Educational Apps
For those who have already access to a tablet, below are some applications we recommend.
Quality Free and Educational Apps
A list curated by the Clermont County Public Library
clermontlibrary.org
1. Khan Academy
Age suggestion: 2-8 years
What parents need to know: This award-winning education app was thoughtfully designed by experts in early education. It guides young learners on a delightful journey through many key skills.
What kids can learn: Math, reading phonics, writing, problem solving and reasoning, social-emotional development.
Engagement: Includes thousands of lessons, books, activities, and games. There are catchy songs and yoga videos, so your child will also have fun moving, dancing, and getting the wiggles out.
Learning Approach: Parents can choose lessons from the app’s library for their kids or use the personalized learning path that automatically adjusts to each child’s level.
2. Starfall ABCs
Age suggestion: 2-5 years
What parents need to know: This alphabet-teaching app presents each letter in a wide variety of ways—visually, audibly, and within words and sentences. It also has some truly interactive bits that let kids solve mazes or spell words by placing puzzle pieces.
What kids can learn: Language & reading, thinking & reasoning, communication.
Engagement: Offers enough task variety to keep preschoolers engaged. Interactive sequences are especially stimulating. Children delight as they see, hear, and interact with letters and sounds in words, sentences, and games.
Learning Approach: Children see spelled-out words and hear them sounded out. Games teach matching as well as lower- and uppercase letters. Mazes empower kids to make choices and spell words with puzzle pieces.
3. Hungry Caterpillar Play School
Age suggestion: 2-5 years
What parents need to know: This is a marvelous learning app because of its range and content. It includes Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a universe of his other beloved characters.
What kids can learn: Math, language & literacy, science & nature, creative arts, problem solving and reasoning, early coding skills.
Engagement: Learning content is supported and enhanced by songs and videos. They help deepen your child’s engagement, understanding, and recall.
Learning Approach: Unlimited access to a huge library of books, videos, and activities. Particularly effective with neurodivergent learners.
4. Kids Doodle – Color & Draw
Age suggestion: 2 years and up
What parents need to know: This easy-to-use app is tailored specifically for young children, but can also be enjoyed by older kids and adults.
What kids can learn: Creativity, self-expression.
Engagement: The app supports several brushes, such as glow/neon, rainbow, emboss, oil, crayon, etc. The brush size and color is randomly adjusted to keep children entertained. A movie mode allows the child to play back the drawing just like a movie.
Learning Approach: This is a very entertaining painting application for young children to freely doodle, make a movie, share creations and then shake the device to clear the screen.
5. Pocket Worlds - Educational Games for Kids
Age suggestion: 2-8 years
What parents need to know: This award-winning education app combines early learning concepts like shapes, colors, and numbers with the fun of games to create a rewarding experience—the type of play kids enjoy. (This app also comes with “Birthday Party World,” a set of additional games. Additional game expansions can also be purchased if desired.)
What kids can learn: Math Concepts, such as matching, sorting, colors, numbers, counting, stacking, and more.
Engagement: Children will explore different worlds while learning along the way. In addition to math concepts, children can freely draw and paint in the Paintbox feature.
Learning Approach: This easy-to-navigate app has a kid-friendly interface that’s simple to use. The high-quality art and voiceover accelerate learning with sights, sounds and positive reinforcement.
6. PBS Kids Games
Age suggestion: 3-8 years
What parents need to know: This app makes learning fun and safe with amazing games featuring favorites like Daniel Tiger, Wild Kratts, Donkey Hodie, Alma’s Way, and more. Play hundreds of educational games designed for your child and watch as they learn with their favorite PBS characters.
What kids can learn: Science, math, reading, art, creativity.
Engagement: Child-friendly, with hundreds of games, mazes, puzzles, dress-up, coloring, and so much more. New games are added frequently so kids can keep playing and learning.
Learning Approach: Encourages early learning with educational games featuring well-loved PBS characters, including Cat in the Hat, Curious George, and the Sesame Street gang. This app teaches through fun, interactive games. More recently, games geared to help with social concepts like kindness, mindfulness, and emotions have been added.
