It's no secret that as mother's we are always looking for ways to keep our children entertained. Of course I advocate craft, as often as possible. However, as much as I love it, it's just not practical to be crafty with your kids all the time. Nature walks, trips to the park, playing cards and doing puzzles are all great, but every now and then kids want to watch tv, and my way to avoid that for a little bit longer if I can is to hunt down something "educational" to do on the ipad. Technology has to play a part in children's lives, from time to time, like it or not; it's their future. I've spent many hours searching around for educational free-free apps; that's applications that are free to download and add free. There's not many, but here's the ones that I like and my preschoolers enjoy.
I won't include links, since things in app-world seem to move so fast - but if you type in the name, you're sure to find it soon enough - any trouble, send me a note and I'll try to help you track it down. Here's to hoping that by the time you find the apps they're still free-free...
BOOKS
- Pirate Treasure Hunt (Education Services Australia) - In one week it's apparently "talk like a pirate day" and as I'm a big lover of pirates, so what better place to start! This app has several steps to find the treasure; kids need to be school-aged or work with you to figure out a couple of the steps - but it's lots of fun solving the riddles to find the treasure!
- Fairy Princess (fingerprint play) - it let's you pick the character you want to be (girl or boy) then you go through a series of short stories and adventures, solving puzzles, being asked to recall details of the story and so on; not bad.
ART
- Talking Dino (Education Services Australia) - this game lets you design and then animate your own dinosaur; it's basic, but noisy!
- Colorama - the free download gives you over 10 templates to colour, and with graphics as well as coloured pencils, you can create almost vintage-feel pictures... be warned... it's addictive!
- Art Maker (Kids ABC) - you can make pictures and animations, with some puzzles to figure out along the way; then you can either save the images or start again.
COUNTING:
- Jellybean Count - kids have to count the number of jellybeans in each particular color and touch the pad in that color with the right number of fingers; it requires a certain amount of coordination which is fun to watch.
- Candy count (comigo) - is also not bad, you only get access to jelly beans for free, but the kids have to drag the colours to the matching jar, then sort the jars from least to most, and so on, so there's a few things to do which is great.
- Counting Ants Lite (playtend) - it's rather slow and for little kids only, but my ones seem to enjoy watching the ants drive past, and the little interactions required of them seem enough for now.
READING:
- ABC Phonics / 123 Writing - this lets the kids trace the letters or numbers with pictures and sound effects to help; it's simple but reasonably effective.
- Pocket phonics lite - the free version only covers 6 letters, but that's about the attention span my children are prepared to commit; you trace the letter, say it, get cheered, then spell a word by listening to those letters spoken back.
MIXED
- Animal Circus Lite (joy preschool) - the app has a puzzle, sequence-guess, a pop the 'most/least' bubble game, and can be set in different languages for a laugh.
- Tell time lite - again, even the basic version seems to give enough for my kids to think about.
- Emma Zoo - spot the difference over several pages; there's not much time and the differences are often small; hard for the big kids as well as the small!
- Creationary - based on lego, you have to 'roll' the dice then guess what lego shape the ipad is going to build; not as easy as it sounds.
- Matching Zoo - like memory, it's sound effects are perhaps the best thing to keep children entertained!
- Barbie I can Be - with three options to be a vet, pizza-maker or cupcake-maker, the roles might not be very aspirational, but my girls love that there are several steps and at the end they get a certificate with stars on it!
If you've found some other crafty apps on the ipad you'd like to share with readers; be sure to leave a comment below, or share them with me at linda(at)partycraftsecrets(dot)com.
Enjoy everyone;
Linda!
