The Best Learning Apps for Kids

By Karen Cicero
Updated October 12, 2020
Credit: Priscilla Gragg

We tapped tech and education experts for their picks in the crowded kids’ app space, then gave a panel of junior testers permission to play. What we discovered: Great learning apps are almost as hard to find as disinfectant wipes—but they do exist. Here are some gems to help you out this school year.

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Best App For Skill Building

Credit: Courtesy of Khan Academy

Khan Academy Kids

Five animal characters guide kids in hundreds of games, lessons, and stories vetted by early-childhood education experts. Whether your child needs to learn how to print their name, take measurements, or count backward, there’s a lesson in the app’s well-organized “library.” Beginning readers will also score a robust set of e-books. “I like that there’s an option to read the story aloud or listen to it,” says Dominique Pompey, a kindergarten teacher in San Diego. Ages 2 to 7

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Best App for Toddlers

Credit: Courtesy of StoryToys

Hungry Caterpillar Play School

A calming intro to the digital world, this app features familiar characters from Eric Carle’s books, along with clear directions and slower-paced play. Many activities focus on math or reading, but the relaxation techniques, like using a Brown Bear to encourage mindful breathing, come in handy. Ages 2 to 5

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Best Educational Videos

Credit: Courtesy of BrainPOP

BrainPOP Jr.

After watching a few of these three- to five-minute animated videos about famous people, places, or concepts, you’ll realize two things: You forgot a lot of what you learned in third grade, and these “movies” are really well done. “One video introduced my 8-year-old to the Alamo,” says Jeanette Leon Go, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “He likes the whole collection because he thinks Moby, the robot cohost, is funny.” Ages 5 to 9

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Best Counting App

Credit: Courtesy of Duck Duck Moose, LLC

Moose Math

The Pet Bingo game and making smoothies are disguised counting lessons. Rewards entice kids to keep playing. “During quarantine, my kindergartner took on increasingly difficult levels so she could expand on the town she had begun building,” says Tenaya Winkelman, of Dallas. Ages 3 to 7

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Best App For Learning Shapes

Credit: Courtesy of Little 10 Robot

Little 10 Robot: Goodness Shapes

The fun games work on all components of shape recognition: matching, identifying, and naming. Our preschool testers felt proud when they loaded ten shapes (including a hexagon) onto a Ferris wheel. Woo-hoo! Ages 2 to 4

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Best For Math Facts

Credit: Courtesy of Ignacio Schiefelbein

Number Run

This brainy twist on Temple Run helps kids master math drills that advance from single-digit addition to division. For each of the more than 50 levels, they have to quickly solve problems so their avatar can jump over cliffs and dodge monsters to reach a treasure chest. Our testers liked earning coins to “buy” new avatar outfits, including—we kid you not—a Santa suit. They also repeated levels to shave seconds off their time. Ages 6+

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Best For Logic Building

Credit: Courtesy of Kahoot DragonBox AS

Dragonbox Numbers

Focusing on “number sense” rather than memorization, this app’s coolest feature is puzzles mode. That’s where kids drag Nooms, various-size characters that represent different numbers, into spaces to complete a picture. They can also feed or slice Nooms to watch numbers grow or shrink. For instance, when cut in the middle, the Noom for the number six breaks into a pair of threes. Kids’ minds blown. Ages 4 to 8

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Best For Telling Time

Credit: Courtesy of Edoki Academy

Tic Toc Time

This Tic Toc deserves more than a 15-second shout-out for making it easier for kids to grasp how to read an analog clock, says Wendy Hilton, co-owner of HipHomeschoolMoms.com. After a beaver shows kids how to read and set a cuckoo clock, the app challenges them to press a button when the ticking clock displays the same time as the digital readout. Ages 6 to 10

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Best For Learning To Read

Credit: Courtesy of Google LLC

Read Along by Google

Thanks to advances in speech recognition, this new app can tell which words kids are stumbling over as they read one of 500-plus globally minded stories. It underlines a word that’s skipped and awards stars for ones spoken correctly. Kids can click on a word they don’t know and a “reading buddy” will help. You can set the app for Spanish, French, Chinese, or other non-English options. Ages 5+

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Best For Spelling

Credit: Courtesy of L'Escapadou

Montessori Crosswords for Kids

Using picture clues and phonics sounds, our testers moved around letters to spell short words like jog and dog. At higher levels, kids do crosswords with longer fill-ins (think turkey). Kids can even focus on certain types of words, like those with a silent e or a long i. Ages 4 to 8

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Best For Storytime

Credit: Courtesy of Audible, Inc

Audible

Let the pros take care of doing the voices for kids’ books. This app offers exclusive collabs, like Laura Dern’s Little Women and Scarlett Johansson performing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now you can sit back and listen together. All ages

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Best For E-Books

Credit: Courtesy of Epic! Creations Inc

Epic!