7. Fish School – 123 ABC for Kids
Age suggestion: 2-5 years
What parents need to know: A playful underwater experience filled with educational activities, this award-winning app teaches children letters, numbers, shapes and colors with colorful fish and friendly sea life characters.
What kids can learn: Letters, numbers, shapes, colors, differences, matching, and more.
Engagement: Whimsical visuals and audio attract children's attention. Games are fun, and children enjoy the interactive features.
Learning Approach: Watch colorful fish create letters; follow the fish as they form shapes; touch, tap, and drag to make fish and other colorful sea creatures do funny things; listen to classical variations of the ABC song.
8. Thinkrolls Play & Code
Age suggestion: 3-8 years
What parents need to know: Unleash your child’s inner genius. This award-winning learning app includes 1000+ logic puzzles, fun brain games and a pre-coding platform where kids can create, play and share their own logic puzzles.
What kids can learn: Logic, problem solving, spatial reasoning, memory, attention, and creativity.
Engagement: No reading or coding skills are required to play and there is a fun reward system for continuous motivation. Children are able to access hundreds of maze puzzles, as well as community puzzles created by other kids.
Learning Approach: Children will encounter a wealth of STEM and pre-coding concepts in a fascinating play experience. Little ones will quickly learn to solve complex problems, think multiple steps ahead, and seamlessly apply these skills to real life scenarios.
9. Find Them All: Looking for Animals
Age suggestion: 2-8 years
What parents need to know: Children will learn things about animals, their natural environments and other interesting facts, mixed with games, puzzles, animations and other interactions.
What kids can learn: Concentration, focus, puzzle solving; 144 animals from the farm and five continents, names of animals in multiple languages.
Engagement: When at least 12 photos have been taken, the child is able to move/delete photos and print them in an album. When all 24 animals in a world have been found, the child is able to print a folding booklet and a separate sheet with all the heads to be cut out and paste in a booklet.
Learning Approach: The game includes animal calls, animated pictures, cards, photos and video. Assistance and instructions are spoken and the app uses a simplified, child-friendly interface.
10. Lego Duplo World
Age suggestion: 2-5 years
What parents need to know: This award-winning app is packed with open-ended play experiences featuring animals, buildings, vehicles, and trains to inspire your child’s imagination and creativity through learning. (This app begins with the “Number Train” play pack. Additional play packs can also be purchased.)
What kids can learn: STEM, reasoning and problem-solving, imagination, creativity
Engagement: Child-friendly, featuring recognizable Duplo characters and blocks. Parents can also play along; the app supports Multi-Touch, so your family can play together and on the go for shared games, learning and adventures.
Learning Approach: Your child can explore each scene to find out what’s in it, discover how everything works, and—of course—play with it. Children can also build structures using 3D blocks, stimulating their creativity.
Road Rally - Mickey Mouse Clubhouse - Disney Junior Appisodes
What parents need to know:
The app is based on the TV series of the same name. Children watch the appisode on the device just like they would on a TV, but sprinkled throughout the show are interactive experiences where kids get to take part and help Mickey and his friends solve problems ranging from finding the triangle to picking the right tool for the job in order to finish the race.
What kids can learn:
Math, thinking & reasoning
Engagement:
A great example of taking something familiar and applying it to something new. Provides just enough interactive elements to elevate the app from the TV version, yet not too many that kids lose sight it's still based on a show.
Learning Approach:
At each pit stop of the race, kids must help Mickey and friends solve a problem. The pause-for-an-answer-format has been shown to be effective for learning. This app also recognizes kids' sound levels and has them tap answers.
Support:
Mickey provides great instruction and feedback to help kids out and reinforce concepts. An icon links to other Disney apps.
Starfall ABCs
What parents need to know:
This alphabet-teaching app presents each letter in a wide variety of ways -- visually, audibly, and within words and sentences. It also has some truly interactive bits that let kids solve mazes or spell words by placing puzzle pieces.
What kids can learn:
Language & reading, thinking & reasoning, and communication
Engagement:
Offers enough task variety to keep preschoolers engaged. Interactive sequences are especially stimulating.
