5 best educational apps for kids

Worried about too much mindless screen time for your little ones? Is your child bored with their homework? Want to get a head start on what's to come? We've got the list for you. 

Educational apps are a dime a dozen these days, but you usually have to weed out a lot of bad ones before you find what you need. The suggested apps below are rated four stars or above and tried and trusted by the PhoneSoap staff and their kiddos. Comment your favorites below.

1) Endless Reader

Description: Endless Reader 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. Recognizing sight words is advantageous for beginning readers because many of these words have unusual spelling, cannot be sounded out using phonics knowledge, and often cannot be represented using pictures. 

Kids will have a blast learning sight words and their context and usage with the adorable Endless monsters. Each word features an interactive word puzzle with letters that come alive, and then a sentence puzzle with words that become what they describe. See the word "dog" as a barking dog, and the word "up" reach for the sky.

This is just one great app in the Endless family. You can check out the rest of the series here, including our favorite – Endless Spanish.  

2) Kids Academy 

This app is especially awesome because it can grow with your child as they get older. 

Description: Over 25,000,000 kids around the world learn with Kids Academy apps.

Talented and Gifted learning academy was created to help identify and nurture the talents of every child from the earliest stage. Hone writing and reading skills, develop a mindset for math, sharpen visual perception and hand-eye coordination, all through engaging gameplay. 

Over 5,000+ educational games, videos, and printables developed by experts in early education:

* Math, writing, phonics, and reading games 
* Sort, match, and classify games
* Animated flashcards and mazes
* Augmented reality-based worksheets and off-screen activities
* Topic-related educational videos

The app provides a step-by-step learning pathway that lets toddlers develop early skills by moving from elementary concepts to more complex attributes. Kids will start with learning to trace letters and numbers and will gradually move to tasks that require deeper visual, fine motor and problem-solving skills.

All games within the app are divided into age groups and can be played as a consistent Learning Path:

- Toddlers (2–4): the games within this age group are available only on iPad
- Preschool (3–5)
- Kindergarten (4–6)
- Grade K (5–7)
- Grade 1 (6–8)
- Grade 2 (7–9)
- Grade 3 (8–10)

3) Monster Physics

Description: Monster Physics® is a unique building app that lets you play with physics. Build and operate your own car, crane, rocket ship, plane, helicopter, tank and more.

BUILD IT
Set your imagination free. Build intricate, working contraptions with over 68 different parts including wheels, rockets, propellers, cannons, magnets, claws, wings, and more. Choose from different materials including metal, wood, plastic, rubber, and ice. Connect parts together by welding them, drawing a rope or chain between them with your finger or using special dynamic joints to bring them to life.

Once your invention is complete, Monster Physics® will render it with its built-in physics engine and let you actually operate your creation in real time. You can drive your car, operate your crane, guide your rocket into space or fly your helicopter! The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

SOLVE IT
Think outside the box. Monster Physics® comes with 50 missions for you to solve including simple tutorials as well as mind-bending challenges. Many of the missions are open-ended and can be solved with a wide variety of different solutions so you can play them over and over again. Players will learn problem-solving and creative-thinking skills while having tons of fun.

LEARN IT
Have fun while learning. Players learn physics "hands-on" through solving missions and building and refining their own inventions. In addition, a separate learn section introduces players to basic physics concepts such as friction, force, mass, acceleration and more. 

4) Teach Your Monster to Read

Description: Teach Your Monster to Read is an award-winning phonics and reading game that’s helped millions of children learn to read.

● Covers the first two years of learning to read, from matching letters and sounds to enjoying little books.
● Designed in collaboration with leading academics and game designers.
● Complements all synthetic phonics programmes used in schools.
● Suitable for school and home use.

Children create a monster and take it on a magical journey over three extensive games, meeting a host of colorful characters along the way and improving their reading skills as they progress. 

The game is rigorous and works with any phonics scheme, so it’s perfect for use in school and at home. It’s developed in collaboration with leading academics at the University of Roehampton. 

The app is commonly used in preschool, primary school, kindergarten and first grade as an interactive teaching resource. 

5) Homer 

Description: HOMER is the learn-to-read program powered by your child’s passions.

When kids read about what they love, they love learning to read, so the HOMER Method takes your child’s passions and current reading level, then creates a personalized learn-to-read plan that grows with them, from age 2 to 8.

HOMER works. Just 15 minutes a day has been proven to boost early reading scores by 74 percent. And, with thousands of learn-to-read stories, lessons and activities, you know your child will find something they love reading about.

Remember to wipe down those sticky phones and tablets with the PhoneSoap Shine (2-in-1 screen cleaner) and throw those devices in the HomeSoap when it's time to ditch the screens and play outside. Gotta kill 99.99% of germs* on those gadgets to help keep busy bodies healthy.

*HomeSoap has been tested by an independent, third-party laboratory to be 99.9% effective against Salmonella, E. coli, MRSA, Staphylococcus, Coronavirus 229Ein. It has been tested on headphones, jewelry and baby bottles. HomeSoap has also been tested to be 99.9% effective against salmonella using ASTM 3535 for efficacy of UV light on hard non-porous surfaces such as glass, metals, and plastics.