You’re in a store. Or a restaurant. Or, for the love of God, on a plane to somewhere wonderful. It would be peaceful, except… well, you brought your kid.
Your toddler, to be specific. And for some inexplicable reason, she starts to FREAK THE F*%# OUT.
Thankfully, this is the 21st century and we have a glorious tool called an iPhone. I seriously don’t know how my mom got through parenthood without it, actually. I know it’s a luxury, and some people are probably against “pacifying” a crabby toddler with an iPhone, but sometimes, you do what you need to do to survive.
Nora is scary good at operating an iPhone, and has been for a while. She can easily swipe to unlock it, and swipe to scroll from page to page of the apps. She scrolls until she finds HER apps, which she recognizes by the picture. And then she knows how to select them, select things on the screen, and how to return to the apps pages to pick something else. It’s pretty incredible. And honestly, she really doesn’t even use it THAT often. It’s certainly not a daily habit.
Still, this thing is a godsend when we need it to be. If you are a stranger to the toddler-silencer-known-as-iPhone-apps, I thought I’d share the current kid-friendly apps that I have on my phone, and tell you which are Nora’s favorites.
Here is the page that has all of Nora’s apps (and a few stragglers of mine, too). Her top 3 are undoubtedly 1) PBS Kids, 2) ABC Song, and 3) Disney Junior.
The PBS Kids and Disney Junior apps are WONDERFUL. They stream full episodes of TV shows on each of the respective networks, and it’s awesome.With PBS, Nora likes to scroll through and watch a few minutes of Daniel Tiger, Dinosaur Train, Arthur, etc. On this app, she is a “channel surfer.” But with Disney Junior, there aren’t as many options, and “turning the channel” isn’t as readily available, so she tends to watch the episodes with a longer attention span. Both of these apps are 100% FREE, which obviously puts them at the top of my list, too. And if you have a certain cable provider, I think you can enter your account info to gain access to more Disney Junior shows and episodes, but it’s not available through our provider.
The “ABC Song” is a free app that I downloaded randomly before or during our Boston trip. Nora’s favorite song is the ABCs, and she loves letters in general. It’s a SUPER cheesy looking app, but it sings her the ABC song, with the letters appearing in bubbles on the screen. She’s a fan. This app is free as well, but the free version has annoying pop-ups at the end of the song, which Nora hasn’t figured out how to “x” out of by herself yet. This leads to a lot of me having to help her be able to play the song again. I just looked and the full version is only $1.99, so yeah, I’ll be downloading that shortly. :)
The first three apps on my screen there are Old Mac, Bus, and Peek-a-Zoo. All of these are from a developer named Duck Duck Moose, and they’re great apps. I first heard about them from Kate. Old MacDonald and the Wheels on the Bus are based on the songs, so there are pages of the app dedicated to different farm animal scenes, or verses of the Wheels on the Bus. Each page has items on it that are interactive when the child taps them, swipes them, etc. Old MacDonald is $1.99, and Wheels on the Bus is $0.99. Nora LOVED these when they were completely new to her, but now she has to be in the right mood to spend a decent chunk of time playing with them.
Peek-a-Zoo is the same type of thing, but features a ton of animals. When Nora taps them, they say things like, “Hi, I’m Linus the Lion!” as they scroll by. There are also pages that ask interactive questions, like “Who is sleeping?” and shows four animals, one of which has its eyes closed. It lets them know if they’ve selected the right one. It’s cute, and obviously somewhat educational, too. Peek-a-Zoo is $0.99, and this is one that Nora still plays with pretty often (when she is given the chance).
Phone4Kids is the least favorite and is honestly pretty lame. It’s made by the same developer as the ABC Song app, so it has the same type of cheesy graphics. Nora doesn’t care for it much, but will select it occasionally so I keep it on there. It has a numbers keypad where the child can “dial,” and has “apps” like weather, texting, maps, etc. Nora might be more into it when she gets a little older and understands more about what each of these play apps is supposed to be. This app was free, so eh, who cares?
We’ll be taking a long road trip to visit my dad within the next month or so, and I’ll probably download some new apps prior to that to help keep Nora entertained. For those who have tried these apps with your own kids, do they agree with Nora’s favorites? :) And do you have any recommendations for new (to us) tried and true apps that your toddler loves?
