Developmental Mobile Apps for Children

Whereas excess consumption of technologies should be discouraged in children, today I would like to highlight a number of useful apps that can significantly support your child’s development and academic progress. Even among small groups of children there is great diversity among developmental, neurological, attention, and learning realities. Research studies show that good quality educational apps are able to adapt to your child’s individual needs, accelerate and enhance children’s development, and are a great way to foster your child’s love for learning by making it fun. One of the best sources to identify a good quality app for your child that has been developed by experienced education experts is the Children’s Technology Review, or Ctrex, website. Not only does Ctrex provide reviews from someone with a pedagogical background, but they provide videos of the app, how educational and entertaining it might be and some of the bugs in it; you can see everything from the price point to the recommended ages to key features it has. Ctrex is a paid subscription but may be worth it for parents sifting through dozens of new apps each year.

There are many great apps to choose from, and below is a small selection of education apps that might be a great help in terms of supporting your child’s studies and development:

Pre-school

At this stage of their development, children focus on developing their language skills, basic social, emotional and cognitive skills, and fine and gross motoring skills, as well as learn basic counting and alphabet. You can download a number of apps on your iPad and encourage your child to explore them. For developing your child’s phonics and language skills, consider ABC Alphabet Phonics, which is a free app that allows children to learn the alphabet through sound, sight, and touch, and/or Peekaboo Barn ($1.99), which introduces children to animal names and sounds using the game peek-a-boo, and can be used for children as young as 6 months old. For developing your child’s Math skills, look into the Endless Numbers free app, which teaches basic numeracy skills and encourages tots to engage with numbers in a fun and light-hearted fashion, with interactive sequences and short animations bringing numbers to life on screen.

Another great free app that will help you to prepare your child for success in preschool and beyond is Kids Academy, for children from 2 years old. This app offers about a thousand interactive games, videos, and off-screen activities to improve your child’s math, writing, phonics, and reading abilities. Children can play games that sort, match, and classify as well as watch topic-related educational videos and work on printed worksheets and off-screen activities. I would also like to mention a great free app for preschool parents called The Milestone Tracker, which explains developmental milestones for children from 2 months to 5 years old with photos and videos, explains warning signals that may point to developmental difficulties and problems, and provides practical tips to parents for encouraging their child’s development.

Elementary school

A great developmental app for children who are 6-8 years old is How It Works?, which helps children to explore and understand natural phenomena of our planet and is full of fun animations, easy-to-do experiments, and engaging games. To support you with teaching your child about emotion and communication, you could also download the Feel Electic! app that features videos, photos, games, and emotion-related vocabulary building activities. The was developed by the talented cast of the PBS Show The Electric Company who show children how to express their emotional with words, and helps children learn ways to express their emotions in healthy ways.

 Another useful app for 6-8 year old’s that helps children to improve their math skills is Time, Money & Fractions, which helps children to understand these three concepts through exciting visuals, funny animations, audio guidance, instant grading progress tracking, and positive reinforcement. For older children who are over 7 years old, I recommend considering Math Evolve as this app makes math feel more like entertainment by combining it with an arcade-style game. It helps improving your child’s multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction skills. Moreover, there are great apps for learning languages in a fun way: Gus on the Go app for learning French with the enchanting and friendly Gus owl, Kids Learn Mandarin for learning Chinese with a cute panda teacher, and Endless Spanish app for learning Spanish from adorable monsters.

Middle school

Math becomes very important at this age, and many children start falling behind and struggling with their studies, and therefore it is important to support and encourage them at this age. The Operation Math Code Squad app is an exciting game that uses math tasks to disarm evil devices and progress in the game, with tasks getting increasingly difficult as your child progresses from one level to another. Learn Algebra, on the other hand, breaks algebra concepts down into one-page classes that allow for practice until your child fully understands the concept. For science, try the Periodic Table Explorer that offers 1,400 vibrant pages that make the elements of the period table come to life in a fun way, with an audio pronunciation feature for each element, and a molecular mass calculator.

For improving your child’s language skills, consider using the Splingo’s Language Universe app, which was developed by speech and language therapists and is an interactive game that allows children to improve their weaknesses in listening to directions and recognizing words and phrases. Moreover, for social and emotional development, I would highly recommend the Social Quest app that helps children practice navigating the complex world of social norms and expectations that may feel stressful and overwhelming for teens and tweens. Lastly, the Khan Academy app has a great selection of math, science and other lessons and is rapidly evolving into one of the favorite educational apps worldwide.

 High school

This is the age when children are increasingly focused on their exams and university applications, and there is a good selection of apps that can help them to succeed in their endeavors. The K12 AP Exam Prep app, for example, is actually a series of 13 mobile apps that help high school students that helps them to study toward their AP exams, available for every subject. Another helpful app is StudyBlue, which is the largest crowdsourced study library that features over 400 million flashcards, notes and study guides, while the MyHomework Student Planner app will help your child to track their homework, studying, and projects, which syncs across difference devices. High school students have a number of key deadlines that cannot be missed, and this app helps your child to plan and organize their workload effectively to meet the deadlines.

Another important area where you can support your child is continuing to develop their social skills. With help of the Social Skill Builder app, children can develop problem-solving skills, critical thinking, emotional awareness, and social resilience. It features videos of real children of their age in real-life social situations, as well as quiz questions and positive feedback. In terms of developing your child’s language and speech, try the award-winning Proloquo2Go app, which is available in English, French and Spanish. The app costs up to $249, depending on which modules you choose, but it is well worth it. Lastly, there is a great app that will help your child to find a scholarship if you are planning to send them to an American university, the Scholly app. It was developed by a college student who received $1.3 million in college scholarships.