Whether your child is taking online classes or being, you might have wondered about the best free educational apps for iPad? Or maybe you don’t mind making in-app purchases on the app store to get your child the most fun and entertaining educational apps.
With kids spending most of their time with their tablets, the solution to making the best use of the device is to find some iPad learning apps that won’t make them feel like they are learning when they are!
We have carefully curated some of the best apps out there for both Android and iOS devices. We aim to ease your troubles of browsing the best iPad apps for education from one free app to another and saving you from spending money on apps that don’t deliver.
Whether you want to teach your child about shapes and colours, find cute stories that help with teaching sight words, or get them interested in STEM, look no further than this list. We have answered the question: what are some great learning apps?
Best Educational Apps for Pre-schoolers up to Age 8: Pre-school and Elementary School
These fun educational preschool apps for iPad are exciting and engaging. The following apps satisfy young kids’ love for colourful art styles and whimsical moods. Whether you want to get them started with their ABCs or help out with their maths, these apps will make learning an enjoyable experience.
Educational movies with BrainPOP Jr. Movie of the Week
Social studies, mathematics, or just endless alphabets, this cool and colourful educational app will have the little ones loving learning as much as they love watching cartoons!
BrainPOP’s easy navigation and cute user-interface create an engaging classroom. And with their friends, Annie and Moby, who are both humorous and kind, children will learn to cultivate critical thinking skills and develop curiosity as they explore more topics.
Android: Free. Available for devices with Android versions 5.0 or later.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with iOS 9.3 or later.
Go from Novice to Scholar with the Khan Academy Kids App
The Khan Academy Kids app offers reading activities for young children based on well-researched techniques that encourage and improve reading. This application comes with fantastic illustrations and interactive stories that help your knowledge-hungry caterpillar bloom into a fully-fledged brainiac.
The app also features Foundational Reading Skills. Thereby, it allows children to learn new words, explore new literary techniques and more, outside of the book they have read. It is also an excellent app for pre-schoolers to learn and write ABCs in a fun and engaging way.
Android: Free. Available for devices with Android versions 5.0 or later.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with iOS 9.3 or later.
Everybody’s Favourite Peppa Makes You Smart in the World of Peppa Pig
This app, from the award-winning cartoon, is perfect for pre-schoolers. The familiar characters and colourful interactive activities take your children on a fun and exciting journey of learning. Children can enjoy different learning activities ranging from reading stories to learning numbers with Mummy Pig!
Let your children unleash their creativity and artistic skills with its dress-up games and drawing with Peppa. And when it’s time to unwind, they can watch their favourite episodes that mix learning into them. You can decide if it is right for your children with its free 7-day trial.
Android: Subscription. Available for devices with Android versions 4.4 or later.
iOS: Subscription. Available for iOS 9.0 or later with the best performance on iPad Air and above, or iPhone 6/SE and above
Maths Is an Adventure with Moose Math
This maths app, designed with the expertise of educators, will make sure your kid loves maths! The Moose Math app creates a mathematical adventure where children can learn the basic arithmetic operations of addition and subtraction. At the same time, they make smoothies and play bingo.
The fun and creative characters help students learn about the relationship between numbers and quantities, recognise shapes, and learn about measurements. Additionally, the app also offers a report card feature that parents and teachers can use to monitor the child’s progress.
Android: Free. Available for devices with Android versions 2.3 or later.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with iOS 9.0 or later.
Meow now, Studycat Makes English Fun for Kids!
When it comes to the right learning app for young children, you cannot go wrong with Studycat. This English learning app, designed with expert educators and teachers, provides the most fun way of learning the language.
The cute little cat and its adventures will make teaching English to your children an exciting activity. The app improves listening comprehension, speaking, and spelling skills with interactive and humorous games and animations.
Android: Free. Available for devices with Android versions 4.0.3 or later.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Apple TV with iOS 8.0 or later.
Get Kids Coding with the codeSpark Academy!
The app, designed specifically for pre-readers, is a great way to introduce coding to young children. The fun monster characters, The Foos, help students develop an understanding of programming basics. At the same time, they creatively introduce coding essentials.
The codeSpark Academy app develops its games and curriculum based on research by great minds from MIT, Princeton, and Carnegie Mellon! The game maker is also perfect for kids and students that struggle with reading and focus-related tasks.
Android: Free. Available for devices with Android versions 4.1 or later.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with iOS 9.0 or later.
Reading Is Fun with Epic! Kids’ Books & Reading
Develop your child’s reading habits with a digital library. The Epic! reading app offers a wide variety of digital books and audio-books to satisfy every little bookworm’s needs. With over 40,000 books, you can find free kids’ books for iPad and will never run out of stories to read at bedtime.
The app allows parents to monitor the reading progress of their kids. It is available for offline use, so your kid can always have a book to read. Additionally, it also recommends books based on the reading levels and interests of the child. Enjoy free kids’ books for iPad and tablets with its 30-day trial period free version before committing.
Android: Subscription. Available for devices with Android versions 4.2 or later.
iOS: Subscription. Available for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Apple TV with iOS 10.3 or later.
Musical Loops with Loopimal
Get your kids grooving and moving by dragging and dropping shapes to create their music! This music app allows your child to experience music composition and sequencing with nine different animals that dance along to the tunes.
The simple art style and clutter-free interface make this music maker a calming and entertaining app. And with no pressure of being right or wrong, kids can unleash their creativity without feeling demotivated.
Android: The app is not available on the Play Store.
iOS: Paid. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with iOS 5.1.1 or later.
