If your kids loved Letters A to Z then ABC Animals – Talking Alphabet Cards for Kids would probably be a hit with them as well. It’s well-illustrated, easy-to-use and educational. The animations are also fun.

For each letter of the alphabet, a letter and an animal are shown. You can touch the letter to hear it spoken, touch the animal to hear its name spoken and easily flip though the full alphabet.
Without question, the production values on this app are fantastic – it’s just too bad that it exactly duplicates the approach of previous apps. With my daughter’s frequent requests for “new app”, it’s nice to have a bit of variety among the well-produced apps. And that’s the thing that’s really lacking with this app – the concept here is identical to Letters A to Z.

While I love the concept and the execution of this app, if you’ve already got one of the apps out there that’s virtually identical, you may not need this one. That said, if you don’t yet have an ABC animal flash card app for your toddler that they love, this one will likely be a hit. You can get it here.

Hope to see more original kids apps from these developers – they definitely know what they are doing.

Related posts:

1. APP Review: Letters A to Z
2. App Review: First Words: Animals
3. Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps

It’s easy to love the App Store, but I do have one frustration – it lumps in kids learning apps with all educational apps, including those aimed at goals such as teaching Korean to businessmen and logic to prospective lawyers. In my mind, this makes it harder for developers to share their kid-specific content, and harder for parents to find quality apps. Someday, we hope, Apple will find a way to display kids educational apps in their own category within the app store. Until then, we’ll keep you updated on great options when looking for learning apps just for the kids.

Top Kids iPhone Apps in the App Store

Wheels On Bus

1. Wheels On The Bus
Price: $0.99
Description: Created by parents, Wheels on the Bus is a fun, interactive musical book, based on the popular children’s song. Come aboard the bus to spin the wheels, open and close the doors, swish the wipers, pop some bubbles, make a dog bark, and much more!
Read a Review
Get It From The Store

Cute Math

2. Cute Math
Price: $1.99
Description: Your little one can count baby penguins, pick the right amount of apples to put in a basket, move some happy birds around to solve addition problems, and drop apples off a tree to solve subtraction problems.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Toddler Flashcards

3. Toddler Flashcards
Price: $0.99
Description: Toddler Flashcards has cards to teach children the names of animals, foods, things – as well as advanced stuff like the alphabet or numbers. Over 200 images, text in English, French and Spanish.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Voice Toddler Cards

4. Voice Toddler Cards
Price: $0.99
Description: A collection of talking flashcards. Cards speak in English and Spanish. You can also add your own voice to any flashcard.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Preschool Adventure

5. Preschool Adventure
Price: $0.99
Description: Contains simple activities parents can do with their toddlers: ocean colors, space shapes, monkey body, farm sounds, animal matching, dot-to-to numbers.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Word Magic

6. Word Magic
Price: $0.99
Description: A picture is shown and and kids select the missing letter for the word shown in the picture.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Five Little Monkeys

7. Five Little Monkeys
Price: $0.99
Description: Little Monkeys jump on the bed to music — kids can build counting and math skills by taking the monkeys on and off the bed. Interactive objects teach concepts like on/off, open/close and more.
Read a Review
Get It From The Store

ShapeBuilder

8. Shapebuilder
Price: $0.99
Description: Shape Builder educates & entertains your little one with easy to move shapes that snap into place on top of silhouette puzzles. Real images are revealed when the puzzle is complete.
Read a Review
Get It From The Store

Letter Tracer

9. Letter Tracer
Price: $0.99
Description: LetterTracer is an educational tool that helps preschoolers and other pre-reading children trace and paint letters and number shapes. The exposure to letters and numbers helps prepare children for reading and writing.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Pick A Letter

10. Teach Me Toddler
Editor’s Choice
Price: $0.99
Description: Teach Me Toddler helps toddlers learn letter names, letter phonics, numbers, shapes and colors.
Read A Review
Get It From The Store

Suzy Dress Up

11. Suzy Dress Up
Price: $0.99
Description:Create and customize Suzy’s wardrobe and accessories with options including: hat, shoes, jewelry, purses, pets, glasses, hairstyle, eyes, mouth, skin color, wings, costumers and more.
Read A Review
Get It From The Store

PopMath Basic Math

Animal Memory Match

Best of Eye Spy

Flash for Kids

Letters A to Z

Coloring Book

abc PocketPhonics

Math Flash Cards

Lady Bug Tree

Let us know — we’ll be putting together a few other Top 20 lists in the coming weeks, but next time not based on sales.

