Entertaining children is not easy in these days in which you are not allowed to let kids get bored. Entertaining children so that you can slack off and watch the telly even harder. And the hardest thing of all is to entertain and educate, whilst grabbing back a bit of time for yourself. I have good news for you reader: your smartphone and tablet are your friend. Kids love playing good apps on smartphone and tablet.
There are literally thousands of kids apps for Android. But not all apps are equal. Some will entertain your kids for only a short while. Others will push them to make expensive in-app purchases. And there are some 'kids' apps that aren't really appropriate for yong people.
Best apps for babies
Sign and Sing Lite
If you're doing pre-speech Sing & Sign with your baby, this offers a visual dictionary. Great fun for
parent and child and it helps with development, too.
Best apps for toddlers and pre-school children
Peppa Pig Happy Mrs Chicken
If your children like Peppa Pig, you have little option but to get them this app, even though it costs a
couple of quid. And although we're not entirely enamoured of it, at £1.99 you won't be disappointed.
All of the P2 Games apps featuring Peppa Pig- and Fireman Sam are good, and as there is a lot of overpriced rubbish bearing the names of Peppa and Sam it is worth looking out for that publisher.
Fun for Kids – Puzzles
In Fun for Kids – Puzzles, your child gets to lay puzzles in four different ways. Every time a puzzle
is completed or a piece is placed a fitting and fun sound is played. With loads of puzzles, cute graphics and different di culty levels, your little one gets to practice problem solving and motor skills – and they should enjoy it too. There is 4 types of puzzles and a total of 40 fun challenges that awaits the child, and it is a super cheap app.
Potato Head Color
A virtual colouring book for younger children, Potato Head Color makes up in simple free fun what it lacks in UK SPELLING. Cough. Rant over.
Forestry
Playing funny and educational mini-games, in Forestry your child will help forest dwellers to build a house, gather food stuffs, pick up berries, go swimming and, of course, prepare for sleep. A fascinating and useful game Forestry can also serve as great memory and attention trainer for your kid. (And it can help at bed time.) It is free, but with inapp purchases, so keep an eye out.
Toca Boca Hair Salon 2
All the Toca Boca games for kids are great (except Toca Band, which will drive parents round the bend), but Toca Hair Salon is seriously a must-have on any family's phone or tablet. Toca Boca games are great – they have the design aesthetic of Swedish wooden toys and 'feel' a lot like real world toys that encourage imagination. They are great fun too.
Peekaboo Barn (and Peekaboo Wild)
Simple, charming identify-an-animal games. Younger kids love these, especially as the developers release updates each Christmas that Christmas-ify them.
Frostcraft
A fun and colourful to help develop children's motor skills and imagination. A game of imagination and ingenuity for tablet users. Your child plays by helping out a company of funny animals.
LEGO DUPLO Train
Your toddler will love to drive a colourful LEGO DUPLO Train from station to station. Choosing and loading wagons, building bridges, stopping at crossings, refueling and laying new tracks around pesky rocks. A toddler's dream.
Best apps for primary school children
Monster Math
You're have to forgive Monster Math for lacking the 's' we would expect in the UK. It is, simply, one of the best maths apps we have seen – much better than your average flash-card based app. It takes the player through the adventure of a monster called Maxx. As Maxx explores new worlds, battles enemies and so on, your kids have to help him through the power of mathematics. It's fun and engaging, and – after an initial purchase – there are no nasty in-app surprises so you can let your kids
play on their own.
Talking Rabbit
If you have kids you will be aware of the phenomenon of 'talking' apps, in which children can interact with and talk to an animated animal. Talking Rabbit is one of the best with disco dance and night time scenes, and a total of 18 different fully coloured outfits. It will drive you crazy, but keep the kids entertained. Just be careful of the in-app purchases.
LEGO App4+
A game of imagination and building skill, LEGO App4+ is aimed at children from ages four to seven years. Build your own truck, then use it to bring your cargo to its right destination, and collect coins to earn more LEGO parts. fun, educational and satisfying. And that's just for the parents.
Little Things Forever
Find things in shapes made up of thousands of objects with this beautiful and addictive free app for children.
JetPack Joyride
A free game enjoyed by children from a surprisingly young age. You suit up with a selection of jetpacks and take to the skies on an exciting adventure.
Spy Mouse
Best played on a tablet you're a mouse evading cats while you try to drag cheese around a house. More tense than you'd expect.