Inner Peace with Headspace: Meditation and Sleep
When thinking of educational apps for iPad, a mindfulness app may be the last thing on your mind for your little one. But after a stressful day of learning and problem solving, your child needs to know how to handle stress and frustration.
The headspace app offers age-specific exercises for ages five and under and helps them handle everyday life better and improve sleep. The app offers five categories: kindness, focus, sleep, calm, and wake-up, to cater to the different mindfulness needs of your child.
Android: Subscription. Available for devices with Android versions 5.0 or later.
iOS: Subscription. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with iOS 12.0 or later.
Best Educational Apps for Ages 9 to 13: Elementary and Middle School
Older elementary and middle school kids prefer their dress-up games and racing games over solving boring maths problems and learning capital cities. But do not worry! These exciting educational iPad and tablet games and apps will draw them in by their curiosity and develop their love of learning!
YouTube Kids for Curious Visual Learners
The popular video streaming app has a kid-friendly version that makes it one of the best educational iPad apps for elementary school students. It has a plethora of family-friendly videos, including those from content creators that cater to the imagination and creativity of children to channels like TED-Ed and Nat Geo. With that in mind, you can be sure kids will have fun and learn as well.
Parents will love the customisation options that help improve the viewing and learning experiences of their children. The app allows parents to limit screen time so that children have the right balance of activities in their schedule. Parents can also block content that they do not want their children to view.
Android: Free.YouTube Kids for Android
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV with iOS 10.0 or later.
Get Your Kids Tinkering with Coding on Tynker
Get your children to learn the basics of Python, Swift, and JavaScript in an engaging and easy-to-understand way with the Tynker coding app. One of the best award-winning apps for iPad, Tynker also features Minecraft Coding, which lets your children enhance their world-building skills in the game.
What’s more? The app lets children program flight paths and stunts for drones and robots, such as Parrot drones, Sphero & Ollie robots, and micro:bit, and watch their code in action in real-time. Teachers and students can also benefit from their extensive offerings including, but not limited to, lesson plans, classroom management, and automatic assessment.
Android: The app is not available on the Play Store.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad with iOS 10.0 or later.
Puzzle-solving Maths Learning with Marble Math
Marble Math makes practising mathematics fun for students with its maze games. Its simple gameplay of dragging marbles, or rolling them around by tilting the screen, makes solving maths problems an exciting challenge.
Parents and teachers can customise the options. Thereby, they tailor the games to the child’s learning requirements and abilities. The game teaches many mathematical concepts, including adding and sequencing fractions with different denominators, factoring, simplifying equations, and more.
Android: Paid. Available for devices with Android versions 2.3 or later.
iOS: Paid. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with iOS 8.0 or later.
PhET Simulations to Encourage Scientific Thinking
This fantastic science app is the creation of the University of Colorado Boulder. It allows young minds to explore and discover different concepts of science. Its multi-language support is perfect for English Language Learners as well.
One of its most handy features is its offline play option, which means learning never has to stop wherever you go. The app is for schools, and hence, teachers can use its many simulations during their classes.
Android: Paid. Available for devices with Android versions 5.0 or later.
iOS: Paid. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with iOS 12.0 or later.
Get Kids Learning Languages with Mondly
Getting a child to learn a new language can be troublesome, and a private teacher can be expensive. But your kids can learn languages interactively and in an exciting way. The Mondly app for children with its fun visuals and sounds is here to help with that.
The Mondly app offers 33 languages that the student can choose from. The app also features professional voice actors to make the language authentic, helping children learn the right pronunciation.
Android: Free. Available for devices with Android versions 4.4 or later.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with iOS 8.0 or later.
Turn Your Kid into a Musical Genius with Mazaam
Let Mazaam introduce your child to different funny animals in need of musical help. This app’s story-book style will help your child feel like they are a part of the story while discovering classical music masterpieces. This app, based on positive psychology and neuroscience research, caters to the personality development of your growing child.
The game helps develop your child’s auditory attention as each module progresses and teaches them music fundamentals, such as tempo, timbre, pitch, intensity, and harmony. Engage in your child’s musical experience with its Duet mode, which uses the magic of augmented reality to put you into its world!
Android: Free. Available for devices with Android versions 7.0 or later.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad and iPhone with iOS 10.3 or later.
Learn About the Blue Planet with Earth-Now
Get your children to learn more about the Earth they live on with NASA’s Earth-Now app. One of the many Earth Science and space-related offerings from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the application is a great way to introduce students to earth sciences.
The app offers a visual representation of our blue planet’s recent climate data such as air temperature, carbon dioxide levels, ozone, and water vapour. It also includes explanations and animated visualisation of past-week climate data. All of that makes this app a great reference tool when learning about the earth’s atmosphere and climate.
Android: Free.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad and iPhone with iOS 8.0 or later.
Boost Your Child’s Confidence with the Can-Do Child® Communication App
Teaching real-world skills can be challenging, even within a school setting. With the Can-Do Child app, parents can help their children develop and improve different life skills such as critical thinking, inventiveness, and expressing their thoughts.
The app presents a wide range of age-based activities developed by experienced professionals that can be done offline in outdoor or indoor environments. The app helps children nourish their communication skills and grow more confident while performing everyday tasks.
Android: The app is not available on the Play Store.
iOS: Free. Available for iPad, and Phone, iPad, and iPod touch with iOS 12.2 or later.
Let the Learning Games Begin!
Make the experience as smooth as possible by getting your tablets and iPads a good screen protector, and the right cover as well. The device is going to get a lot of use after all!
Our list of the best Android and iPad educational apps includes everything from the best programming apps to the best English learning apps. We hope it will help you find the right fit for your child’s learning needs!