There’s lots of great educational app content for kids out there now.

We’ve been spending some time thinking about what makes a kids app truly special.

Wired’s Geek Dad shared a great challenge a while back. He wrote:

One thing that defines us as GeekMoms and GeekDads is our desire to see our children question and challenge the status quo, to help them grow into human beings who are capable of tackling the future and making this world a better place. If they are going to do that well, we need to begin to look at the new technology offered to us by iPads and touch tablets and start demanding that we design applications that make the most of that technology.

Where are the applications that help teach preschoolers how to build simple structures, a digital version of building blocks?

Where are the applications that teach the laws of physics to primary school children by taking the use of the three-axis gyroscope and accelerometer one step further?

Where is the application that uses computer programming concepts and ideas I haven’t thought of yet because I am not smart enough, and creates something that becomes essential to all children’s learning and development and can only exist on the iPad?

We still think these are great questions.

Which apps do you think are best rising to this challenge?

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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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A few weeks ago I got my wife an iPad for our anniversary. In what seems to be a fairly common occurence for many early adopter families, it’s been tough to get it back from our kids since it arrived. Besides having fun with the oversized versions of their old favorites from the iPhone, they’ve got a few new favorites on the iPad. One of these is My Numbers, from Punflay and EMANTRAS.

My Numbers reminds me of some of the toys I grew up with – the form factor of the iPad definitely allows for a different kind of learning experience than is possible with iPhone apps and for the digital reinvention of some classic toys.
At it’s core, My Numbers is a simple counting experience that allows kids to master their numbers by practicing with objects, colors and sounds. Touch an object, and the appropriate number is spoken. Touch a number, and the appropriate objects light up. Spin the color wheel, and the colors of the app change. Perhaps best of all, the navigation has been optimized for the youngest learners – which is part of why I think our kids come back to this app. They don’t spend any time fighting through menus or navigation — they simply push the oversized buttons and get to explore the wide world of numbers.

Kudos to the My Numbers team for a solid kid-focused, educational iPad offering. If you’re interested, you can get it here. And, as always, if you’ve got other favorite educational apps for the iPhone or iPad, please do let our readers know in the comments.

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I’ve just returned from visiting family on the other side of the ocean where, among other things, I got to watch my toddler try to get the hang of Hungarian. I just loved watching her mind soak it all in. I’m sure many parents can relate to her first few words — “No”, “Uh oh”, and “Chocolate”. I’m also guessing that there are many parents out there excited about helping their kids prepare for the multilingual world of the future. To those parents, I can enthusiastically recommend OccupyBaby, a great kids iPhone app from Milobox.





OccupyBaby’s base farm theme allows toddlers to easily learn the names of farm animals in English, Spanish and French. It features lots of cute little animals in an easy-to-navigate scrolling barnyard interface. The app’s music is engaging and the interaction is easy, allowing even the youngest kids to play along. Just tap on an animal to hear a sound effect and hear the name of the animal spoken. Or slide your finger across the screen to scroll back and forth and reveal more animals. And if you really want to make things simple, you can put the app on an autoplay mode that will scroll thru all the animals one-by-one with no interaction required. That’s all there is to it — which keeps things manageable for the kiddies.





OccupyBaby is well-designed, easy-to-use, and – as I mentioned – a great tool to help young learners explore a few different languages. Once kids have learned the names of the animals in one of the languages, they can easily switch it up. By the time they are 3 they will be ready to identify all the barnyard animals they meet on your next Madrid-Paris-London road trip. Sound like a dream come true? Well, there’s an app for that. And you can get it here.

P.S. In case your road trip takes you to Budapest….rooster in Hungarian is “kakas”.

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Mozart As A Child

I’m also willing to venture that someday very soon a latter day musical wunderkid will create breathtakingly fresh iPhone-powered music that we will all treasure. Experimentation has already begun, as evidenced by The Mentalist’s cover of MGMT’s song “Kids”. This video, which was first released earlier this year, is worth taking a look at as an example of some of the musical creation that the iPhone is enabling:

It may be tempting to dismiss something like this as a PR stunt — which it surely was — but that would be to miss the greater possibilities that a performance like this demonstrates. Put simply, the iPhone has not only enabled us to carry around the tools of an entire orchestra in our pocket, but it has facilitated the creation of completely new ways of musical expression. It is here where Bebot succeeds.


The app’s interface is simple — you’re presented with a robot butler character that you can make “sing” in different ways depending upon where you touch on the screen.

Bebot - Robot Synth

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There are some kids apps that you just love. In response to the recent launch of our favorites lists, @NuggetIsland declared “we are totally a shapebuilder family!”

Shapebuilder earns this endorsement because it does a great job of reinventing a classic – the children’s puzzle. It’s easy, intuitive, and uses touch technology to teach a core concept – shapes.

