We Reviewed The Most Awesome Apps for Kids Under 5 So You Don’t Have To. Here Are Our Top Picks.
Toddlers and preschoolers are excited about the world and about learning. Apps for preschoolers can open up a world of possibilities and fun for young children who are really starting to get interested in the world and are learning at a very fast pace.
These apps are very nice for young children. They bring out all the best from your device, take full advantage of digital capabilities, and will help your kids learn and grow in many ways. Here are some fun and educational apps for preschoolers that we rated and loved.
Top Apps for Kids Ages 5 & Under
Our team of moms locked themselves in a room for six months until they unearthed their recommended list of apps for children under five years of age. That’s right folks, even for the really young ones, there are apps that can be educational and can help the under five’s develop some great skills.
The reality is that children this young are like sponges. They soak up a lot and learn very fast if you can keep them engaged and exploring. Our favorite apps for kids ages 5 and under are perfect for the little ones who are just starting to interact with the world in new and exciting ways.
The toddler apps we chose have a nice mix between games and learning apps all designed with engagement in mind. These apps have been tested by our children so we can confirm that they’re good enough to hold a child’s attention.
From music apps where simply tapping the screen creates sounds that the really young can react to, all the way to educational games that will keep your five year old challenged and learning while having fun, we think we have the best apps for kids ages 5 and under.
Other App Categories: App by Grade, Apps by Age, Apps by Topic
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Really Young Children’s Apps
Baby Games for 1+ Toddlers
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Here’s a simple app that your baby will love. It’s easy to use and free from advertisements. Parental controls are also tucked safely away from curious explorers. Babies will learn about shapes and colors, stories, and much more.
There are additional content items available for $4.99 each.
Kids’ Balloon Pop Game
Price: Free with in-app purchases
There are few things more satisfying that the “POP” of a balloon! Popping balloons gives young children a sense of control and accomplishment. Anyone who has attended a children’s birthday party has seen this activity in action. This app translates the fun of popping balloons to the digital world.
This app includes a parental control center where adults can change the size and speed of the balloons, which is a very nice feature. There are optional in-app purchases, ranging from ninety-nine cents to $3.49 for game enhancements.
Baby’s Musical Hands
Price: Ninety-nine cents
Baby’s Musical Hands is an award-winning musical toy for babies and toddlers for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, as well as Android devices. Every time baby touches the screen, colorful stars and musical sounds burst from the device. The app supports multi-touch, so the more fingers, the better!
This app costs ninety-nine cents. It’s very safe for kids and loads of fun.
Bogga Magic – Play a Magician, for Kids
Price: Free on iOS App Store (Lite version); $1.99 on Google Play
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Give your kids a touch of magic and appetite for wonder! Magic tricks are not only fun – they also spark creativity. Kids can watch and even join the performance. The app also has some hidden tricks to reveal. Can your child find them all?
The app has a solid rating on the App Store. It’s won a few awards, too, so check it out!
Price: Free with in-app purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Learn together with your baby or toddler, or let them discover a world of farmyard fun themselves. Simple, endlessly enjoyable, and fun, this app will keep them occupied and learning for a long time to come. There are more than 50 sounds waiting for baby. And you can set the app to any one of 17 different languages.
This app is free to download. There are in-app purchases to unlock more animals for costs ranging from ninety-nine cents to $1.99, or you can unlock all of them with a single purchase of $2.99.
Busy Shapes
Price: $2.99 on iOS App Store; Free with in-app purchases on Google Play
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Busy Shapes helps children improve their ability to handle simple objects through a series of puzzles. This app encourages experimentation and learning using gentle guidance and no-fail scenarios. It also has a lot of features designed with baby in mind. Parents can limit access to the home button and “turn off” parts of the screen to make sure baby doesn’t accidentally exit the app, for example.
It is very child-safe and child-friendly.
Duckie Deck Collection
Price: $2.99
This cheerful collection from Duckie Deck includes six fun and friendly games for kids aged 2-5 years. Kids can practice visual matching skills, experience digital versions of everyday activities, get excited about trying different types of foods, practice caring for a pet, and much more. The app is wholesome and delightful.
Duckie Deck Collection is complete. It is also very child-safe so you can relax while your child is playing.
Endless Numbers
Price: Free with in-app purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Kids will have a blast learning number recognition, sequences, quantity, numerical patterns, and addition with adorable monsters. The app uses fun learning activities and animated video clips to help kids put context to the numbers.
