Apps for 4 & 6 yr old... what do your kids like?

oakshade

Santa is bringing my two boys some Android tablets for Christmas. The boys are 4 and 6 and use our phones at the moment, mainly for games (Miles from Tomorrowland, Lego, Angry Birds etc). Any recommendations for Apps (both educational and games, ideally without in-app purchases) that I could ask Santa to pre-install? Much appreciated

skallywag

There are some good painting apps for free, you should find them if you search under painting.

farmchoice

there are loads of games apps, blaze and the monster machines have a good one and temple run for the older lad is quite adult looking which my lad likes but is basically just running around, there is a good minions one as well. there are a few good thomas the tank engine ones and fireman sam ones as well. you will usually need to pay a couple of euro for the ones with less or no in app purchases although these are getting harder to find.
there are loads of educational ones I'd download loads and see what they like, although how educational they actually are i don't know.
there is a special kids you tube app which is good because it blocks anything not kid specific.

ectoraige

Cut-the-rope is a good puzzle game that is vaguely educational in a similar vein as Angry Birds. For fun, Subway Surf, and Berry Rush are both popular endless runner games. They also like games where you have to manage flow of customers and resources such as the Hello Kitty Hair Salon and Hello Kitty Restaurant games.

ted1

RTE junior have a great ad free app, with lots of games, clips and activities.

Akrasia

There;s a great range of 'Toca Boca' apps that my kids love

They encourage exploring and creativity

There's also a really great spelling app called 'Endless Alphabet' that has the phonetics for each letter and it's done in a cute and engaging way so your 4 year old will recognise the letters and their sounds and it will help with their reading and writing.

pwurple

The TG4 apps are very good. Cula Caint. It had some irish vocabulary, looks nice too, very colourful, nice sounds.

Lego juniors quest, there is a huge range of lego apps actually.

Endless alphabet is a spelling game which is fairly enjoyable. American words and pronunciations though.

Toca Boca range they enjoy, not educational, and the sounds go through me altogether.

Rte junior (this is more for smaller kids, but mine like the join the dots games on it).


** Just adding OSMO as well. Ours were given this as a gift, and it's good fun.
https://www.playosmo.com/en/

ht9zni1gs28crp

Jumping in on this as we are in the same boat with our seven year old getting her first tablet.

Any recommendations to online security or monitoring apps?

pwurple

miller_63 wrote: »

Jumping in on this as we are in the same boat with our seven year old getting her first tablet.

Any recommendations to online security or monitoring apps?

I set up blacklists and whitelists on the router by IP, but here's a device that's supposed to be a little simpler to use for anyone non-technical.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/tech-tools-ikydz-1.2468440

http://www.ikydz.com/

Akrasia

miller_63 wrote: »

Jumping in on this as we are in the same boat with our seven year old getting her first tablet.

Any recommendations to online security or monitoring apps?

you can set up profiles on android tablets. The kids profile can have it's own password and you can disable internet access and control what apps she has access to.

Jakey Rolling

miller_63 wrote: »

Jumping in on this as we are in the same boat with our seven year old getting her first tablet.

Any recommendations to online security or monitoring apps?

I used the free app Kids Place on Android - it provides a child friendly overlay that lets you limit what apps can be run, also internet access etc. An add-on, Kids Screen Time, lets you time-limit apps individually or set a general daily limit.

What suited us with this was the kids would stop playing without complaint when it was the device itself that timed them out. Different story if we tried telling them to stop! Fortunately they are slightly more mature in that regard now.

s8n

Anyone know any good review sites for kids games ?

oakshade

Jakey Rolling wrote: »

I used the free app Kids Place on Android - it provides a child friendly overlay that lets you limit what apps can be run, also internet access etc. An add-on, Kids Screen Time, lets you time-limit apps individually or set a general daily limit.

What suited us with this was the kids would stop playing without complaint when it was the device itself that timed them out. Different story if we tried telling them to stop! Fortunately they are slightly more mature in that regard now.

Samsung do a 'kids mode' too which is similar