the App Store here.




Math Bingo has been one of the hottest kids apps in recent weeks and has been extensively featured by Apple — but in case you missed it, Math Bingo is wonderfully focused on a simple concept — you answer math problems to fill spots on a bingo board. This drill-style learning is complemented by adorable little “bingo bugs” that you place on your board as you correctly answer problems. Once you win a round you are awarded a bingo bug to keep and then given the chance to play with it for a bit — not only by touching it, but also by moving your iPad around and triggering the accelerometer. Great fun and a great reward for learning. My three year old isn’t quite ready for this yet, but apps like this one and Math Ninja are driving her curiosity around this whole “math” thing. Last night she spent an hour with me asking questions like what is 3+4 and 5+2 and 1+4 and on and on.. Anything that engages my daughter in learning like that is a tool I want in her life. If you’re interested you can get it from the App Store here.




Full disclosure here – Build A Zoo is our app, and we’re proud of it – but you don’t have to take our word for the fact that it is a great learning app for the iPad – Apple named it a “New & Notable” education app just the day after it was released. Build A Zoo features six different learning games that kids can play to earn animals for their zoo. The included games help develop a nice balance of skills including spelling, memory, matching, as well as timing and fine motor skills. Interested in seeing what your kids think? We’ve got some promo codes for free copies of the app that we’d be happy to share with you, our loyal readers — just let us know in the comments..We’re all out of promo codes for the current version, but you can still get it from the App Store here.

There’s absolutely no doubting the fact that Cookie Doodle is an incredibly engaging app. Kids love to play house – and this app lets them bake and decorate cookies without the mess. Trust us – if your kids like baking real cookies, they’ll love this too. We have seen some comments in user reviews that this app is void of educational content — but we disagree. If you’re looking for apps to help your kids get a jumpstart on reading, writing and arithmetic, than this probably isn’t the best app for you. But if you believe the process of going through a self-guided yet structured creative exercise can help your child learn to think, than this is probably an excellent app to add to your child’s collection. Just be prepared to help eat the virtual cookies.. You can get it from the App Store here.

Math Board is a classic – one of those apps that validates our claim that mobile devices are the modern chalkboard. This app takes that idea quite literally – math problems appear and you have the ability to work them out by hand on the virtual chalkboard. The app features deep options for customizing both the type of problems you want to answer and the overall quiz. Further it also stores your quiz results and displays them in an easy to see dashboard. Perhaps the best part of this app is it’s ability to deliver value across a wide range of learning levels. Depending upon the child, it’s easy to see this being useful as a regular learning tool for kids from as young as 4 to as old as 13 — and not many apps can make that claim.
You can get it from the App Store here.














Color & Draw is a modern coloring book. It includes a wide variety of line drawings that kids can color in, as well as stickers that can be added to drawings, and the ability to import images and draw on them. The app’s user interface is simple and clean and easy for little kids to figure out — meaning you don’t have to fight with the technology at all and can instead get straight to the fun of coloring. Color & Draw also makes it easy for you to save and share images — meaning that even if junior’s next masterpiece doesn’t end up on on gramma’s fridge, it may end up on her desktop. Sound like fun?
You can get it from the App Store here.
























The Cat in the Hat has always been a classic, and it’s only gotten better on the iPad. The iPad version will read to you, or let you read and explore the story yourself along the way. Really, the magic here is the story – but the occasional convenience of having the book read itself and the fun of being able to interact with story elements gives this version a freshness beyond any paper copy.
You can get it from the App Store here.




















123 World Geography is both a guided coloring exercise and a great introduction to geography. It’s best explained by watching the demo built into the app, but the essence of it is that you get to color in a wide range of maps. Once you’ve finished coloring in your map, you can also easily save or share your colorful cartography with friends. A great app for the kids in the car on any road trip.
You can get it from the App Store here.
































Super Why is a favorite of many kids from the PBS Kids series. Their app is true to the series – with classic characters each hosting their own game, including sentence completion, rhyming, spelling and a letter hunt. The visual look of this is obviously top-notch and the learning games are of obvious educational value. Some reader reviews seem to indicate that there’s been some instability with this app – but I’m happy to say that I’ve not been able to crash my iPad with it. Which is lucky, because our kids love it.

This list is based on a mix of our personal take and iTunes App Store data as of early June ’10. We’re confident all of these are truly great iPad apps for kids — but we’re not convinced our list is completely comprehensive. Although the situation has improved greatly since we put together our list of Top 20 Kids Educational Apps for the iPhone, the nature of the App Store still makes it easy for some great apps to slip through the cracks and makes it even harder for them to ever get rediscovered. On that note – are your kids using any great educational iPad apps that you love that you don’t see on this list?

Let us know — we’d love to feature some reader favorites here.

Do share.

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