The app is free to download and includes the first five numbers. You can get more numbers for prices ranging from $6.99 to $14.99.
Endless Alphabet
Price: $8.99 on iOS Store; Free with in-app purchases on Google Play
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Kids will have a blast learning their ABC’s and building vocabulary with the adorable monsters in Endless Alphabet. So much fun. Each letter features an interactive puzzle game and a short video clip demonstrating the definition of the key word. Can you imagine your little one spouting words like “gargantuan”? Once everything is downloaded, there’s no need to be online to use this app.
Sago Mini World
Price: Free with in-app purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Go on a play date with your favourite Sago Mini friends! Take a walk to a friend’s house and let the fun begin. Help Robin the bird fix a birdhouse. There are over 30 games in this app. Kids can enjoy them year round and for hours. This app gives you access to a bunch of Sago games all at once.
The app is free to download. After a short trial, you’ll need to subscribe. The cost is $6.99 monthly or $59.99 annually.
Avokiddo ABC Ride
Price: $2.99
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Have you ever seen the letter E hatched from an egg? How about a K popping out of a kangaroo’s pouch? This app features fun puzzles, hidden letters, and much, much more. Even the verbs match up with the letters- see the seal swim, and the letter H hiding under the hat. The app introduces alliterations in a way that no other app does.
The app is one of the best alphabet apps available.
Nursery School Age Children’s Apps
Grandma’s Preschool
Price: $3.99
Grandma’s Preschool is a great virtual learning app with lots of fun, interactive learning games and activities for children to explore. There are 11 educational games, puzzles, and other challenges in this app. The topics covered include beginning sounds, matching, number words, colors, and more. There are also 13 educational videos.
This app even includes an interactive classroom for kids to explore.
Monkey Preschool Explorers
Price: $2.99 on iOS App Store; $4.99 on Google Play Store
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Lead the way by learning the fundamentals of early education: numbers, upper and lower case letters, colors, shapes and more. While kids play, they will develop skills such as creative thinking and working memory. Plus, the app has monkeys! In Rovers that kids can customize! What could be better than that?
The app includes over 100 puzzles, games and activities.
AlphaTots
Price: $2.99
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Fun tool for helping children learn the alphabet. Filled with creative and clever interactive activities, the app reinforces letters. The app is unique because it uses verbs as the keywords for each letter. Each letter has its own minigames and puzzles, too.
The app is very child-safe. Kids will also see both capital and lower case versions of each letter which will help them when they get ready to read.
Noggin Preschool
Price: Free with in-app subscription purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Hang onto your hat, baby! Here are all of your child’s favorite characters from Nickelodeon shows to teach beginning skills. There are ebooks galore, fun games, and even instructional videos. The app covers basic math skills, basic literacy, and much more.
Download the app and get a 7-day free trial. After that, a subscription costs $7.99 per month.
Beck and Bo
Price: $2.99
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Beck and Bo is a fun educational app that is sure to engage your little kids in a creative way, while helping them build their vocabulary. Kids can create based on a dozen thematic scenes from everyday life. They’ll need to drag and drop characters, animals and objects into the right spots to solve the puzzles, then they can cut loose with creative pretend play.
This app is very child-safe and easy to use.
Bubble Puppy: Play & Learn
Price: $3.99
Send your child swimming into a fin-tastic play date with Bubble Puppy! Kids can dress him up in fun outfits, feed him all kinds of treats and groom him. The app covers lots of levels of social-emotional learning, literacy, math, social skills, and more. Parents can adjust the challenge level to make sure each activity is exactly right for their child.
Bubble Puppy is from Nickelodeon, and very child-safe and child-friendly.
Dr. Panda & Toto’s Treehouse
Price: $3.99
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
“I live in a big treehouse all by myself, and I need you to help me make food, wash up, and of course play together! We can play basketball or go on the tire swing.” Kids can care for Toto, the newly-hatched baby turtle. They can help him with everyday tasks, play with him, feed him, and more. Along the way, they can explore Toto’s magical, marvelous treehouse.
The app is easy to use and very child-safe.
Daniel Tiger’s Day & Night
Price: $2.99
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Learn about morning and bedtime routines with PBS KIDS’ Daniel Tiger. Help Daniel get ready for school in the morning and for bed at night through imaginative play. This app features 8 games about morning and nighttime routines that kids need in their lives. They will love the sing-along songs, too. The app even includes a musical timer to help keep the child’s real routines on track.
Kids Academy Talented and Gifted
Price: Free with in-app purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
This whopping big app includes over 5,000 learning activities suitable for kids from ages 2 to 10. The app will guide you in setting up a personalized learning plan for your child so it won’t seem overwhelming at all. Help them lay the groundwork for reading, writing and math. Let them play classifying and matching games. Everything in this app will help build a foundation for learning.
The app is free to download, and includes some of the listed content. More can be acquired by in-app purchases of $2.99 per topic. There is also a subscription plan to unlock everything. It costs $19.99 per month, $39.99 for a quarter, and $129.99 annually.
Kiddopia
Price: Free with in-app subscription purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Here’s a set of research-based, kid-friendly games that will keep your youngster coming back for more learning for years. The app is comprehensive, covering activities that include numbers and langauge learning, as well as coordination, social/emotional learning, and much more.
There is a 7-day free trial where you can check it all out, then a subscription is available for $9.99 per month or $69.99 annually. It’s not a bad price considering the developers promise new content regularly.
Preschool Learning Games with Abby Monkey
Price: $2.99 on iOS App Store; Free with in-app purchases on Google Play Store
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
This award-winning app includes 12 educational activities and 2 more creative pastimes. Kids can explore numbers, letters, shapes, sizes, puzzles and much more as they roam through the app. There are also matching, colors, shadows, categorizing, and other foundational skills covered.
It’s a great app to help kids get ready for school and even life!
Endless Reader
Price: Free with in-app purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
This app introduces “sight words”, the most commonly used words in school, library, and children’s books. Kids need to recognize these words by sight in order to achieve reading fluency. There are 6 words to try for free, so kids can check out the fun animations, video clips and games.
The app is free to download and try. Ten additional word packs that cover more sight words can be purchased for $5.99 each or in discounted bundles.
Curious World: Games for Kids
Price: Free with in-app purchases
This app holds lots of children’s favorite characters, including Curious George and Arthur. They will help children develop curiosity, problem-solving skills, social-emotional skills, and creative expression, to name a few. There are languages, new words, coding and other types of activities to explore, too.
This award-winning app is free to download and play some of the features. To access its full power, though, you will need a subscription. A monthly subscription costs $7.99 and an annual one costs $64.99.
ABCmouse.com
Price: Free with in-app subscription purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Here’s an award winner with over 10,000 activities for kids from ages 2 to 8. It covers pretty much the entire preschool curriculum and then some. There are 850 lessons spread over 10 levels. The standards-based activities are designed to take kids from kindergarten readiness to third grade readiness. Parents can set up and monitor individualized learning paths, and it’s great for homeschoolers as well as families on the go.
The app is free to download and try. Subscriptions cost $12.99 per month or $79.99 annually.
ABC’s: Alphabet Learning Game
Price: Free
Toddlers and tots will love learning about reading and writing with the ABC’s: Alphabet Learning Game. Designed to introduce your little ones to the wonderful world words. With a guide named VocabuLarry the Parrot, kids will explore loads of letters and words. With VocabuLarry’s help, they will begin to sound out words, too.
This app is free to download and play.
Hopster: Preschool Learning
Price: Free with in-app subscription purchase
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Children can learn beginning math, basic preliteracy, ABCs and more from this app. It allows them access to a wide array of children’s television shows that you can download and watch offline. There are also great books and fabulous sing-along music. This app is a one-stop-shop for things your preschooler will need to learn to be a star in kindergarten. It’s also great for traveling or waiting times.
Hopster is free to download and offers subscription plans on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annual basis. The costs range from $6.99 to $59.99.
Reading Eggs – Learn to Read
Price: Free with in-app subscription purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
This subscription-based app provides kids with access to early reading activities and games as well as early readers that they will love. It covers reading skills from ages 2 to 9 in five comprehensive levels. Kids will go from learning their ABCs to reading words to managing whole stories in no time.
The first month’s subscription is free, so you can see if it’s right for your child. After that, you’ll need a subscription for each child. The first child will cost $9.99 per month and an annual subscription is $69.99.
Preschool Games for Kids
Price: Free with in-app subscription purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Preschool Games includes 23 learning games for kids getting ready for school. There are prereading and early math games, drawing, colors, shapes, sorting games, puzzles, and more. Kids will love the bright colors and engaging activities.
Preschool Games for Kids is available by subscription. An in-app purchase of $4.99 will give a month’s access, and you can subscribe for a year for $58.99.