Train Conductor 2 Lite
What child doesn't love trains? Train Conductor 2 lets them guide trains to their destination while avoiding disastrous collisions (or not, depending on the child in question). To play kids must simply drag each train to the correct track with the swipe of a finger. The free version of the game will keep kids entertained for hours, too.
Petting Zoo
Featuring artwork by illustrator Christoph Niemann, this is silly but fun. And great to look at. You pet
cartoon animals, they do funny things.
Wombi Airplane and Wombi Treasures
Wombi Treasures is a basic but fun and graphically rich treasure hunt game for kids, available as iPad, iPhone and Android apps. It engages young children in scouring locations to find hidden artifacts, rewarding perseverance, and keeping kids gripped with their challenge. While the graphics are rich the gameplay is relatively basic but keps children excited to keep playing again and again.
Stack the Countries
A geography quiz (countries, flags, cities, landmarks) combined with a game to try to stack scale country outlines on top of each other without the pile falling over. Surprisingly good fun.
Hoopa City
Hoopa City developer TribePlay creates games with fun and interactive educational values, letting kids role-play and use their imaginations. Hoopa City is a character game for primary school children. It features Hoopa the Hippo. Kids must combine together elements to help construct cities. Children must build roads, houses, and more. It also features pioneering new mechanics so kids can combine elements to find secret combinations to unlock different building.
Dr. Panda's Toy Cars
An interactive game that lets kids role-play and use their imaginations. Children drive around two different cities, exploring the roads and discovering hidden surprises. Kids can explore by driving a fire truck, police car or even a boat. Best apps for teenagers
Tap Tap Revenge
With Tap Tap Revenge you tap the targets on your touchscreen to the beat of music from a variety of beat pop combos (it's young people's music). Tap along well and you score points for accuracy and timing. There are multiple diffculty levels, hundreds of songs and live online battlegrounds. Our teenage correspondent said she likes how you can choose different songs for the game and tap along to the beat.
Virtuoso Piano
A useful free tool for music study/practice. Our teenage app fan told us she finds this app useful for finding a specific note, before auditioning for a drama or music performance. And for the post-Glee
generation that is high praise indeed.
Best apps for kids of all ages
Let's Create Pottery Lite
Providing you can wrestle your phone or tablet from your kids, here's an app that you can enjoy just as much as they do. It won't teach you how to become a real potter but Let's create! Pottery HD is a greatlooking and surprisingly fun game which everyone can enjoy. The full gaem costs £2.99, but if you're not convinced, try the free Lite version first.
Temple Run
You know that bit in every adventure film where the hero or heroine gets their hands on the treasure but has to navigate a maze of booby traps to get out alive? That's this game in a nutshell. It's free, and
according to our panel enjoyed by kids aged from four upwards.
Monument Valley
One of the most beautiful and captivating games ever released Monument Valley isn't cheap (for an app) at £2.49 but it will keep children and adults engaged for hours working our how to help the silent princess Ida through mysterious and mind-bending, fantastical architecture, uncovering
hidden paths, unfolding Escher-like optical illusions of impossible geometry, and outsmarting the barking Crow People. Monument Valley is both surreal and serene exploration though and will surely go down in game history as one of the unique greats.
Dumb Ways To Die
Originally conceived as a public safety animation for an Australian metro company Dumbs Ways To Die morphed from a brilliant cartoon and maddeningly catchy tune that kids love to sing into an equally fun game of 15 potentially lethal possibilities. Kids love it and learn how not to get themselves killed at the same time. All together now: “Set fire to your hair, Poke a stick at a grizzly bear. Eat medicine that's out of date, Use your private parts as piranha bait.”
Minion Rush
You love Despicable Me, right? Minion Rush is a great action arcade game where the little yellow Minions jump, fly, dodge obstacles, collect bananas, ride the Fluffy Unicorn, and defeat villains in a variety of different missions. You can customise your Minion with costumes, weapons, and power-ups. Earning new locations and different Minions makes this free game a lot of fun for Despicable Me fans and anyone who likes bananas. There are in-app purchases available but not buying any doesn’t affect game play in any way.
Subway Surfers
Letting your kids have fun running around on train tracks doesn’t sound like safe advice but Subway
Surfers is great fun when restricted to phone or tablet, and not real life. The aim is to help Jake, Tricky & Fresh escape from the grumpy Inspector and his dog. There’s hoverboard surfing (think Back To The Future) and paint-powered jetpacks to speed around on. Addictive.
UPDATE NEW TOPIC
