I’ll admit that I’m not the greatest mom when it comes to monitoring screen time with Holt, but I do like to make his screen time as educational as possible. I have found a few apps for his iPad that he and I both love! So if you are looking for some fun and educational apps for your toddler, then keep reading. If you are interested in seeing these apps in action before you download them, be sure to check out my Instagram or Facebook page for previews! Most of these apps I did pay a little bit of money just to remove ads so that Holt wasn’t accidentally clicking into things, but he plays all of these games so often that I felt it was worth the money.

1. Smart Shapes/Smart ABC

This is one of the very first apps we ever downloaded for Holt and it has been so fun for him! Even at one-year-old he was catching on and matching the shapes and letters. These are actually two separate apps, but they are made exactly the same. One app focuses on shapes, colors, as well as small and big. Your child moves the shapes across the screen to fit into the match. The ABC app focuses on the alphabet and numbers. This one also has an option to work on putting letters together to make words. Both of these apps are so fun and a great way to no only start introducing your child to numbers, letters, and shapes, but it’s also an awesome way to work on their hand-eye coordination and their focus. In both of these apps there is a matching game that is fast paced and Holt absolutely loves it! It really requires a lot of focus and he is always excited when he does really well.

I have this downloaded on an iPad, so I looked to see if it was also available for Android and it is, but it looks slightly different. Serves the same purpose though!

2. Baby Flash Cards

This app I did purchase the full version, because it offers so much content. This app has 12 different topics such as farm, vegetables, fruit, toys, colors, and bunch of others. The games help your toddler to learn new words and to recognize pictures. The interface is extremely child-friendly and it has parental control so your child can’t make purchases without your knowledge. I definitely love that feature. This one is all about matching up pictures as well as doing a small puzzle type game. Like all of these apps, there is always a voice that says the name of each item as it is matched so your child is learning the names to everything while they play!

3. 22Learn

This app I was only able to find on the Apple Store, but it is a lot of fun as well! It offers a wide variety of little games that help with naming shapes and animals. It is mostly matching up pictures, but it has an audible voice that says the name of each shape or animal that your child is matching. There is also a separate mode where your child can play on a laptop, and click on different shapes, letters, animals, vehicles, etc. My 2 year old loves this! He learned a lot of animal and vehicle names on this particular app. He would always surprise me by randomly naming an animal I didn’t even know he knew.

4. Coloring and Drawing for Kids

I found this app just by searching “drawing for kids” in the app store. It’s the same creator as the baby flash card app! This can be found on both the Google Play Store as well as the Apple Store and it does have in-app purchases. Holt went through a faze of really wanting to draw and color on his iPad, so I found this and he loves it. At first he wasn’t quite sure how everything worked and it was an app that we usually played together, but nowadays he goes into it on his own and colors these pictures so awesomely! He gets so creative and I love to see the different colors he chooses each time. The app has different categories of coloring pages, You get the “animal” one for free I believe. You can purchase all of them for 7.99 or each individual category for 0.99. This one is really fun cause they get to learn colors and practice some hand-eye coordination.

5. Khan Academy Kids

Last, but certainly not least, my favorite app is Khan Academy Kids. I’m sure you might have already heard about Khan Academy, which is an online education resource that offers content to help you learn any subject, for free. They’ve created this super fun app for kids and it is also completely free! There is so much content on this app and it can be educational for students well into 2nd grade. There is a whole library of stuff from books, videos, creating art, learning ABC’s, numbers, reading, and even logic! There is so much on this app! Your child will not get bored easily and they will definitely learn something. The other day I caught Holt learning how to write each letter of the alphabet! I was amazed! It is so much fun and a great use of screen time.

Those are my top 5 educational apps for toddlers! I will post a few screenshots from some of the apps below. Comment on our Instagram or Facebook and tell us some fun and educational apps your children like and what you do to monitor screen time and make it useful.