FirstWords: At Home succeeds in a similar way. The app introduces spelling one letter at a time by allowing kids to drag the letters of a word into place, aided throughout by helpful audio prompts.

FirstWords: At Home

FirstWords: At Home

You simply touch the letters to hear them spoken and then drag them close to the appropriate spot where they helpfully snap into place. When you complete a word, you are rewarded with an animation that highlights the letters of the word one at at time. And then it’s on to the next word.

For kids that are exploring letters for the first time, this is ideal. The app helps reinforce the connections between letters and sounds, while also introducing the idea that letters can be combined to make words.

FIrstWords: At Home also offers the option to adjust the difficulty level of the app – for example, you can hide the letter hints and let your child try to spell the word on their own.

For parents with kids that have recently mastered their ABCs, this app is a perfect next step in their development. Interested? You can get it here.


Have other apps you’d like to see featured?



Let us know about your favorite kids iPhone apps!

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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.

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One of the newest kids iPhone apps, “Feed Me! Numbers, Colors & Shapes!” is an endless buffet of educational fun. It features fantastic animations of a hungry purple monster who is constantly day dreaming about something — a color, a shape, a number, a pattern – you name it, and this magic little guy can dream it up. The focus of the app is on selecting the appropriate object that matches what the purple monster is dreaming of. Sounds a little complicated, perhaps – but when you see the app, it all makes sense:

Feed Me! Screenshot

When you’ve identified the appropriate object, you drag it over to the monster. If you get it right, the monster eats it, smiles and it’s on to the next day dream. If you need help, you can touch any of the objects to hear an audio description. If you get it wrong, the monster gets a bit of a stomach ache and you have to select again. On and on it goes with a wide variety of objects and concepts. The app keeps track of performance over time on different types of questions, and awards a treasure chest when certain milestones are reached.

Some of the things awards are given out for:
- Answering 6 color questions correctly
- Answering 10 shape questions correctly
- Answering 10 math questions correctly
- Answering “time” questions correctly
- Answering 50 questions correctly

This approach succeeds because kids are consistently rewarded for their learning, while additional milestones remain on the horizon. This helps keep the learning experience fresh over time and provides ongoing motivation to continue to play – and learn.

Another aspect of this app that’s great is the fact that it’s been produced in eight languages with native speakers giving voice to the dreams of the little purple monster on every version. This language crossover makes it perfect for kids that are learning their first, second, or third language. No matter what language the kids speak, it’s easy to love the possibilities that this app opens up for all early language learners.

One feature request for any updated versions – it would be nice if an additional “mode” existed that allowed kids (or parents) to select a specific type of question. The random mode is great, but for my toddler some of the pattern-based questions are a little more than she’s ready to handle, and it would be nice to be able to focus in on the shape, color and number questions which are a better match for her development level. Likely many kids could benefit from this ability to focus on specific subject matter or difficulty level.

One other note – part of the fun of watching my daughter play with these apps is getting to see what happens when she rapidly touches everything on the screen in an effort to understand the dynamics of the interface of a particular app. In the English version of this app, rapid fire touching on some of the objects in the pattern questions leads to several longer audio files all playing at the same time and a bunch of gibberish playing. Not the end of the world, and definitely not a reason to skip this app — but something that should probably be cleaned up in future versions.

Those two notes aside, this app is highly recommended. It’s a great educational experience that will engage kids over time and hold their interest while they learn. If you want to see it in action, you can check out a video demo of the app here.

If you’d just like to get it in the store, it’s available for $1.99.

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Peakaboo Barn is an easy app to love. The user interface is simple, the animations are cute — and it’s among my toddler’s favorite apps. She keeps coming back to this one, which is part of what pushed it to the top of the ever-growing list of apps to review.

The app itself is simple — upon start-up a barn animates in on a country landscape while “Old McDonald” plays.

The barn then hops on the screen and makes animal noises until you touch it — the doors then open, and you get to see the animal inside the barn.

Peekaboo Barn

Peekaboo Barn

The name of the animal is displayed until you touch the screen at which point your view zooms out to the barn again. From there, the app repeats in a loop of 10 or so animals. There are pigs, horse, donkeys and more. There is a bit of a twist when the scene turns to night – but I’ll let that be a surprise for those of you that end up getting this app.

One aspect of this app that really helps my daughter connect with it is the fact that the audio is actually kids saying the names of the animals. It makes her feel comfortable to hear voices that sound like hers, and she usually repeats the animal names as she goes through the app.

In my mind, however, the biggest reason this app succeeds is because of the simplicity of the interface. It’s great to see how naturally a child can flow through this learning experience simply by continuing to tap the screen. The simplicity of it all definitely delivers a sense of being in control of the experience – and what toddler isn’t excited about that?

If this sounds like the perfect iPhone app for the kid in your life, you can get it here.

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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]

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