apps – Mediocre Mum

7 Recommended iPad apps for 7 year olds

With Summer holidays looming I thought it may be an idea to share a few of our favourite iPad apps. Finding new apps can be a bit of a minefield. I’ve lost count of the number of iPad apps we have downloaded and it turns out they were rubbish.

You can’t always trust online reviews but I can assure you that my 7 year old daughter has played with these extensively and goes back to them over and over again. I don’t suggest you dash out and buy them all but do have a look and arm yourself for the holidays.

Chatterpix Kids by Duck Duck Moose

I’ve always been a fan of their apps. I came across this one under my guise as a Computing Consultant in Education. It has a lot of educational potential but bottom line it’s hilariously good fun. You can make just about any object, including a piece of toast, talk simply by drawing a straight line and recording your voice.

Crazy Gears by 7 Academy

Children explore how mechanisms work (gears, chains, rods and pulleys) and engage in problem solving to unravel a series of puzzles.

Thinkrolls2 by Avokiddo

I love apps that are fun and educational at the same time. Thinkrolls2 is a series of logic problems that get progressively harder, you have to get the characters through a maze, whilst learning about force, aerodynamics, buoyancy, electricity and even get a taste of quantum physics.

Simple Machines by Tinybop

Children have the opportunity to explore levers, pulleys, wheels, screws and wedges and learn about physics without even realising it. This app is a great way to foster a love of Science from a young age.

Barefoot Atlas

This app was created for 9-11 year olds but I think it’s brilliant for slightly younger children as well. You have a 3D Globe that you can spin around with a swipe of a finger, then zoom in to explore different landmarks and places. Listen to BBC TV presenter Nick Crane and learn some fascinating facts about different countries.

Shadow Puppet Edu

I have no idea why they call it Shadow Puppet as it’s a bit misleading. This is an incredibly powerful app and very easy to use, again I came across it in a school. I downloaded it and within minutes, without any input from me, my daughter was creating animated books, by taking photos of her favourite book and then narrating them herself. She then moved onto creating a visual presentation on Egypt using the images that come with the app and narrating them herself. This could make homework projects much more exciting.

Toca Hair Salon2

We’ve had this app for awhile and my daughter never tires of it, she can cut, curl and colour hair with hilarious results.

Do you have any must have apps that I should have a look at? If so, leave me a comment below.

5 iPad Apps for Halloween 2013

With half-term looming, Halloween around the corner and weather forecasters warning about storms coming next week, I spent a bit of time looking for a few Halloween iPad apps in case we have a few days stuck indoors.

We’ve had a really good play with some of the Halloween iPad Apps today and I can recommend the following.

iPad Apps for Halloween

Carve A Pumpkin from Parents Magazine – virtually cut out pumpkins, either free hand or using their shapes, without all the mess and save the images to your camera roll.

Haunted Halloween Escape by TeraLumina – My daughter is only 6 and this was rated 9+. I was impressed with my daughter and husband’s perseverance as I would have given up. You have to work your way through the room, finding all the clues and collecting things that you need to solve the puzzle (e.g wooden stake to kill the vampire). They spent an hour from start to finish trying to solve it and suceeded. It’s inspired us to download more of these walk throughs from TeraLumina

Casper Scare School – Costume Closet by Mindshapes probably the least scariest ghost of all time. Can you remember what Halloween Costume he was wearing? Have fun dressing him and his ghoulish friends up.

Sneak HD by Made in Me – How quietly can you sneak up on your iPad? If you can get to the iPad, snap a photo of the monster without him hearing you, you win. See how many monsters you can collect. Great to play with friends as well.

Mask Jumble Halloween – using the iPad camera create hilarious photos of you and your friends.

Have A Hauntingly Happy Halloween!

Never thought I’d download a kid’s app like this…..

I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to kids apps and often boast ‘you’ll only find educational apps on my phone/ipad’. I even have them in folders; Literacy, Numeracy, Big Books, etc. You won’t find Angry Birds, Ninja Fruit or any farting animals!

However, during the school holidays, I started to look for some new apps that had great reviews and kept coming across one in particular. After reading the reviews I succumbed and downloaded it (£1.49)…..

It’s from Toca Boca and it’s called……wait for it…..

Hair Salon 2! It made me squirm!

I have never seen my daughter so taken with an app, she normally gets bored after a while but was engaged with this one for ages and eventually had to take it off her but she keeps going back to it.

Please tell me there must be some educational content: Exploring the world around you, fine motor skills, creativity????

Am I stretching it?

Note: Make sure you download the second one as it’s a lot better than the first version.

You can find a list of other Apps we liked here.

Sneak HD – iPad App for kids

Do you worry about your kids sitting like lumps in front of the iPad? Then this app ‘Sneak HD’ by Made in Me (£1.49), is for you. It gets them up off the sofa moving around, perfect for the looming school holidays.

It does what it ‘says on the tin’. There are 5 monsters that live inside the iPad. You have to select some bait, then run and hide and sneak up like a Ninja to catch it. You unlock more bait as you go along.

I think this would be great for groups of kids, possibly for parties.

Why I pay for Apps?

One of the biggest reasons I tend to pay for Apps is to avoid the advertising. Plus, I’ve heard of children managing to download full versions at great expense to their parents. This happened to one of my neighbors but he did manage to get a £70 credit from Apple and he has now changed the settings so it doesn’t happen again.

I was trolling the net today looking for more Maths apps for my 5 year old. I often rely on the reviews when deciding whether to purchase or not.

I know I shouldn’t find this funny, but I did!

You may want to bear this in mind when downloading those FREE apps and don’t forget to turn off the ability for ‘in app purchases’ on your devices to avoid any nasty surprises!