Back-to-School, Best Educational Apps For Kids!

With our “back-to-school” schedules we are all looking for a little added support when it comes to school for kids of all ages.

• KHAN ACADEMY is the gold standard for educational apps, particularly considering the wide range of courses it offers for students of all ages, and the fact that it’s free. Khan Academy’s YouTube videos cover most subjects at a range of levels: math, science and engineering, arts, and humanities (which includes history and social studies), economics, AP courses, and test prep. Khan Academy is popular among students, parents, and educators because its videos are engaging and targeted at visual learners, using photos, maps, and other illustrations, and because it allows students to work at their own pace.

• BUSY SHAPES is an app aligned with the Montessori method of self-directed, hands-on learning. As such, it’s perfect for the youngest kids just starting to interact with technology—it’s not rote learning. The app is designed to develop young children’s logic and reasoning skills by learning about how objects relate to each other and how they can manipulate them. Busy Shapes is simple to play. Kids drag an object into a hole—they are challenged to match the shape of the object with the corresponding hole—and eventually, another object and hole will appear in a new setting. Most importantly, there are no instructions, which is something toddlers can’t really handle—it’s all child-directed.

• ABCMOUSE.COM-More than simply an app, ABCmouse.com is essentially a well-rounded curriculum for preschoolers. It’s designed for children aged two through 8 but is best for younger kids who haven’t started kindergarten. It includes hundreds of interactive games, activities, and videos related to reading, math, science, and art. It’s also a multi-platform program that can be used on a computer or mobile device. 

• PRODIGY is one of the most popular math games on the market, largely because it’s set up like a video game.  It’s a fantasy-based web and app game that covers math topics for kids from first to eighth grade. It’s more designed to test kids’ knowledge rather than introduce math topics to them for the first time. Kids earn spells by answering questions correctly and get to do monster battles as they move through different fantasy worlds. The basic app is free, but a paid subscription offers more features.

• GOOGLE ARTS AND CULTURE- While Google Arts and Culture became famous for its selfie feature, which allows you to compare your face to great works of art, the site and app contain a wealth of information on museum collections, artists, theater and performing arts, historic figures, and events. Google Arts and Culture is an invaluable resource for tweens who are assigned research projects, as it can provide in-depth information that goes far beyond the written word to include images and videos. While the app can truly be enjoyed by people of many ages, the amount of information available can be overwhelming for younger kids who may not know how to use search terms efficiently.

• QUIZLET  learn feature provides different types of testing, such as true and false questions and multiple-choice, and based on the user’s performance, increases in difficulty over time. Quizlet is particularly good for foreign language study, and its audio pronunciation is better than many other apps. Quizlet also has 500 million archived study sets already created by users, so new users can search within those to see if a study set has already been created that matches up with their needs.

• STOP, BREATHE AND THINK  is a wonderful app that promotes social-emotional learning and helps tweens and teens regulate their emotions. It starts by having kids take a breath and then asks them how they’re feeling physically and mentally. Based on those results, the app suggests a range of guided meditations lasting under 10 minutes.

• HOPSCOTCH is a coding app designed for kids 10 to 16 years old. It’s built much like Scratch, one of the first programs developed to introduce kids to computer programming, but Hopscotch is built specifically for mobile devices (only iPads and iPhones), while Scratch is web-based. It’s a great way for kids to be creative and start learning how computer programming works, without worrying about difficult, technical coding language. It’s also a good starter coding app, from which kids can move on to more complex programs like Scratch on a desktop or laptop.