Top Learning Apps for 2 to 5 Year-olds

Description: Khan Academy Kids is a versatile learning app that caters to children's diverse needs. Its comprehensive offering includes books, videos, exercises, reading, and math. It encourages creativity-building activities and fosters the development of essential social-emotional skills.

Editor’s Top Tips: Parents can guide children, especially younger ones, to new areas of interest and keep learning fresh and engaging. Includes content from National Geographic.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: Free

Awards won: Parents' Choice Award, Children's Technology Review Award

Subject: Educational games, Books

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Description: Moose Math is a fun, interactive educational game that offers kids five different activities to enhance their skills in counting, addition, subtraction, connecting dots, and sorting. The tasks introduce children to important concepts through sorting shapes and colors, and performing simple mathematical operations.

Editor’s Top Tips: With an engaging, user-friendly interface, kids will love navigating through the app as they discover math basics, starting with counting and problem-solving.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: Free

Awards won: Parents’ Choice Award, Children’s Technology Review Award

Subject: Math

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Description: Reading Eggs invites children on a personalized adventure to develop their reading skills. A comprehensive assessment is conducted to determine each child's reading level. Based on the results, customized exercises reinforce their phonics knowledge, sight word recognition, and the connection between sounds and letters. This tailored approach enables children to progress at their own pace to reach their reading goals.

Editor’s Top Tips: Reading Eggs allows multiple kids to participate. Parents can track progress through a report card function. To further support learning, parents can download free activity worksheets that align with each online lesson. The initial assessment may take some time, so it's important to have your child complete it when they are feeling energetic and focused for optimal results.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: $9.99/month

Awards won: Dad's Choice award, Mom's Choice Award

Subject: Reading

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Description: ABC Kids Tracing Phonics is a playful and vibrant app that provides a fun introduction to letters and sounds for young children.

Editor’s Top Tips: The ABC Kids Tracing Phonics app is a fun and interactive way for younger children to familiarize themselves with the alphabet and phonics. It has an engaging musical component that will captivate kids. Some children could find the experience a bit overstimulating. We recommended monitoring kids' engagement and adjusting their screen time limits accordingly.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: Free

Awards won: Google Play's Best Game Award

Subject: Learning ABCs, Tracing, Phonics

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Description: Bugs and Bubbles is an exceptional educational game. It features stunning graphics and engaging exercises for children to enhance their color recognition and listening skills. With a high-quality design, Bugs and Bubbles offers a fun and interactive way for kids to practice following instructions and matching colors.

Editor’s Top Tips: Bugs and Bubbles fosters creativity. It helps kids enhance their fine motor skills through innovative exercises like bug racing games that challenge kids to understand and follow visual instructions.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: $2.99

Awards won: App Store Rewind, 2012 Reader's Choice Awards

Subject: Cognitive skills

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Description: Step into the world of Lexi and unleash your imagination. With Lexi's World, kids create their own unique environment by spelling the names of animals and plants.

Editor’s Top Tips: This innovative app utilizes a keyboard so kids can practice writing words. The app provides helpful guidance to prevent frustration from mistakes. It's perfect for young learners who are just starting to read and spell.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: $2.99

Awards won: Children's Media Awards, Kiri prize 2019 from Digital Ehon

Subject: Wordplay

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Description: Monster Physics challenges kids to use problem-solving skills by using building materials to create movement and direction. Designed to be engaging and educational, this app requires children to be able to read the instructions, encouraging them to develop their literacy skills while having fun with physics.

Editor’s Top Tips: Kids learn to follow clear and concise instructions. They learn to understand objectives and goals at each game level.

Device: iPhone, iPad

Cost: $1.99

Awards won: Children's Technology Review, Editor's Choice Award

Subject: Physics

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Description: RelationShapes is an excellent educational tool for young children to establish a strong foundation in spatial relationships and mathematics. This engaging game presents children with an assortment of shapes that they must match by dragging and dropping, providing an interactive way to learn fundamental math concepts.

Editor’s Top Tips: Through intuitive drag-and-drop exercises, children build skills and confidence by matching shapes and creating imaginative designs. The simple, colorful interface is easy to understand, allowing kids to grasp the concept and have fun exploring.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: Free

Awards won: Common Sense Media “Best Of” Lists: Best Geometry Games, Apps, and Websites for Kids; Multiplayer Apps; Top Puzzle Apps & Must-Have Apps for Family Travel, Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner & Parents’ Choice Awards® epic™ LIST (2017), Best PreK / Early Childhood Learning Solution (2017)

Subject: visual-spatial reasoning & creative expression

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Description:  The Cat in the Hat Builds That app is playful and educational. It asks kids to participate in challenges such as matching, sorting, and constructing objects using shapes. It allows kids to develop problem-solving and spatial awareness skills. This is a companion app to the PBS kids STEM-series, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That.

Editor’s Top Tips: The challenges in this app keep kids engaged as they complete tasks such as building ramps and following verbal instructions. With levels that progressively increase in difficulty, kids can improve their problem-solving and listening skills.

Device: iPhone, iPad

Cost: Free

Awards won: Webby Award, Cynopsis Imagination Award, Canadian Screen Award

Subject: Science

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Description: Endless Wordplay helps kids master the basics of phonics and sight words. With a simple and intuitive interface, kids have fun learning by dragging and dropping letters to spell words. It offers a playful and engaging approach to building essential reading skills.

Editor’s Top Tips: This app features dynamic flashing lights and moving letters, giving it a gamified feel. For optimal user experience, we recommend using this app in conjunction with another learning app.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: $6.99

Awards won: Apple Store's Best of 2013

Subject: Educational Game

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Description: Pet Bingo is an interactive and educational game designed for students from Kindergarten to 4th grade. With a focus on mathematics, It helps kids develop skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, Pet Bingo provides a visually stimulating platform for children to reinforce their skills and explore new concepts through engaging gameplay. Visual hints makes the learning process more accessible and enjoyable.

Editor’s Top Tips: To reduce overstimulation, adjust the screen brightness and volume as needed. Parents can keep track of their child's progress through the comprehensive report card.

Device: Android, iPhone, iPad

Cost: Free

Awards won: Parents' Choice Award, Children's Technology Review Award, Tech with Kids' Best Pick App Award

Subject: Math

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