Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or working mother, you want to ensure that whatever time your children spend on their tablets, phones and computers are constructive, fun and educational. One of the best ways to have children spend “quality screen time” is by installing apps or games that are of sound value to children. As a parent, you, of course, must monitor the amount of time children spend on these. Given below is a selection of apps/games that you can install to make tablet-time an enriching experience.
Intellijoy
Intellijoy is a company that makes preschool educational apps, which are loved by busy parents from across the world. The apps are a fun away to have kids focus on and master core elements in the preschool curriculum such as alphabets, numbers, phonics, puzzles. They also have an app designed to teach children how to read --- a huge help for parents. In fact, the Learn to Read app has become so famous that Google invited the company to present the app at a conference last year. The lite versions of Intellijoy apps are free to try. If you like it, you can buy the app from Google Play or App Store.
Squeebles Times Tables
Every parent knows that teaching kids their multiplication tables can be a deeply frustrating experience. Make children learn their 12 and 13 tables and soon you’ll find they’ve forgotten their 6 and 7 tables. You get the picture, right? Enter the Times Tables app from Squeebles, a UK-based company. The multiplication app, meant for 5-to-11-year-olds, provides a series of multiplication questions to earn stars and rescue characters from a monster. This paid app is available on iTunes and Android.
Who doesn’t love trains? I, for one, definitely do. Brought to you by the company, Toca Boca, Toca Train is just like a toy train set with a difference (a huge difference) --- it comes alive on screen. Your kids get to play driver in this train set simulator which features a steam train with sounds, smoke, whistle, sparks and speed lever. There are no written instructions --- all one has to do is pull the levers to unload cargo or load passengers. Great fun, right? Toca Train is suitable for kids between 3-7 years old. Available on the App Store and Kindle Fire.
The Happy Face
I use smiley stickers to reward my kid when he’s written neatly or got all his sums correct, but if you are looking for fancier and more interesting stuff, you can look up the Happy Face app available on iPhone/Ipad. This paid app moves children's photos onto a happy or sad face according to their behaviour, thus rewarding your children when their behaviour is great and letting them know when it needs to improve. Neat, isn’t it?
Lego Super Heroes Movie maker
The idea behind the Lego Super Hero Movie Maker app is to help children create their own Lego movies using stop-motion photos of characters and scenes that they've built in the real world. While the app is built around the Lego Super Hero toy line and promotes it, there's no restriction on what users can focus their film on. The app has simple tools and guides that make it easy to shoot, edit, and even add music to the movie. The app is clearly a lot of fun --- using it you can snap your fingers to take a photo, add stickers to any frame, create a title card and customize it, record your own sound effects and edit the duration of each frame. Lego movie maker works on iPhone and iPad.
Move the Turtle
See a greater coder in your kid? Let her or him try Move the Turtle, an educational application for iPhone and iPad that teaches children the basics of creating computer programs. According to one website, in Move the Turtle, a friendly Turtle introduces your child step by step to the basic concepts of programming in a colourful graphic environment. By completing the tasks, one by one, the child learns how to plan complex activities composed of simple elements, how to reuse previously completed work, how to use graphics, spatial orientation and sound in programming. The app, meant for children 5 years and above, boosts thinking skills and patience.
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