Apps For Children

EDUCATION

Endless Alphabet (Free + IAP)
A joyful collection of words, and monsters to explain them. Sorted alphabetically, each word gets children to drag its letters into place, after which they’ll see a characterful animation for its definition. The app includes ads, which you can remove with a single 69p in-app purchase.

Mystery Math Town
Yes, there’s an “s” missing: this is an American app. But my six year-old has taken to it strongly: a game where you explore a series of spooky houses by tapping on stairs, ladders, doors and windows, solving sums before you can go through them using numbers collected along the way. You can tweak the difficulty level and sum-types to suit the age of your child.

STORYTELLING

Me Books (Free + IAP)
This is a pre-2013 app in the UK, but it’s just gone live in the US, making it worth its place in this list. Me Books is a store+reader app for digital picture-books, including faous characters like Peppa Pig and a host of Ladybird classics. Children can turn the pages and listen to voice narration, but the app also lets them record their own dialogue and sound. The app is free, with stories sold as individual in-app purchases for between 69p and £1.99.

Drawnimal
This is an absolutely fab idea, getting children to draw the outer bits of animals (legs, ears, whiskers and so on) around their iPhone or iPad, before the device provides an animated face. There’s an animal for every letter of the alphabet, and many of them will make parents and kids alike laugh out loud.

Puppet Workshop
Most kids I know like sock puppets (the original kind, not the review-their-own-books-on-Amazon kind), but Puppet Workshop takes the idea digital. Kids start with a virtual sock or glove, and decorate it with buttons and other items, before placing it on a background and taking a picture. What I loved most about this app, though, is that it got my children into making real sock and glove puppets: digital play sparking physical play, rather than replacing it.

Freckleface Strawberry: Monster Maker (Free)
The Freckleface Strawberry books are the work of actor and author Julianne Moore, and have received lots of critical acclaim. This app isn’t a straight story, although there is a storytelling element. It gets children to create their own monster from different body parts, with the ability to insert it into photographs of themselves and friends or family members. A creative introduction to the Freckleface series.

PLAYFUL

Toca Hair Salon 2
In truth, you can buy any Toca Boca app and expect marvellousness: the publisher has a well-earned reputation for quality. Toca Hair Salon 2 is its newest app, and a good introduction. It gets kids cutting, colouring, brushing and styling the hair of a collection of quirky characters, with no set goals beyond having creative fun.

Petting Zoo by Christoph Niemann
One of my favourite apps of the year so far – and in more digital-to-physical fun, it’s one of the reasons my sons were so keen to go to a real-world zoo earlier in the year. It’s the work of author and illustrator Niemann: a collection of 21 animals whose animations respond to your swipes up, down and across the screen. Craft and humour in spades.

APPS FOR CHILDREN – http://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/jun/19/50-best-apps-kids-iphone-android-ipad