Last year for birthdays my mom got my girls tablets for their birthdays. Not expensive brand name, cheap from Walmart but they use the Android system so I know how to use and can get them apps. I recently shared my favorite Android apps for moms, so I thought it was only fair that I share them for kids too.
I don’t let my kids have their tablets that often. When they first got them, they had no more than 30 minutes a day, and it would be the first thing taken if they had been misbehaving. Now, they get it maybe twice a week. I don’t think that they really need more screen time.
I look for apps that don’t require internet connection as most of the time when they have them we aren’t home.
- Kindle. FREE. This is the first one I installed in all of our tablets. I look on Amazon at least once a week for, you guessed it, free ebooks. Internet is needed at first, to sync when downloading new books and then after that you don’t need it.
- Netflix. Obviously you have to be subscribed to Netflix and have internet for this one. But it is well loved when the kids have them at home, and sometimes Hubby will use his cell as a hub so they can watch it when we’re out… this has saved our sanity at gymnastics with a cranky one year old.
- Kindergarten Math Lite. FREE This one has six different types of “games” Counting, Maze, Sequence, Tens & Ones, and Add and Subtract. There is a paid version of this one as well.
- Sight Words (we have kindergarten and 1st grade) FREE – there are three different options or levels if you will. Word Review – they say the word and spell it out, Missing Letter – you guess the missing letter, and Touch the Word – there are three words listen your child picks which word they think the person is saying.
- Cooking Games – Making Donuts. FREE This one was added just for fun in the beginning. But after watching Austin play it, its quite cute and your child is learning to follow a recipe/instructions. I could not find the link to this one, but there are a lot of this style app.
Bonus: French for Kids. FREE Austin commented the other day about learning French. I know very little french now, so I got her this app. It is pictures and words, with the app saying the word for the picture. She’s only used it a couple times but I see how it works and think if she’s truly interested she could learn a bit from it.