What do you do after dinner as a family?  For a while, we have been doing tongue twisters and we all love it.  It is a fun way to bond with kids and it is a good activity to help kids understand the importance of speaking words clearly when they talk.  Kids learn words and phrases, practice their mouth muscles, and enjoy the family fun. The book we’ve been using is a FREE iBook Tongue Twisters for Kids. It is… Read more

Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood: Play at Home with Daniel is a fun app from PBS Kids where kids can do pretending plays. If you aren’t familiar with Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, it’s a cartoon on PBS that is based off the old educational show “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood”. My son enjoys the cartoon and loves waving to all the characters with Daniel in the opening scene with the famous “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” song. When he saw this app he was… Read more

Toca Builder is another app from Toca Boca. It is a Mindcraft-like building app for kids age 5 and up, slightly older than a typical Toca Boca app’s target age.  It is free for limited time on App Store. Like other Toca Boca apps, it is all about free play, there is no goals or scores.  Kids simply get in the app and start building.  There are 6 builders in the app, each has a unique skill set and own… Read more

Fix The Factory is a new free app from LEGO. LEGO calls it a puzzle game, but I view it another cool game app teaching kids about programming. The story of the game features a humanoid robot fixing the factory, where battery packs are dropped in all the wrong places.  The players’ jobs are to write instructions in code blocks to guide the robot move to the right spot, pick up the mis-placed batteries, and put them back to the… Read more

Last year my 6 year old daughter started learning chess both at home through playing with us and at school through an afterschool enrichment program.  Learning and playing chess encourage concentration, improve cognitive abilities and rational thinking, it is a great game for kids. Just because it requires concentration and staying power, so it was not necessarily her first choice of activity at home. I was lucky if I could convince her to play once a week, and I could see that… Read more

Today I am sharing a free resource helping kids practice English grammars – Road to Grammar.  It is a website, not an app, but it functions very well on iPhone and iPAD.  It is originally designed for ESL (English as Second Language) students, but kids in primary school who need some reinforcement in grammar can definitely use it too. Once you open the website on your iPAD or iPhone, you see the list of practices kids can do – Adjectives… Read more

Right after I posted 10 free math apps for school age kids, I found another free math app that is also quite engaging.  It is called Free the Balloon.  It helps kids practice skip counting via games. The basic game play idea is simple.  Kids follow the teacher’s instructions at the beginning of the game on a blackboard, like “count by 1 from 4 to 15”. They then move the balloons, in the correct order, through the hoops labeled with… Read more

Today I am reviewing a handwriting and math activity app called 123 Tracing by Kids Academy Company. Learning numbers is a fundamental concept to basic math, this app helps children learn their numbers through the use of tracing and handwriting. It is a very basic app consisting of the numbers one through ten, allowing your child to trace the numbers. It encourages repetition which increases mastery. They have added in a game of catching fireflies throughout the app. The more… Read more

Goodnight Moon was our favorite bedtime book for years.  I was really happy to see it on App Store. Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd created the book 65 years ago.  It is a children’s book you will always like to read and enjoy the reading no matter how old you are.  This app version stays very true to the original print book, with added interactivities to some images. There are 3 ways to read the book: Auto Play, Read to… Read more

Studio Pango have produced a cute interactive game for pre-schoolers. It’s engaging, easy to use and requires no language comprehension. Relying solely on images to provide instructions, it inspires imaginations and encourages creativity in a non intimidating way. Pango Imaginary Car is the kind of app that could work very well with children who have learning needs, especially those in need of practise in the areas of fine motor skills. It’s also pretty good at re-inforcing logical thinking too. The… Read more

Great news for kids (and grown ups) who like coloring pages, or actually for those who don’t like coloring pages – what you are going to try today will change your thought about coloring page completely – all by this FREE app that will bring your coloring page to life in 3D! Before I told my son about the app, I printed out a coloring page on the app’s website.  I then asked my son if he could color the… Read more

I am always excited when I find a good app teaching kids social skills. On iGameMom, we have reviewed quite a few apps helping kids on emotional wellbeing, such as I Learn with Poko and FeelElectric.  Today I want to share another wonderful app that helps kids explore emotions and feelings. Avokiddo Emotions is a fun educational app that allows young children to freely explore a wide range of emotions and facial expressions while interacting with three highly responsive animals. When kids… Read more

The Noisy Bug Sing Along app is an interactive story book of bug sounds. With a target audience being 5-8 years old, it’s a great learning app for all the nature loving kids out there. It offers a fun way to learn more about bugs and their sounds. The author is a bug expert, so the facts are accurate and detailed. It’s a great interactive tool for learning about science and insects. Science and nature are a fundamental concept for… Read more

Sometimes the best ideas are the most simple. That is absolutely the case with this app. That is not to say that this app is slight. Not at all. In fact, I think it packs quite a punch with what it provides. It cannot be stressed enough how important learning the alphabet is in a preschooler’s life. It opens the door to reading and writing. Beyond flashcards and repetition, there are few other options for learning your ABCs. Then came… Read more