I love historical movies and TV shows. I was excited when I got an opportunity of free set of DVDs to review Little House on the Prairie. If you are in the US, you probably already know the book series and the TV show. If you are not from the US, the Little House is a book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, about American frontiers’ life in the late 19th century. It depicts the life of the Ingalls family, the… Read more

Have you tried funbrain.com? It is a free learning website for kids from preschool to grade 8. I have not shared the site here because I thought it uses flash and won’t function on iPad and iPhone. But yesterday, I tried it on my iPad and the games and books all worked well. I am so glad that there is one more learning website that is available on mobile devices, so kids can enjoy the fun learning on the go… Read more

I loved gears. We used to play with LEGO and created a lot gear models with it. There are many engineering concepts involved, but when doing it right, it is fun for young children to see and understand those concepts. I am very excited to see now there is an app about gears designed for kids. Crazy Gears is from Seven Academy, who also designed Busy Shapes. The app incorporated many science and engineer concepts in the simple puzzle play… Read more

Four Letters is a free app of fun word games. It is not for young children, but it is a fun one for school age kids who have certain vocabulary already. All words in the games are 4 letter words. Think it will be easy? Try it out. It is fast paced fun vocabulary game that the family can play together. You can even set up a competition among family members. The game play is quite easy. The player is… Read more

Kids Awesome 1st Grade Math Premium is a fun math game app designed for first graders. It covers the content from counting and number order to different operations, to telling time and geometry. Although it is designed for first graders, many kids from kindergarten to 2nd and even 3rd grade can benefit from the games. The app doesn’t allow users to skip levels. Kids have to finish one level to unlock the next. I have not get chance to review… Read more

I loved the app Thinkroll. It is a fun physics science game with tons of build-in science concepts. Kids learn science, critical thinking and problem solving while playing the games. Now the sequel Thinkroll 2 is just launched, with similar game set up, but more science concepts, and more challenges and more fun. There are two sets of the games, one set for age 3 to 5, another set for age 5 to 9. Each set has about 120 games… Read more

Winky Think Logic Puzzles has a series of fun logical and critical thinking games for kids. It starts with fun shape and color matching, but gradually goes into complex puzzle games full of obstacles that require reasoning, observation and spatial cognition skills to solve. It is a fun game for the whole family. It is currently free for limited time. The games are roughly grouped into 3 skill levels, with over 180 puzzles in total. The first level is very… Read more

Scratch Jr is a free app from the developers of Scratch at MIT. It is designed for younger children to learn coding. Different from other coding apps for young children, it encourages storytelling as well. With the many interactive functions, parents and teachers can use it as a customizable tool to teach kids many other subjects, such as following instructions, counting, coloring. When you first start the app, there is a tutorial video. I highly suggest going through the video… Read more

When kids start learning math beyond counting, they start to encounter math concepts that they need understand precisely the meaning, or they may have trouble. For example, they need know the meaning of “Angle”, and the differences between “Acute Angle”, “Obtuse Angle”, “Right Angle” and “Straight Angle”. It will be helpful if the kids have access to these math terms at home when they need help. Math Dictionary is a free online math dictionary designed for kids to look up… Read more

LeafSnap is a free app developed by Columbia University, Maryland University and Smithsonian Institute. It is a tree leaf identification guide that helps users identify trees with the leaves. You can snap a picture of the leaf, and the app will compare the image with the database, and tell you what tree is the leaf from. It is a fun app to have for your walking in the park. The most fun part of the app is the Snap part… Read more

YouTube has become more and more popular and more and more parents and teachers are using videos they find on YouTube as teaching materials for kids. Although there are so many great content on YouTube, parents worry about that kids may run into videos they are not supposed to watch. To solve the problem, Google launched YouTube Kids, where kids can watch age appropriate videos, and parents and teachers can have the peace of mind knowing all contents are child… Read more

JFK Challenge is a free app from The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It is designed for school age kids to learn the history, particularly the two initiatives by JFK – The Peace Corps and The Space Program, via the combination of multimedia introductions and hands-on games. To start the app, kids can set their own avatar with a picture of themselves. They will watch a brief introduction of John F. Kennedy and the two initiatives. Kids can… Read more

Zap Zap Fractions is a free app for kids explaining the basic concepts of fractions. I like the good visual help when the meaning of fraction is explained. If your children just start to learn about fraction, this is a great tool to help them to have a good understanding of the real meaning of fraction. The app has two parts: lesson and challenge. The lesson starts from a division, and shows to kids that fraction is essentially a division… Read more

Medelia is a free app helping kids learn about the history of Mediterranean cities. Kids visit the cities, learn and explore at their own pace. It is a fun way to learn history. There will be more cities included the app, but currently there are 3, and one city is free. When kids just start the app, they can create their own avatars. The created the character will be the one explore the cities. Currently the city that comes free… Read more