I just read the news that LaunchPad the company who created Toontastic app is bought by Google. As a celebration, they set two of their apps free: Toontastic and TeleStory. We reviewed Toontastic, which is a fun app letting kids create their own stories and making them into movies. Toontastic also teaches kids how to arrange the storyline to make the stories more interesting. Different from Toontastic, TeleStory is an app letting kids create their own TV shows with provided… Read more

Are you comfortable to let your kids watch news on TV or news website? If not, how do your kids stay updated on what is going on around them, in the community, in the country, and in the world? I have reviewed some child-safe news resources, and today I found one more great news resource for kids: Youngzine. It is a free website of news articles for kids. Youngzine is a website created due to the fact that it was… Read more

No matter what time of the year, there are always moments that you have to stay home, and try to find things to do with kids. We’ve shared many fun activities for kids on iGameMom STEM, but many times you just need some inspiration on ideas, and sometimes, need help figuring out how to do those fun experiments. Good movies for kids and educational videos to the rescue! Today we share YouTube channels that have cool science experiment videos for kids… Read more

Do you have pets? Do your kids like pets? Pets could be very good companions and friends. We’ve seen many wonderful stories about pets and kids. Today we share good movies and TV shows for kids featuring pets. As we are Netflix members, these movies are all available on Netflix. Good Movies for Kids Featuring Pets As usual, we list movie titles by kids age groups. Movies for younger kids are listed at the top of the list, and movies… Read more

We love Smithsonian. This institute has done so much in education! Recently I found an excellent non fiction reading program from Smithsonian. It is called Smithsonian Tribune. It collects appropriate news stories that will interest kids and deliver these stories on the website or the free apps, and invite kids take quizzes or post comments. All readings are leveled by Lexile score. The content includes passages, photos, graphics, and audio and/or video materials about current events, history, art, culture and… Read more

Teaching kids creative writing is a complex process. It involves many elements, such as idea generation, plot structure, vocabulary, character development, review and revision, … and many more. We are trying to put some learning tools we discovered over time that are helpful in our writing learning journey. Hope this is helpful to you as well. I’d also like to hear from you what tools do you use while teaching kids writing. This is part of our Best Learning Tools for… Read more

Is your child learning a music instrument or singing? Do you know how to play the instrument yourself? I have a child studying piano, but I had no knowledge of music. It is very hard for him to practice listening exercises at home as there is no one can tell him if his answers are correct or not. Practice like this is still helpful, but it is just not as effective as if you can get immediate feedback. A while… Read more

We love to read Christmas stories, they help to bring the holiday spirit and it is great bonding time. Nothing makes me feel better than snuggling together with the family to read a holiday story together. Compared to years ago, now you can find many Christmas stories on your iPad or other mobile devices, book apps, Kindle books, or iBooks. We are listing here some of the best Christmas stories for kids you can find on your iPad. The nice… Read more

Link That Gugl is a fun app for any one, no matter how old you are. There are similar games on the App Store, but I like this one for the fun characters of the Gugls. Kids will gain visual pattern recognition and fine motor skills while playing. It is also a game for the family to play together. Gugls are the cute and round little guys in different colors and hues. With two big eyes, baby’ish voices, and bouncy… Read more

This week is Computer Science Education week. To correspond to the campaign Hour of Code, we are sharing a fun coding app designed for preschool kids, and it is Free.  The app is called The Foos: Code for an Hour. The app introduces programming concepts through exciting puzzle adventures. It is for kids or adults who know nothing about coding or programming. So get started, download the app, put in your hour of code this week! There are 24 levels… Read more

Critical thinking and problem solving skills are very important for a child’s academic and future career, or even life success. How do you teach a child critical thinking skills? How do kids get better at it? There are many elements in critical thinking, assesse, analyze, compare, question, create, … I find the best way to help kids improve the critical thinking skills is to present age appropriate challenging problems and encourage them to solve the problems in their own ways. Today… Read more

My son loves watching videos and short movie clips. He would go into Youtube, search for videos he wants to see. He found many good ones. We found some educational YouTube channels to follow. I am glad he can find educational movies and videos for free, but am also concerned that he may see something he’s not supposed to when searching for videos. That is why I immediately downloaded MagicFlix when I first read about it. MagicFlix is a collection of videos and… Read more

Making friends is an important life skill for everyone. How to teach kids about friendships? How to teach them the skills of making and keeping friends? There are many things you can do, such as reading books, role modeling. Today we focus on educational movies for kids teaching friendships. Most these movies are available on Netflix, which is the app we use to watch movies and TV shows. For more information about Netflix, please visit Netflix offers good movies for… Read more

Learn World Geography is a free geography app from Brainscape. It is a flashcard app, but the algorithm is designed by learning cognitive scientists leveraging the latest cognitive science techniques, so you can master the content faster. From the surface, it is just a flashcard. After using the app for a while, you will find that memorizing the geographic facts is not that hard, and in fact it is quite easy. According to Brainscape, their objective of the app design… Read more