Storytelling is a tradition as old as time. For generations, kids have loved to hear stories of adventure, magic, romance, heroism and all the rest. They’ve also always enjoyed creating their own stories, putting their own special stamp on familiar tales, and bravely inventing new ones. Toontastic, an award-winning iPad app from Launchpad Toys, has taken this simple truth about what kids enjoy, and used it as a foundation for an entire platform that enables kids to tell stories and share them in entirely new ways.

Quite simply, Toontastic is a brilliant idea brilliantly executed. The iPad app enables kids to create their own stories. How? Scene-by-scene, kids are prompted to select background graphics, characters, & music, and then kids are prompted to move their characters around the scene while speaking and recording their own story. That may sound complex, but Toontastic makes the entire experience elegantly simple and easy for kids as young as 4 to manage with minimal adult supervision.

Toontasic also lends itself well to intergenerational play. My four-year old daughter and I play this app together regularly – at her request. Often we’ll split up the characters in each scene and then improvise the story. She ends up being a princess a lot and I am typically the knight, the pirate, or the dragon. Parents beware: you may find yourself enjoying this as much as you did movies like Toy Story or Aladdin. It’s one of those rare experiences that is fun no matter how old you are – everyone can get a little something different out of it. Still, as fun as it is to live the childhood fantasy of controlling my own cartoon, it’s even more magical to watch my daughter’s imagination in action in real time.

If you’ve got an iPad and you’ve got kids, Toontastic is quite simply a must have. Seriously folks, this app is in the App Store Hall of Fame for a reason. Stop what you’re doing and get it now.

Still not persuaded that this app is a must have? Check out the content kids have already created.
You will be inspired: http://toontube.launchpadtoys.com/

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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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3. APP REVIEW: Chinese4Kids

Having studied Mandarin for over 10 years and having lived in Beijing for a few months, I have a special place in my heart reserved for an app that might help my daughter learn Chinese. That said, I am still blown away by the quality and the value of the new Chinese 4 Kids- Animal Kingdom app.

Chinese 4 Kids

The app has two different modes – learning and games. In the learning mode, you begin by selecting from among 26 animals.

Select An Animal To Learn The Chinese

Having selected an animal, you then get a screen that features an image of the animal, the Chinese character, the English word, and the Pinyin transliteration. All of these options offer interaction — selecting the English or the Pinyin produces the appropriate audio, while touching the animal image gives you a sound effect and selecting the character shows you how to correctly write the character. Simple and straightforward — but a great way to learn.

Learning to say and write Tiger in Mandarin

The learning mode could easily keep a kid (or an adult, for that matter..) occupied for quite some time — mastering all of them is no simple task. But there’s more to this app — once the kids are confident that they have some of the content mastered, they can then transition into game mode, which features three different games to test your knowledge. The first game, Dot-To-Dot, challenges you to match the image of an animal to the appropriate Chinese character.

Dot-to-Dot Game

Quick Pick is a bit easier — it asks you to select the correct Pinyin transliteration for the image of the animal. The game gives you 10 rapid-fire questions and then gives you a grade and a score based upon your performance.

Quick Pick Game

The final game is Flip Card which is a classic memory matching game that challenges you to demonstrate mastery of the correct English, Pinyin, and character for an image — and match them to each other by flipping cards. It’s a pretty standard memory game – but one that requires a solid knowledge base to succeed at.

And that’s why I love this app – it takes a challenging topic and reinvents the way the material can be learned so that it is both fun and educational. Kids may think they’re playing a game, but I guarantee that to succeed they will learn quite a bit along the way.

On a more personal note, this app is still a bit too much for my toddler right now. For slightly older kids, however, this app is a clear winner. My only real complaint is the music — it’s rather irritating and would almost be better without it. That said, I really do think this app is fantastic. Any parent looking to help their child get a jump start on learning a language that is sure to be critical over the next century has a great tool on their hands here. If that sounds like you, and you’ve got $0.99 to invest in your child’s future, you can get the app here.

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Anyone with toddlers knows that daily life is a lot like having monkeys crawling all over you. Five Little Monkeys is an entertaining kids app that captures this essential truth and turns it into sing-a-long fun for the kids.

Jumping On The Bed

The app opens by allowing you to select your preferred music type — country, rock or pop. Having selected your theme song style, the app transitions to a scene like the above — monkeys jumping all over the bed. You can then touch the monkeys and get treated to an animation of them falling off the bed and bumping their head. Following the lead of the song that is the app’s inspiration, Mama then calls the Doctor only to be informed that the monkeys should no longer be allowed to jump on the bed. While the song plays, the words animate across the screen in a familiar see-and-say fashion.

