I’ve had my iPad now for almost a year and I guess I’ve had plenty of time to determine my favorite iPad apps.
I also have a toddler and I find that I need to share time on my iDevices just to save my iSanity, so here are some of my favorite toddler applications.
I intended to categorize them into things like Educational, Story or Games, but it seems like each of them crosses over so much that I just decided to put them into one list with annotation.
Dr. Seuss
If you liked the Dr. Seuss stories as a kid, then you’ll find just about every title by the author available on the iPad in a great format. There is an interesting interview with Michel Kripalani, the company’s president which is worth a listen if you want to know more about why these gems are so well done. They have all my personal faves and I have purchased these The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and Hop on Pop.
Since they have an exclusive contract with the Seuss family business, rather than with a publisher, they are planning on releasing every title ever written, which is rare for most of the company’s that license them through a third-party. I was very excited to see that one of my daughter’s favorite titles (Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?) was released just this month. Go check it out. (Ok, I confess it’s my favorite, but I think it’s in her top 10.)
Edutainment
As far as education goes, there are a bunch of classics.
Star Walk and Solar Walk are two related applications that are fun, entertaining and educational for a large range of kids. Toddlers and younger like to just move around the planets or discover things on the screen. Older kids can really learn a ton from the wealth of information provided. The constellation finder and GPS/accelerometer features are amazing.
These are only a couple bucks but they update frequently and add some really nice features. This alone has paid for itself. At Christmas time, look for Santa in the sky. This is really fun for the kiddos when they see Santa flying through the stars.
Wheels on the Bus HD is a classic interactive song which sings each verse while displaying an interactive scene related to each (doors/wipers/people on the bus, etc.). The music is nice and you can change from a man to woman’s vocals, a string trio or you can even record your own voice to play back. This is one of my top picks for a young to mid toddler.
Fish School is another product by DuckDuckGo who made Wheels on the Bus. It has a bunch of related activities centered around letters/numbers/shapes that are simple all the way up to a matching game and spot the differences. Overall quite engaging and will keep a toddler busy for awhile.
Music
GarageBand is Apple’s iPad version of the well-known Mac application which allows you to not only play intstruments, but also create full songs with multiple tracks. What can I say, it’s awesome and well worth the $10 price tag. If you don’t think you’d use it enough to justify it, there are free alternatives below. But if you know how to play music, even just a little, you can have a great time recording songs with your kid singing along, or playing along.
iMusicards is an inexpensive app that is small, but has entertained our kid on many occasions. It’s basically a set of 8 or so flashcards that display an intstrument and plays a brief series of notes. I know, it doesn’t sound like much but it can serve as a great introduction to musical instruments for very young kids. I wouldn’t expect it to entertain an older toddler for long, but it is cheap fun.
Pro Keys is a cheaper alternative for playing piano on your iPad or iPhone. Not quite as full-featured as Garage Band, but not bad for keyboard players.
Shiny Drum is a free alternative to Garage Band, but as you might guess it’s lacking in power. But if you just want to bang on a drum set occasionally and don’t care about actually making music, it’s fun and free.
Diversion
Pocket Pond HD is a serene pond filled with a few fish. You can add dragonflies and lily pads for a little entertainment. It’s an engaging toy for kids but don’t expect them to play with it for hours, but when you need a brief diversion it’s pretty fun. And it’s free.
Saturation is a mindless app that draws color patterns based on color palette’s from Adobe’s Kuler website. It is pretty addictive to tap and change the arrangement of colors and probably has some eye-hand coordination benefits, who knows. Plus it’s free.