Do share your favorites.

[Editor's Note: Descriptions listed in this article are adapted from the info provided by developers on iTunes. Our take on the apps can be found in the relevant reviews -- linked from above as available]

Related posts:

1. App Review: Teach Me Toddler
2. App Review: ABC Animals – Talking Alphabet Cards for Kids
3. APP REVIEW: Chinese4Kids

Letters A to Z succeeds because it takes a simple concept and executes it well. My toddler loves it because it is easy to use, visually pleasing, and helps her learn her letters.

Letters A to Z

Playing with the app is straightforward — you can flip through the letters of the alphabet the same way you browse pictures – by simply dragging your finger across the screen. This is smart, usable design – it makes it easy for even the youngest learners to navigate thru the app. For any given letter you can also tap the letter to hear audio and you can tap the picture to hear the relevant word spoken and see a fun animation.

The Letter F

That’s all there is to it. But for kids apps, this make sense. Hard to go wrong with something that’s easy to use, interactive, and promotes learning.

Looking to help your toddler master their ABCs? You can get Letters A to Z here.

Related posts:

1. App Review: Teach Me Toddler
2. App Review: ABC Animals – Talking Alphabet Cards for Kids
3. App Review: FirstWords: At Home

The tale of a kid asking their parent for a trinket is an age-old story, but lately I’ve found myself living the digital version of it — my daughter Emma is two, and she has recently taken to grabbing my iPhone, navigating to the app store and handing it to me with an expectant declaration of “NEW!”

I cringe less when she asks for a new app than when she wants a glass of Coke, a bit of chocolate or some other indulgence. Many of the apps help her learn, challenge her, and occupy her. A new one is much cheaper than a trip to Toys R Us or Target. And as a parent desperate for a moment of sanity, the apps are a godsend for me. They are always around, whether you’re at the doctor’s office, in the car, or at home.

Some of them she loves, some of them bore her quickly, and some are just too demanding for a two year-old. But by and large they are an entertaining and educational part of her rhythm.

As for me, it’s fascinating to watch her shape her concepts about how to interface with a machine and what you can do with one. It’s a computer – wait – it’s a phone – wait – it’s a camera, it’s a stereo, it’s a map – and on it goes… When I was a kid, music came on vinyl, stories happened in books, and code lived inside of my Commodore-64. She has more flexible ideas about where content comes from and how you can play with it.

I do believe that acquiring this digital fluency early will prepare her for the world she will live in, and yet still will admit to the occasional concern regarding the amount of screen time she gets at such a young age.

But my bottom line is that as long as she’s learning, having fun and it’s part of a balanced life, then it’s a good thing.

Check it….

And if you happen to be looking for a new app, you can get the one Emma is playing with here..

Related posts:

1. App Review: Teach Me Toddler
2. Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps
3. Emma’s Favorite Apps

Teach Me Toddler is definitely one of my daughter’s current favorite apps.  The app is pretty straightforward – there’s a talking mouse that asks kids to identify a letter, number, shape, or color from among a few options.  After the initial set-up (parental supervision required ) you get a screen like this when you open the app:

Pick A Letter

Pick A Number

The interface is easy and intuitive for a two-year old to grasp and the talking mouse is always at the ready in case the kiddies need a bit of help remembering what they’re supposed to be looking for.  For kids, it’s a fun game to find the right answer.  Moreover, the app provides immediate audio and visual feedback that lets them know if they found the right choice.  Emma typically punctuates her successes by showing me the phone and exclaiming, “YAY!!”, when she gets a correct answer.  Like I said, she loves it.  

For my part, I love the fact that the app keeps track of her performance over time, allowing me to to view at a glance what she’s doing well with and what she might need more help on.  

Maybe we need to work on colors?

Pretty good with numbers...

The stats are pretty detailed — providing letter-by-letter, number-by-number, and shape-by-shape results on her performance.  



Another cool part about the app is that it has a fun little interlude that rewards kids with stickers for correct answers.  

Great Job! Pick a sticker....

Stickers On The Beach

After answering three questions correctly, the mouse awards a sticker of the child’s choice, which can be dragged around and placed on a rather pleasant looking beach scene.  

The combination of great learning activities, fun rewards, and performance tracking make this app a great choice for any parent looking to add another kid-friendly app to their phone. You can get it here.

Related posts:

1. Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps
2. APP REVIEW: Chinese4Kids
3. APP Review: Letters A to Z