The iPad isn’t the patron saint of parenting and should not be used instead of good parenting; but it can certainly help entertain and educate children. Toddler Mojo is 20 months old now and adores his iPad time. He learns from it and has fun at the same time. Granted some of the iPad apps have more fun involved than learning; but there have to be some enhancements of his fine motor skills going on there too. Here’s a quick rundown of what Toddler Mojo is digging on the iPad this month.
Ken is a young boy. He and his kitty cat are painting when the cans of paint get overturned. The paint comes to life, the green splosh escapes and has magical adventures where he counts various objects.
This is a good app for kids because it’s active and has lots of control for them to do, including touching objects and making the green slposh jump around. Toddler Mojo loves this app, but it did take us a long time to figure out how to go between pages. In the end, he figured it out by touching the paint cans in the lower right and left of the screen. Educationally, the words to the story are highlighted as they’re said and have various pages that eventually count up to ten.
It’s not my favorite app because I can’t figure out how to disable the ad in the bottom of the page. Occasionally, Toddler Mojo will hit that button and take us to an ad. Grrr…if we could figure out how to disable that ad we’d be a happy camper. However, Toddler Mojo digs this app, and it’s educational, so we hunker through the occasional ad and let him enjoy the app.
This is the story of Kib, who can’t sleep. He looks like a star and has a friend call Cuckoo Baku that takes him to sleep land.
This is a great app because it’s very interactive, has lots of background materials that are ‘clickable’, a nice soundtrack and is available in six languages (Dutch, French, Japanese, Spanish, English and German). There are games within the app, chances to draw, listen to the music, read along or have it read to you.
Even though it’s a story, Toddler Mojo goes to this app anytime he gets the chance. The narration is a pleasant British English voice and the interactivity of Kib Can’t Sleep really makes this an app that parents and kids can enjoy.
It’s a simple premise: 3D alphabet blocks. The iPad twist is that the blocks spin, have animated letter mascots, in addition to phonic sounds and letter names. This app meets all of our standards, it’s very educational, very fun and Toddler Mojo loves it.
The phonic capacity for3D Blocks was important to us because he’s much more apt to learn the phonetic sound, as opposed to the letter sound at this age.
Toddler Mojo doesn’t like this app yet, but we highly suspect that he will. Say it Zoe has basic toddler words and pictures that are said once the picture is touched. At the top, bottom, right and left of the main picture are photos of other common toddler words. When the toddler move their hand up, down or right and left the picture will change to that word. It’s kind of like a five squared Rubik’s cube that has no answer.
This has all the markings of an iPad app that Toddler Mojo will love by the time he’s 21 months.
We got all of these apps for free using App Shopper. It’s a fabulous free app that tracks apps by category and price. We always look for free apps. That can then be sorted by ‘new’ and free or ‘price changed’. Get the App Shopper and you’ll never have a shortage of cool apps for a picky toddler. We also have the BubCap for our iPad. If you have an iPad or iPhone and let your child five or under use it, then you need a BubCap. It’s a sticker that makes the on/off button much more difficult to turn on or off.
iPad apps that will entertain toddlers is a monthly series that highlights iPad apps that may entertain toddlers. If it’s a bad month and we download some bad iPad apps, we’ll share them with you too. In general we are very cheap and look for free apps. However, we’ll give you a sampling of what’s keeping our toddler entertained ( and Dad sane) on the iPad.
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