Now that school is out many long hot summer days stretch before us. It’s that time of year where parents start to get concerned about the summer slide which is the loss of learning over summer break. This loss makes it tough for kids and teachers when they start school in the fall because they have to play catch up to get back to where they were before they left in the spring.
Recently I wrote a post sharing fun summer slide sites for kids. After writing that post I was inspired to look into apps as well. Since so many of us spend a lot of our time on the go, apps are a great way to keep kids learning all summer long. In my research I found so many great options out there for kids and I’m excited to share this collection of the best fun apps to prevent summer slide.
Stack The States – This is a creative and fun app that Kora & Logan play all the time. It teaches kids the shapes of the states, capitals, landmarks, borders, flags, and nicknames all through a series of games. This app is so fun that kids don’t even know they are learning. It’s our go to app for U.S. geography for kids (ok Dave and I even play it sometimes too!).
Motion Math Pizza – In this creative app, kids are owners of a pizza shop. They get to create their own pizzas but within a budget. They have to set the price of their pizzas and then customers come into the shop and order pizzas. They have to add and multiply to figure out how much the customers need to pay. They also have to decide who to buy ingredients from, how much to pay, as well as save up to buy signs and other upgrades to their stores to attract more customers and sales. It’s a fantastic app that teaches math, economics, marketing, and more and kids can’t wait to play.
Motion Math Cupcake – This app comes from the same company that created Pizza and it’s just a brilliant and fun. In Cupcake, kids run a cupcake shop and create and name their cupcakes. They set a price for them as well and then customers come in and place orders. Like Pizza, kids have to decide who to buy ingredients from, what to stock up on, how to save to buy store upgrades, and more. What makes it different from Pizza is customers ask for the cupcakes using addition, multiplication, and word problems and kids have to deliver the cupcakes using a coordinate map. This app teaches mixed numbers, fractions, negatives, tricky word problems, proportions and more all while being so much fun kids will beg to play.
Epic! – Epic is the world’s leading online children’s subscription book service. They offer thousands of children’s books for ages 12 and under including titles from Harper Collins and National Geographic and more. The first month is free and at this time it’s only $4.99 a month. When you first sign up it will ask the age of the reader and what topics they enjoy reading about. There are lots to choose from, you set up your free account which only takes a minute, and kids are on their way to reading all summer long. I was excited to see they have books by Dan Gutman who is one of Logan’s favorite authors and Beverly Clearly who Kora loves. The digital pages turn like a real book when kids are done reading they can favorite and rate the book and see what other kids thought of it. You can also click a button to read offline. It’s easy to browse the books and discover new ones or to search for specific books by title, author, keyword, or age group. Once you set up an account kids can read on the computer too. Kids earn badges and rewards for reading and there is a reading log too. This is a fantastic app that helps kids fall in love with reading wherever they are. I wish they had an app like this for adults!
McGraw-Hill Grammar Wonderland – This app is a fantastic and fun way for kids to learn parts of speech. Kids can choose from nouns, verbs, adjectives, and 3 different levels of play. Kids can explore worlds and have fun all while learning grammar.
Geography Drive USA – This app is a traveling trivia challenge where kids can learn state capitals, U.S. landmarks, key historic events, and more. There are more than 800 facts packed into this traveling adventure where kids can earn trophies and upgrade their car. A fun, creative, and thought-provoking way to learn about the U.S. states.
Tiny Countries – In Tiny Countries Dr. Evil and his henchmen have a plan to realign the world by moving continents and kids play as Tiny using their knowledge of geography to find clues all over the world. There are 15 missions in 6 countries and over 75 countries to be mastered. There is also an animated interface to learn about countries, their capitals, and famous monuments.
Tower Math – In this game all the numbers have been changed into monsters by an evil wizard. As kids add, subtract, multiply, and divide, they build towers with magic powers to free the numbers. Their math skills will help them earn special powers like a Freeze Ray. Kids love this game and enjoy using the math they know and learning new math skills to help save the day. With multiple scenes this app has a long life and provides lots of entertainment, education, and fun.
Mystery Math Town & Mystery Math Museum – This is actually a recommendation for two apps, Mystery Math Town and Mystery Math Museum. In Mystery Math Town kids help a friendly little ghost rescue fireflies that are hidden around town and in Mystery Math Museum kids help friendly little ghost rescue dragonflies that are hidden in Mystery Math Museum. In both apps, kids use math skills to unlock rooms and passages along the way. This app offers customizable math skills for each player including addition, subtraction, and multiplication as well as varied number representations in dice and tallies. These are creative apps that kids enjoy and have fun learning while doing so.
Amazing Alex – This is a very creative physics based app from the creators of Angry Birds. Each room in Alex’s house has children setting up various objects to create chain reactions to complete a challenge. Kids can set objects up to bounce, pop, bash, and crash into one another and based on angles and if-thens the set up is a success or it needs some tinkering. What we love about this game is that with an entire house full of toys available to choose from, there is more than one way to solve each challenge.
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These apps sound so cool. My son would love them