Virtual School for Families: Top 10 Educational Apps

With millions of children home from school and learning online we review some great educational apps to help families enrich their child’s learning. The apps below will give you confidence that your child is getting educational benefit from time spent on their screen. We do strongly advocate for balance though, and you can find more suggestions for ways to achieve this here.

Khan Academy Kids

4+
Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore
Free

Khan Academy Kids uses 5 fun animal characters to guide children through a range of activities including early literacy, reading, writing and math whilst encouraging their creativity and social-emotional skills. The app creates a personalised learning path for each child to ensure they are able to learn and develop new skills at their own pace.

Duck Duck Moose

2+
Apple App Store and Google Play
Free

Duck Duck Moose offer a range of child-friendly educational apps, starting with Nursery Rhymes for our youngest learners, spelling and phonics apps to support children learning to read and a very popular app ‘Chatterpix Kids’, where children can make anything talk from their toys to their favourite TV characters.

IXL

4+
Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore
Free or Unlimited Access for £14.99 a month

IXL is an educational app built to support the curriculum. It includes nearly 5000 skills covering English and Maths and has built in analytic features that pinpoint exactly what children know and what their next steps should be.

Duolingo

4+
Apple App Store and Google Play
Free

Duolingo is a completely free way to learn a new language. The app adapts to how you learn with a variety of ways to answer questions, listen to and read vocabulary. Duolingo is a great tool to encourage children to learn a new language with minimal adult input needed.

Hit The Button

4+
Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore
£2.99
Available for free at https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Hit the Button is an interactive maths game that covers number bonds, times tables and and a range of other number facts. It can be adapted to match each child’s ability.
The games are an against the clock challenge that requires children to select the correct answer by hitting the button. It is the perfect game for children to practice their mental maths skills and build their number fact recall in the fun way.

Puppet Pals

4+
Apple App Store
Free

Puppet Pals is a story-telling app which allows children to add characters to a backdrop, move them around and record the story to play back afterwards. Children can create different scenes and story lines. This app is a fantastic way to encourage children to build their story telling and speak and listening skills. The only limit is the child’s imagination.

Green Screen by Do Ink

4+
Apple App Store
£4.99

Green Screen by Do Ink allows children to record videos, import media, add backdrops and edit and scale. Every child dreams of being part of their favourite TV show or movie, with this app they can be.

codeSpark Academy: Kids Coding

4+
Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore
7 Day Free Trial then £8.99 a Month

codeSpark Academy: Kids Coding allows children to practice those all important coding skills. Through fun mini-games and challenges children will learn the basics of coding which can then be applied to more difficult challenges. This app is completely word free so can be accessed by even our youngest learners.

YouTube Kids

4+
Apple App Store and Google Play
Free

YouTube Kids was created a safe place for children to explore online video. From their favourite TV shows to educational videos that teach a new skills with this kid friendly interface children have the freedom to explore independently. The parent controls ensure you do not need to worry about the content your child is viewing as you have complete control.

Hoopa City

4+
Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore
£3.99

Hoopa City provides children with the chance to completely release their creativity. By planning and building their own city they can experiment with resources, design and trial and error.