Our Favorite Educational Apps
I thought I would take a personal aside today and share some of the best educational apps we’re using around our house. I don’t utilize technology anywhere near as much as I could, so this isn’t supposed to be an exhaustive list. It’s just what I’ve chosen for my daughter to use when on her tablet. Oh, we use a Samsung Galaxy tablet, so these are apps for that (I’ll do a list of great Apple apps soon enough)
For learning another language, this is a great free app. We started off using it for French, but it’s nice that she can just decide to learn a little Italian or Swedish when the mood strikes. I have it set for 20 minute lessons, and I can leave her to practice until it says the day’s time is completed. It covers several languages, and does vocabulary and basic sentences (read full review).
This particular free science app is by Socratica, and it’s perfect for learning the elements. The table is easy to navigate though you really do get a lot more information than you need for each one (like the heat of fusion or the covalent radius in picometers). Still nicely visual to get familiar with the symbols, names and positions on the table. You can just browse around the table, or challenge yourself with a quiz.
This is the only educational app that I have yet to pay for (it’s around $14), and I don’t regret it. We used this a lot during our various studies on the human body and anatomy. The 3D imagery is impressive, and you can just navigate around the body to see how organs, bones, muscles and other parts all fit together. Information is provided on many of them though we used it mostly for the models.
This crossword app doesn’t really have a name, but it’s done by Berni Mobile. I had a hard time finding one suitable for my 11-year old and this works very well for us. It’s great to build vocabulary. At the easy level, it offers all the letters of the answer in a jumble which is where we started off. She now works on the next level though I often work on it with her as some of the words are too hard. You can also customize the size of the puzzle.
Again, another app that doesn’t have a unique name. We only just started using this one, so I haven’t decided on it yet. I like it so far, as it’s a simple quiz that offers 4 multiple choice options for capital cities per country.
We also have a constellation sky map app, but since my daughter has her tablet with her at the moment, I can’t go and check which one. I’ll update as soon as she’s home again.
