BrainPop Featured Movie is a free app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It features good educational short movies for kids, teaches kids something new every day. It is provided by BrainPop, an award-winning educational online resources used by millions of teachers and students across the world. It provides a great amount of content for a free app. Users get a new animated documentary every single day, followed by a quiz to see how much they understood. Each movie has some… Read more

If you are like me, you have tons of different things to keep track of – child’s after school activities, vacation plans, shopping lists, blog ideas, birthdays, work projects, school projects, …. It is so hard not to miss anything and stay updated on everything, till using Evernote. Evernote is a free, cross-platform application that greatly simplifies the process of keeping track of notes, ideas, memos, lists, pictures, web clips, etc., into a single place and keeps them in sync… Read more

Recently I found another FREE app that is good for kids keeping journals, make their own books.  It is called StoryKit.  I think this one would also be a good app to keep travel journels. What to do with this app: You can record your journey, or create a story. You can create the story in 4 ways: Pictures: either take a photo of your own (using iPhone would make it so easy to load the picture into the app)… Read more

Pretty soon, kids will start spring break. Some families will travel. I did some search on apps teach geography. I found Stack the States. With this app, kids will learn about capitals, state shapes, and map locations with animated states that stack, drop, tumble, and slide around like puzzle pieces. In the game, the player is asked a question (identification, capital, national landmarks, etc.) and if they choose the correct answer from four multiple-choice options they can use that state… Read more

Khan Academy has become a phenomena in the past couple years. It offers free online classes on subjects like math, physics, or history. The topics include: K-12 math, science (such as biology, chemistry, and physics), finance, history, test prep (GMAT, CAHSEE, SAT math, etc). The level of the courses ranges from elementary school to college. Couple days ago, Khan Academy launched their App. Like their online courses, the app is free. It enables you to view Khan Academy’s complete library… Read more

Everyone in our family had fun with this game. It is a fun brain training game app for people of all ages. It is challenging and fun. The free app has 5 mini-games, and there are 8 more available via In-App Purchase. It is a great game app for kids to training critical thinking and problem solving skills. The description at AppStore says it all: Discover a series of ingenious mini-games especially created to test various cognitive abilities such as… Read more

Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday. This free app is a perfect gift to celebrate the beloved author’s birthday. When you start the app, you can choose the song you want to play, and the way you want to play. There are 10 songs, all are soundtracks of Dr. Seuss, such as Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham. Among the 10, 3 are free. The rest can be unlocked by earning points or in-app purchase. You can choose between… Read more

I created a math problem for my son when we played Tiny Tower together.   Hope you can use it for your child as well. The problem: It takes 25 seconds for the elevator to move from first floor to the 5th floor.  How long will it take it to move from first floor to the 9th floor? The correct answer is – 50 seconds.   Did you get it right?  Make sure you get it right before asking your child.  If… Read more

After playing Flight Tycoon for a while, my son is in the mood to build a city. I found Tiny Tower for him. It is not about building a city, instead it is a simulation game building a tower, creating and managing businesses in the tower. You can have apartments, tea shop, photo studio, comedy club, laundromat, … You make money from apartment rents, and from selling the products. When you make enough money, you can build more floors. One… Read more

Learning about US Presidents is easy with this app from Britannica. The app has features, fun facts, and a nice quiz section.  I particularly like the quiz section, which is hidden under the “menu” at the bottom of the starting screen. Below is the description from iTunes: Britannica Kids: U.S. Presidents takes young learners on a fun and educational meet-and-greet with the 44 U.S. presidents. IDEAL FOR HOMEWORK HELP Bring the Oval Office into your living room with detailed profiles… Read more

A couple of weeks ago, my son found out our metronome was not working. He was having trouble with one of the new music pieces. His teacher suggested practice with a metronome. A friend told me about a free iPhone App called Chatternome. I downloaded to my phone. However, when we used it, we realized it is hard to set the tempo. You select the tempo by sliding an oval-shaped dot along a line – moving up leads to slower… Read more

I have been partnering with my son on a game called “Flight tycoon”.  It is a game he found in the App Store, and since it is free, we downloaded for him.  At first, I didn’t pay much attention to the game.  One day, when he showed me what the game was about, I found it very interesting and educational. It is an airport simulation game.  To play the game, you have to build an airport and buy airplanes.  To keep you airport… Read more

I don’t know much of the video games my son plays. But at least when he mentioned the name, I know what it is about. When the games got on iPad, the situation became worse. All I see is the little icon on the screen, I did not get to watch him play anymore, since it is so portable and so small, he can easily hide in a corner and I would not know where he is. One day, I… Read more