Your bookworm will never run out of material. More than 40,000 options—from popular series like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate to Newbery Medal winners such as Hello, Universe—are smartly organized by age, genre, and even passion. There are also sections on dinosaurs and comics (shriek!). And the app logs reading time. Ages 2 to 12

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Best For Creative Writing

Credit: Courtesy of RSA Group, LLC

Write About This

Hundreds of writing prompts, in categories ranging from food to feelings, give kids inspo. Our testers wrote about fave artwork, what they’d like to do upside down, and who makes the best pizza. Older kids typed out their response on the virtual loose-leaf paper while younger ones recorded it. Ages 7+

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Best For U.S. Geography

Credit: Courtesy of Dan Russell-Pinson

Stack the States

Kids answer multiple-choice questions about capitals, flags, and other trivia, earning states they can pile on top of one another like Jenga pieces. “During quarantine, my soon-to-be 5-year-old learned all the shapes and locations of all the states using this app,” says Mike Dawson, a dad of three in State College, Pennsylvania. “The other day, I showed him a particular tortilla chip and asked him which state it looked like. He nailed it with his response: Alabama.” Ages 4+

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Best Atlas

Credit: Courtesy of Barefoot Books Inc.

Barefoot World Atlas

It’s so much more than a map. Kids zoom across a 3-D globe, playing games such as dropping world flags on the correct country. “We’ve had this app for two years, and it still holds my 6-year-old son’s interest,” says Katie Caruso, a teacher in Vacaville, California. “Our family likes that it contains historical elements, such as the location of the Titanic, as well as landmarks and cultural facts.” Ages 4+

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Best For Presidential Trivia

Credit: Courtesy of Dan Russell-Pinson

Presidents vs. Aliens

In this high-stakes election year, we can’t think of a better time for kids to learn about government. After choosing one of 45 presidential avatars, kids answer multiple-choice trivia questions about nicknames, important dates, quotes, and events. For each correct response, they receive a president to fling at an alien. Ha! When all the aliens are off the screen, kids advance to the next level. “My 6-year-old loved the questions that asked to match the names of the presidents to their photos,” says Janelle Knight, a mom of two in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. “She also found it super-fun to collect the presidents after correctly answering a certain number of questions. I learned right along with her.” Ages 6+

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Best For Beginning Coders

Credit: Courtesy of Scratch Foundation

ScratchJr

You’ll probably have to help your kid read through the instructions at first, but soon they’ll get the hang of dragging and dropping pieces of programming script. “The app’s open-ended nature allows kids to create their own animated story,” says Monica Cardella, Ph.D., a program director with the National Science Foundation and director of the INSPIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana. Ages 5 to 7

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Best Intro To Science

Credit: Courtesy of PBS Kids

PBS Kids Play and Learn Science

Know how your kid gravitates to the water-play area at your local children’s museum? Here’s a virtual, germ-free version of those experiments. Preschoolers can play games that explore what happens to water when it flows over and through objects of different shapes and sizes. Our testers also love the game that lets them predict whether objects sink or float in the water. Ages 2 to 8

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Best Intro To Animals

Credit: Courtesy of Night & Day Studios, Inc.

Peekaboo Barn

Toddlers learn the names of animals and the sounds they make as they pop in and out of a barn. “My 18-month-old gets excited to press the door and reveal a new animal,” says Caitlin Ultimo-Pereyra, of New York City. “Overall, the graphics are cute and the sounds aren’t irritating, as is the case with some apps.” Ages 1 to 3

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Best Intro To Space

Credit: Courtesy of Learny Land

What’s in Space?

With activities for a range of ages, this is an app that siblings can share. Toddlers can build rockets and dress astronauts, while older kids can connect the dots to form constellations and see how the sky changes between the northern and the southern hemisphere. Ages 4 to 10

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Best For Nature Walks

Credit: Courtesy of iNaturalist

Seek by iNaturalist

Imagine Pokémon Go for plants. This app offers badge-earning nature challenges you can complete as a family. It will also I.D. pictures of unfamiliar flowers, leaves, bugs, or birds. So when your kid asks you what something is, take a snap and let the app figure it out. The app will even tell you facts about your find and whether other people have noticed it in your area. Ages 4+

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Best Musical Basics

Credit: Courtesy of Mazaam Interactive Inc.

Mazaam

More than a dozen games teach preschoolers through first-graders (a time when their ears are easiest to train) about musical concepts such as pitch, tempo, and harmony, using 140 classical pieces. If you wind up with the next Ben Platt, we expect a concert ticket. Ages 4 to 6

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Best Intro To Instruments

Credit: Courtesy of Melody Jams Inc.

Melody Jams

Kids choose monster characters, each playing a different instrument, to rock out with in a garage band, during a big show, or at the Mars Disco. Our testers loved adding their own piano, drum, and xylophone sounds to the mix. Ages 3 to 6

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