12 Responses to Favorite Toddler iPhone Apps
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About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
We have Android based phones and we definitely use it to entertain our son while out. He is only 5 days younger than Nora so I understand where you are coming from. We also have an iPad so I’ve included some of the apps we use below.
I just recently bought the full version of the ABC Song because my son loves it so much. It was a great investment! The Disney Jr app is another one of his favorites. In fact Disney Jr has a Jake & the Neverland Pirates app and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Road Rally app. Both of these are free and a huge hit with my son. We also have Paint Sparkles which is basically just a painting app. Another big hit is Tab Tale books. They have various free interactive books and games. A fun game we downloaded for him was Hungry Hungry Hippos. He also likes Fruit Ninja. Also think about downloading Talking Ben or Talking Tom or something similar. You are bound for some belly laughs with one of those.
These are just some of the apps we have downloaded on the iPad for the little one. He has more apps on the iPad than I do!
Thanks, Lisa! Sounds like several good ones there, and since our kids are so close in age, I’m sure Nora would enjoy them, too. Love it!
My daughter is a little younger than yours (she’s 20 mo), but she really enjoys the Fisher Price apps. Her current favorite is ‘Where’s Puppy’s nose?’ and the Laugh and Learn Monkey app (that has four different things for her to play with).
She LOVES wheels on the bus. The bird that’s behind the doors on the second screen? She gets annoyed with me because the laugh it makes kills me and I press it over and over again.
Oh, and in case you’re interested I just pinned a way to lock an iphone/ipad/ipod.
http://pinterest.com/pin/189151253071113061/
For the most part my daughter can navigate between apps, but when she gets off of ‘her’ screen that has all of her apps, she needs help. This is a way to basically turn off the button on the bottom until you enter a code. It supposedly works if you have iOS6 (which I don’t have because I’m being annoyingly stubborn about the maps issue).
We have ALSO refrained from upgrading to iOS6 because of the maps! And they’re not joking when they tell you the maps are f-ed up. A few weeks back, my family (so my mom, both my brothers, etc.) made plans to go to an apple farm that is about 30 minutes from where we live. Everyone arranged to meet at the farm at 9:30. None of us had never been so no one knew how to get there. Michael and I used my iPhone maps, and we got there no problems, within 30 minutes. We waited, and waited, and waited for my brothers to show up (one of whom had my mom with him). As it turned out, both of them (completely separately) drove 20 minutes out of the way… they were all complaining about how they didn’t understand what happened, because they followed the iPhone maps. I said, “Did you guys upgrade to iOS6?” and they all said YES!
In other words, iOS6 = no thank you.
Logan (22 months old) loves “I Hear Ewe”, which has two pages of animal sounds and one page of transportation sounds. He also loves “Zoo Train”, where he gets to pick the pieces of a train and watch it ride through different scenes.
I had no idea PBS Kids and Disney Jr. were free. Totally downloading those now!
Best. Post. Ever. In the middle of downloading PBS Kids, Disney and Peek-a-Zoo. You’re the best.
Awesome post, thanks. My little girl (18 months) loves my iPhone and I have been hunting around for new apps. She loves Fisher Price’s “Animal Sounds for Baby” and “Where’s Puppy’s Nose?” Her other favorite is “Elmo Calls” although she still has problems accidentally hanging up on Elmo when she pokes the screen too many times.
Great post – I love your blog! I have a 14 month old son, and he loves the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn apps.
Great post! I can’t keep my little girl from grabbing my iphone. She’s only 12 months right now so we won’t need these apps quite yet, but I’ll have them on hand for when she’s ready. The tantrums with this one already are unbelievable!
I recently downloaded an app called Toddler Teasers. It is such a great find (a friend of mine found it while she let my 2 year old play with her phone). It’s very educational and FREE! But, after the first time my son played it I paid $3.99 to expand the app to include like 20 additional categories. My son is hooked on it. I hate letting him play with my phone and the iPad, but letting him do something educational makes it a little easier to swallow. And, it buys us an extra 20 minutes of sleep on the weekends :) Thanks for the great post.
My 27 month old daughter loveees playing Mickeys Road Rally, and KidsDoodle. Those are her top 2 and they are both free