I was a bit skeptical of this app when I first saw it — but my daughter had a different opinion. Perhaps it’s because she’s a huge Curious George fan or maybe it’s because she just loves music, but in any case this app is one of her favorites. My take remains that this app is primarily a fun diversion — but I suppose I can’t rule out that she’s learning words by singing along.

Bottom line — if you’re looking for a strong educational focus you can probably find better options. But if you’re trying to find a highly entertaining musical diversion for your toddler – then Five Little Monkeys is a great choice. You can get it here.

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Suzy Dress Up is a tough app for me to review. Let me start with this – my daughter loves it. And that makes sense – lots of little girls like to play dress up, right? This app extends that appeal to the digital domain and allows you to customize a virtual girl’s appearance – her hat, shoes, pants, shirt, purse, dog, eyes, skin, jewelry, purse – much like creating a Mii character for the Wii.

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

The design of the app is fantastic, the artwork is first-rate, and there’s a wide-array of accessories for you to choose from. You can make Suzy look like anything from a cheerleader to a princess to a nurse to a witch…

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

So if the app engages my daughter, is easy to use, and has lasting entertainment value, what’s the problem? I guess my concern surrounds what this app (and the rest of the barrage of media coming at her) might do to my daughter’s notions of who she is, what her possibilities are and what society values in women. Perhaps I’m reading too much into the content of a kid’s app, but I can’t help but be a bit concerned because I’m keenly aware of how my little two-year old angel is absorbing everything around her and using it to build her concepts about the world. The other night at dinner I slipped up and uttered an expletive after burning my tongue – which Emma then spent the rest of the night repeating. Not the end of the world – but definitely a timely reminder of how actively she is internalizing everything that she comes into contact with. I hold out hope that my daughter might want to become a scientist, a politician, a historian – or if she so chooses – a fashion model. Yet I’m not sure that this app sets her up for all of those possibilities.

Open to input on this one — especially from Moms. As a Dad, I may be in over my head on this one — and I don’t want to shutdown to an app that is in all other respects great. But I do want to know that as I put digital media in front of my little girl that it’s helping her to grow and not just serving as a virtual pacifier – or worse – something that’s shaping her self-concept in a limiting fashion.

Thoughts?

If you think I’m being too conservative on this one, please do speak up.

And if you’re just looking for the app, you can get it here.

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Animal Memory Match transports a simple kids game – Memory – and puts it on the iPhone. The game is populated with all sorts of cute animals, beginning with the home screen icon, a lovable little duck. The game includes four levels – at the easiest level, you have to match six cards, while at the hardest level you have to match thirty cards. Game play is straightforward – you just start-up the app and start touching the cards – they flip over in a smooth animation and remain flipped if you happen to match them. If you fail to match them, they flip back over and you can try again. There’s no timer, no score, no pressure, and no multiplayer aspects to the game – but that doesn’t stop the fun.

Animal Memory Match - Hard

Animal Memory Match - Easy

This app took a little while for my two-year old to figure out – but after we spent a couple of weeks playing it together, she is now fully in control of her own experience. In fact, the only thing that slows her down is stopping to exclaim “WOW” every time she matches a pair of cards. Although she has mastered the first three levels of the game, she does still like playing it with me so that she can learn the names of all of the animals. This app is definitely worth the $0.99 price tag and is among the apps that my daughter consistently revisits. Interested in checking it out for yourself?

You can get it here.

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Wheels On The Bus deserves notice if only because it is the most popular app within the education category. There’s a reason for its success too – it’s a highly engaging, fun experience that puts kids inside of an immersive environment that they can explore. Essentially an iPhone version of an old-school pop-up book, the app is centered around the children’s song that is also its namesake. The app is broken down into a few scenes, each of which feature a snippet of the song and a couple of touchable elements that kids can interact with.

In the first scene, you can swipe on the school bus and watch it drive down a road.

Wheels On The Bus - Scene 1

In the second scene, you can open and shut the doors on the bus.

Wheels On The Bus - Scene 2

In the third scene, you can interact with the bus driver and make the teddy bear bounce in his seat.

The Wheels On The Bus - Scene 3

And so it continues. Other fun aspects of the app are the ability to have the song play in a variety of languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German. In case you’re looking for more to do you can also record yourself singing the song.

The strength of this app is its engagement value – the graphic design is top-notch, the animations are fun, and the variety of languages is a nice touch. That said, Wheels on the Bus may not be quite as strong of an educational app as some of the other kids-focused options out there. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a lot to be said for singing songs in lots of different languages, it’s just that the app is not as focused on learning as it is on fun. Which is okay – and for any parent looking to keep their kid entertained while at the doctor’s office or in the car, this is a must-have.

Get it here..

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