Learning Approach:
Children see spelled-out words and hear them sounded out. Games teach matching as well as lower- and uppercase letters. Mazes empower kids to make choices and spell words with puzzle pieces.
Support:
Presents each letter in a variety of ways: visually, audibly, and within words and sentences.
Kids Paint Free
What parents need to know:
The app has been rated the best drawing app for young children.
What kids can learn:
Creativity, self-expression.
Engagement:
Children are encouraged to draw and save their drawings to a photo gallery.
Learning Approach:
Children draw art with random color, perform color cycling and shake the device to clear the screen.
Support:
Children can post pictures to Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/virtualgs/kids-paint/
Kids Doodle - Movie Kids Drawing
What parents need to know:
This easy-to-use app 1s tailored specifically for young children.
What kids can learn:
Creativity, self-expression.
Engagement:
The app supports several brushes, such as glow/neon, rainbow, emboss, oil, crayon, etc. The brush size and color is randomly adjusted to keep children entertained. A movie mode allows the child to play back the drawing just like a movie.
Learning Approach:
This is a very entertaining painting application for young children to freely doodle, make a movie, share creations and then shake the device to clear the screen.
Support:
A built-in gallery is supported. It can store both the drawing picture and its draw procedure. As a result, you can continue your drawing whenever you want, or play back old drawings anytime you want.
Pocket Worlds - Educational Games for Kids
What parents need to know:
This award winning education app combines early learning concepts like shapes, colors, and numbers with the fun of games to create a rewarding experience - the type of play kids enjoy.
What kids can learn:
Math Concepts (matching, sorting, colors, numbers, counting, stacking, and more).
Engagement:
Children will explore different worlds while learning along the way. In addition to math concepts children can freely draw and paint in the Paintbox feature.
Learning Approach:
This easy to navigate app has a kid-friendly interface that's simple to use. The high quality art and voiceover accelerate learning with sights, sounds and positive reinforcement.
Support:
Additional themed worlds are available including Alphabet, Memory, and other early learning games.
Live Puzzle! Forest Animals
What parents need to know:
Unlike traditional jigsaw puzzles, in this animated puzzle app, the scene keeps moving while children drag and drop the puzzle pieces into place.
What kids can learn:
Analyzing, concentration, problem solving, eye-hand coordination, animal names in English and nine other languages.
Engagement:
Very intuitive and easy to play; the animations keep he child's attention.
Learning Approach:
When the puzzle is completed, children can click on the animal to play a rewarding and funny animation. The name of the animal is displayed and is spoken when children click on the text.
Support:
Parents may purchase additional puzzles (African animals, underwater animals, and farm animals).
Find Them All: Looking for Animals
What parents need to know:
Children will learn things about animals, their natural environments and other interesting facts, mixed with games, puzzles, animations and other interactions.
What kids can learn:
Concentration, focus, puzzle solving; 144 animals from six continents, names of animals in French, English, Spanish and German.
Engagement:
When at least 12 photos have been taken, the child is able to move/delete photos and print them in an album. When all 24 animals in a world have been found, the child is able to print a folding booklet and a separate sheet with all the heads to be cut out and paste in a booklet.
Learning Approach:
The game includes animal calls, animated pictures, cards, photos and video.
Support:
Assistance and instructions are spoken. The app uses a simplified, child-friendly interface.
Coosi Box Creative Drawing
What parents need to know:
Coosi Box promotes children's unrestricted creat1V1ty. Children choose themes, fill the screen with whatever their imagination tells them and watch their own creation become part of an animated story scene.
What kids can learn:
The app fosters creative drawing and is an excellent tool to practice creative story telling. The picture stories can then be published and shared with other players via a dedicated gallery.
Engagement:
Children can work with their friends or parents, and inspired by their own creations, they can tell their own stories.
Learning Approach:
The app uses simple and child-friendly drawing tools. Creations can be saved and shared with children all over the world by publishing in the Coosi Box gallery.
Support:
YouTube videos are available to show how to make pictures come to life in the Coosi Box.