Best Educational Apps for Preschoolers and Toddlers

I have a love/hate relationship with the tablet. My son has learned so much from his games, which is great, but it also reduces his interaction with the real world.

That being said, the amount he is learning from tablet games is insane. At 3 years old, he’s in the 99th percentile for school readiness and most of what he’s learned is from video games. He just absorbs information like a sponge. I’ve tried recreating the same learning experience in real life but he just gets frustrated with me and shuts down.

I am extremely selective about what he is allowed to play. There are a lot of apps that look like education games but aren’t. For example, some puzzle games allow you to move a puzzle piece to any place on the screen and it will snap into the correct place, even if your child is nowhere near the correct place. It’s important to look out for these fake educational games.

Here are my top picks. Some of these are multiple apps bundled together.

Best Reading Readiness Game

Endless Learning Academy

This includes:

Endless Alphabet
Endless Reader
Endless Wordplay
Endless Numbers
Endless Spanish

The endless series is awesome. You can buy the “Endless Academy” via a subscription in the apple app store. It includes all of the games I listed above (including some music and art activities). The Google play store doesn’t have the subscription option so you’ll have to buy the games individually…which can get a bit expensive. If I were to choose one game from the series it would be “Endless Reader”.

My only complaint is that some of the letter sounds have the “uh” sound at the end (B-“uh”, C-“uh”, etc.). It hasn’t confused my son but we also had taught him to proper way to say the letter sounds prior to introducing this app.

Best Math Game

Moose Math

Moose Math is made my a company that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Khan Academy. Moose Math is a great math app once Endless Numbers becomes too easy (or boring). Moose Math is aligned with Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten and 1st Grade and includes a Report Card section where parents and teachers can monitor progress and find additional skill-building activities.

Moose Math features 5 math activities:

MOOSE JUICE: Make smoothies while practicing counting, addition and subtraction (Williams favorite)
PAINT PET: Match the pets by counting the number of dots
PET BINGO: Solve addition, subtraction and counting problems to get BINGO
LOST & FOUND: Learn and sort through shapes and colors
DOT TO DOT: Help the Dust Funny find his way home by joining the dots

Best Puzzle + Sorting Game

Smart Baby Big Box Bundle

This is another bundle. It includes:

Smart Baby Sorter 2
Smart Baby Touch
Cars & Vehicles Puzzle
Smart Baby Sorter
Smart Baby Shapes
Smart Logic Games

These are geared towards younger kids (2 year olds). My son LOVED these games for a long while. He went through a sorting phase for over a year and was sorting everything. He became a sorting expert!

Google Play Store – Not available
Apple App Store
Amazon App Store – Not available

Portuguese App

Lottie Dottie Chicken (Galinha Pintadinha)

This isn’t a game but an app with a lot of “Galinha Pintadinha” episodes. I don’t usually let William watch shows on the tablet but this is the one exception. This app filled with songs, including a few “mini” episode. He’s learned the Portuguese ABC’s and 2 songs so far. I like this show becuase they use simple and clear language, simple imagery, and all of the songs have subtitles. We also listen to the soundtrack in the car (free on Spotify). The songs are common in Brazil so they also appear in Turma da Monica-Folclore Brasileiro that we read as part of his homeschool curriculum. The show is free on YouTube so I would watch it to make sure your child likes the show before purchasing.

Lottie Dottie comes in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Google Play Store
Apple App Store
Amazon App Store – Not available

Ok, that’s it! Those are my all time favorite apps. We use other apps as well but I have problems with them which is why they didn’t make it on the list.

The other apps he uses are: