Special Education
Powerful apps designed for students with special needs are more common these days and that’s a great thing. These app developers deserve a special round of applause for committing to helping children with special needs and the wider community by creating apps that empower independence in students with special needs.
JumpStart Preschool Magic of Learning
JumpStart Preschool Magic of Learning is a great, all-purpose app that will entertain kids for many sessions and help them develop some of the skills they’ll need later for success at reading, math, and critical thinking.
AlphaTots Alphabet
Alphatots is a fun ABC app with 26 interactive games. It is unusual among ABC apps and alphabet books because it uses verbs instead of nouns for the letter sound key words.
Bob Books Reading Magic Sight Words
Bob Books Reading Magic Sight Words is an engaging and fun look at thirty common words that will help kids learn to read and spell while they enjoy the familiar characters and scenes from a favorite series.
Tic Tac Math Trilogy
Tic Tac Math Trilogy is a simple, effective system that provides vital, practical practice with math skills from basic computation through algebra, and it even includes a massive section on operations with fractions for good measure.
Find Adventure, Alfie Atkins
Young users will love exploring the amazing world of Alfie Atkins! With cool DIY vehicles, friendly creatures and people, and interactive animations around every bend, this app will keep kids busy for a very long time.
Mini Prep
Mini Prep is a low-key, gentle app that will help the very young practice basic skills of color matching, number matching and number order, letter matching and letter order. The app is simple to use and will help the young users feel very successful.
Attributes by Math Doodles
Attributes by Math Doodles is an entertaining way to sharpen a host of higher-order thinking skills that will not only support the development of understanding of math concepts, but will also build attention to detail, reasoning and many other vital mental muscles.
Say Word
Say Word is a perfect tool for students in middle to upper elementary on up to use for practice with difficult homophones and easily-confused words. Most will find the vocabulary and concepts challenging and interesting.
More or Less
Kids use virtual wooden beads to represent the numbers in addition and subtraction problems, helping them gain their own understanding of the concepts.
Star Gurus
Star Gurus is a great app for young children that will help them practice important counting skills which are foundational to learning math in early elementary school. The dot-to-dot game is rewarding in its own right, and the teaching is so gentle and unobtrusive that kids will not even know they are practicing important skills.
Imagistory
Imagistory offers a healthy dose of creative thinking and storytelling opportunities to children by encouraging pretending. With two free wordless picture ebooks and four more available for purchase, children will love building story after story, recorded in their very own voices.
Painting Gallery
Painting Gallery offers coloring book pictures, varied backgrounds, and blank canvas for young artists to make their own using 30 colors and 100 stickers. Young children can save their work in an art gallery, arrange the pictures on the digital wall, and pick the perfect frame to compliment their work.
ShapeKit
ShapeKit is an entertaining and creative way to learn about shapes. It allows several levels of creativity, will encourage young users to explore, and offers an opportunity to save and share masterpieces both on the device and over the internet.
Wonder Bunny Math Race: 1st Grade Kids Advanced Learning App for Numbers, Addition and Subtraction
Wonder Bunny Math Race: 1st Grade Kids Advanced Learning App for Numbers, Addition and Subtraction offers a creative and entertaining way for children to practice first-grade addition and subtraction skills while having lots of fun.
MathLab for Grade1
MathLab for Grade 1 is a simple app that will help preschoolers through first graders learn age-appropriate foundational math skills while having fun. The app is fast-paced and unpredictable, and kids will benefit from the wide variety of math skills that it covers.
Twist and Count-Pinball Math
Twist and Count-Pinball Math is a simple yet entertaining way to introduce young children or challenged math students to basic addition. The game features high-action animations, colorful graphics, and delightful sound effects.
MiniChess by Kasparov
MiniChess by Kasparov is an excellent app that will not only help young children learn to play chess, but that will also provide a wide array of practice on prerequisite skills, which just happen to be foundational for learning other things, as well.
ABC Gurus
ABC Gurus is a simple, yet fun app that will keep young children thoroughly entertained again and again as they hear the letter names, sounds and key words the entire time that they play.
David Wiesner’s Spot
David Wiesner’s Spot is an outstanding app that taps some of the iPad’s unique capabilities to create an engaging experience in five strange new worlds that are exciting for all ages.
Highlights: All About
Highlights: All About is a wonderful digital addition to the Highlights family. Just like in the magazine, the app provides a wide array of activities that encourage thinking skills, practice foundational academic skills, and more.
Up to 100
Up To 100 is an outstanding app that will help young children and those with special needs to master basic concepts about numbers, including ones and tens place value, number sequence, and more.
The Sight Word Adventure
The Sight Word Adventure is a thorough and comprehensive practice system for some of the most important early-reading words that every child must master to gain fluency.
City Nights
City Nights is a cute ebook with a soothing poem that would be perfect for use as a bedtime story. Children can watch as the busy city settles down for the night and help put the sleepy young main character to bed.
Mia – The Happy Helper!
Mia-The Happy Helper offers a nice variety of activities and games for early learners. It is an outstanding app that preschoolers and young children will really enjoy as they practice a variety of skills.
Voice Dream Reader
Voice Dream Reader will open the doors of reading to many people struggling due to vision problems, dyslexia or other literacy issues.
Messy Mia and the Tale of Ancient Tech
Messy Mia and the Tale of the Ancient Tech shows young children how technology has changed between the time their parents were young and the present day.
Forestry
Forestry provides an entertaining way to learn about common forest creatures. The animated characters and games are whimsical but the skills they teach are very important.
The Joy of Reading
The Joy of Reading is a simple and effective app that will help young learners practice important readiness and early reading skills.
The Story of Dracolino
Young children will enjoy helping Dracolino learn about feelings and how to respond to them appropriately.
Preschoolers ABC Playground PRO
Preschool ABC Playground PRO is a fun app that will help preschool and young elementary children learn many important letter skills.
Tiggly Chef
Tiggly Chef will have your young children giggling, counting, giggling and counting some more as they assist the Chef of Tiggly Town to make some outrageous recipes.
KidQuest
KidQuest will provide your children with hours of hand-on, learning fun as they do crafts, explore science experiments and more as they follow the directions from this app.
Lumio Farm Factor: Multiply and Divide Basics (Full Version)
Lumio Farm Factor does a great job of actually teaching the fundamentals of multiplication and division to beginning students.
Gro Flowers
Gro Flowers provides multiple educational and creative play opportunities, and it is fun to play.
Bongo’s Spelling Packs PRO – Everyday Words, CVC, Dolch, States, Capitals and Countries
Bongo’s Spelling Packs PRO offers enjoyable, practical spelling exercises with a phonics flair to students from kindergarten through grade 5.
Sago Mini Friends
Sago Mini Friends is an adorable app designed for young children that encourages creative play with a friend or alone.
Bug Mazing – Adventures in Learning
With fascinating bugs skittering around the screen, this app will entertain preschoolers for hours as they learn about letter order, counting, colors and more.
Daniel Tiger’s Grr-ific Feelings
Help kids learn to recognize their feelings while playing along with Daniel Tiger in this cute app.
Curious George and the Birthday Surprise by iRead With
Curious George and the Birthday Surprise by iRead With takes advantage of all of the iPad’s features and offers a host of support for parents who want to help their children get ready to read.
uKloo
A simple yet entertaining app, uKloo will provide hours of practice with basic reading and comprehension skills.