Kindergarten Aged Kids Apps
Elmo Loves ABCs
Price: $4.99 with in-app purchases
Elmo loves this app! It has songs and videos about letters. It has coloring pages and games about letters. It has all the letters from A to Z! Elmo even made a new alphabet song for it. Elmo thinks it’s the best ABC app ever! There are 80 classic Sesame Street video clips and 75 coloring activities to discover as kids trace and complete the other alphabet activities.
The app costs $4.99 and offers in-app purchase of additional content for ninety-nine cents.
ThinkRolls
Price: $4.99 on iOS Store; $3.99 on Google Play Store
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Kids will have a blast navigating their Thinkrolls through a series of obstacles in brightly patterned mazes. Each chapter introduces a new object with unique physical properties which kids discover. These logic puzzles will challenge your kindergartener, your elementary student, and maybe even you! And if you like this one, look for the other apps in this series.
Montessorium: Intro to Math
Price: Free
Intro to Math, by Montessorium offers an important comprehensive look at foundational number concepts, including comparison, sequencing, units and wholes, even and odd, and symbols. This app looks at beginning math skills through the lens of Montessori methodology, which some kids really do well with. It’s very hands on and interactive. The app covers numbers 0-9.
The app has a solid rating on the App Store.
My Play Home
Price: $3.99
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
My PlayHome is a doll house for the iGeneration. Imagine a doll house where your child can use everything, even the closets, TV and shower. You can fry an egg and feed the family pizza. Now kids can play with dollhouses they love, virtually. It’s great for on the go families, or families that don’t have space for a traditional doll house.
It’s got out of this world ratings on both app stores, as well.
Starfall Learn to Read
Price: Free
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Your child will hear, touch, read and eventually master this sound-spelling through a variety of engaging activities, movies, and songs. Play and explore! The experts at Starfall have created a great app to help your child using the expertise they’ve been developing with their website that’s been online since 2002.
The app is free to download and use. Kids will love it!
SkyBrary- Kids’ Books and Videos
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Children ages 3-9 explore worlds of reading to discover storybooks and learn about such topics as animals, friends, family, science, space, music, and more. This app is from the people at Reading is Fundamental (RIF), and it’s designed to get kids excited about reading. Parents can create customized profiles for up to three children at no extra cost.
The app is free to download and includes a 1 month free trial. After that, a subscription costs $4.99 per month or $39.99 annually.
Coral Reef by TinyBop
Price: $3.99
Kids will love interacting with this app- it teaches all about the amazing ecosystem of the coral reef. The app is a mixture of teaching and playing that is perfect for children in kindergarten. It gives them a chance to try out real scientific skills and make observations as they play. What fun to play hide and seek with an octopus!
It aligns with school curricula and is standards-based.
Bob Books Reading Sight Words
Price: $2.99
Sight words are one of the most critical skills for young readers to master, and this app will help them along that road. It’s a digital version of books that are commonly used in kindergarten to teach this crucial first words. The app presents ten stories about characters from the Bob Books series. Learners arrange letters to spell common sight words, tracing and spelling the words.
Winky Think Logic Puzzles
Price: $2.99
Winky Think Logic Puzzles offer a ton of fun that is so engaging that users won’t even realize just how important the skills are to learning. Each puzzle provides a mental challenge that requires problem solving, logic, memory, eye-hand coordination and other skills. There are 180 challenging puzzles based on the same skills that are the focus of the Common Core Standards for Kindergarten math.
This app will keep your kindergartener occupied for a very long time (and maybe you too!).
MiniChess by Kasparov
Price: $4.99
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
MiniChess by Kasparov is designed to help introduce young children to the game of chess through an engaging, interactive story. The game is loaded with dozens of puzzles and activities that teach the prerequisite skills for the game, and also sharpen spatial skills, math skills. This app is recommended for children ages 5 and up.
TeachMe: Kindergarten
Price: $2.99
An educational app which teaches six different age appropriate subjects to Kindergarten aged children: sight words, addition, subtraction, spelling and writing letters and numbers. Parents can select which subjects they want, set different difficulty levels, and even choose questions. This award winner tackles 6 different topics important to the kindergarten curriculum. It’s got a parent monitoring system, too.
Wheels on the Bus
Price: Free
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Wheels on the Bus is a fun, interactive musical book, based on the popular children’s song. Come aboard the bus to spin the wheels, open and close the doors, swish the wipers, pop some bubbles, make a dog bark, and much more! This app won the Parents’ Choice Gold Award.
It’s from the experts at Duck Duck Moose, so you know it’s safe and easy to play.
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