iPad Educational Apps: A Few Of Our Faves!

Prince Charming (5) and Little Caveman (3) reading Mousey Howsee

As some of you know, I wrote a review in early December about a surprise birthday present from my dear husband deployed in Afghanistan, an iPad 2 {see here}. 

Now that we have owned it for a little while, I wanted to update you on some tried and true educational apps that we have found to be very useful in our homeschool 🙂 We have several other apps we are in the process of using, and we’ll update the list accordingly.

I will do my best to give a brief description, link, and classify them by age as well. These are all apps that we use OFTEN so I feel confident in my recommendations. Some of the apps are FREE and some cost a small sum of $$. And although these apps are on our iPad, most of them are also on our iPod touches and can be used on your iPhones as well!

Here we go….

• Child’s Prayer – our all time favorite Bible app that starts our day off with a different scripture to talk about and pray about 🙂
• Stack the States – fun geography game for any age teaching the shapes, capitals, historical facts, and more of the 50 states.
• Stack the Countries – fun geography game for any age teaching the shapes of the continents and countries within them, languages, flags, etc.
• Presidents vs. Aliens – a great game for any child/adult interested in identifying the US Presidents while learning some interesting facts about each one as well.
• Mousey Howsee and the Rescuers – great interactive book for all ages that changes based on the current season and time of day!
• JumpStart Preschool Magic of Learning – 15 games designed to teach more than 10 math, pre-reading and critical thinking skills for preschool age children.
• Number Tag – great way for preschool/K age children to master identifying their numbers and counting to 20.
• Alphabet Freeze Tag – great way for preschool/K to master the alphabet.
• Pre-K Letters & Numbers – wonderful app for children to learn phonics, letters, and the basics of tracing leading into handwriting.
• Learnin’ USA – wonderful tool for any age to learn state names, positions, capitals, bordering states, etc.
• Adding Apples – math game teaching from 1+1 to 9+9, as well as boosting confidence and fluency in addition. Recommended for ages 3-8.
• Subtracting Sardines – math game teaching single digit subtraction, as well as boosting confidence and fluency in subtraction. Recommended for ages 3-8.
• Multiplying Acorns – fun multiplication game teaching 1×1 through 9×9. Recommended for grades 1-5.
• Bluster – develops vocabulary and word understanding (synonyms, antonyms, etc). Recommended for ages 4+.
• Starfall ABC’s – based off of the fabulous starfall.com – this teaches letter recognition and phonetic sounds in a fun way! Preschool aged and up.
• Children’s Bible – contains comic books and movies about the Bible for children of all ages.
• Into the Snow We Go – wonderful interactive book about Stella and Sam and their adventures in the snow. All ages.
• ABC Mouse Grand Canyon – a fun interactive story that uses music and art to help teach reading fluency and fun facts!
• Grover’s Number Special – uses fun Sesame street animation to teach number recognition, counting, and shape recognition. Preschool and up.
• Math Blaster Hyper Blast – 30 levels of mind-bending math teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Recommended for ages 6+ but my 4 year old son LOVES this game.
• KinderMath – teaches sorting, classification, counting, number comparison and more. For Kindergarten age children (4-6).
• SightWord – a list of sight word designed to help children from preschool through 3rd grade with reading fluency.
• Jingle – a Hallmark story designed to go with a b
  ook, but we use it alone. Great for all ages and they have other free apps to go with their books as well.
• iLuv Drawing Animals – teaches you how to draw 40 animals. For all ages.

This list are some of the apps we have and really enjoy. We have many others that we are “getting” to and in the process of figuring out if we like them. I will update my recommendation list from time-to-time as we continue our journey of learning via the iPad 2!