30 Incredible Apps that Will Make Your Kids Become Well-Rounded Adults

As parents we are very concerned about our children's development, including the TV programs they watch and video games they play. Most often though, these games and programs cater to the lowest common denominator. Same goes for academic expectations at public schools, as a result our education system provides results that are laughable at best.

All children are born creative and, looking at the statistics for gifted children worldwide, you can see that there is no difference between the rate of giftedness in most developed countries. Yet, according to statistics for average intelligence by nation, the United States and Canada are far behind countries like Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. What happened with all these creative and gifted children? The answer is: They got neglected and mistreated by the educational system.

If you want to ensure that your kids get the proper education and develop into well-rounded individuals, you have to take matters into your own hands. Talents are not necessarily limited to math, science, or languages. Educational and gifted assessments often find that children are gifted in a particular area, yet may have weaknesses in other areas. As a parent, you should strive to find the areas your children are strongest in and help advance their talents further. Even more important is to address their weaknesses, if any. Educational apps could be an excellent tool here-children can learn while having fun.

Using the right apps gives your children the opportunity to nurture both their analytical and creative capabilities. Here are 30 of the best apps for kids, available for both iOS and Android.

Education and general knowledge

1. BrainPOP Featured Movie

This app provides you with a quick and fun way of learning information on a variety of topics like science, math, art, English and social sciences, through great movies and quizzes. A great way for a child to learn something new in their spare time.

iPhone or Android

2. News-O-Matic

Kid-friendly news from around the world available on your child's smartphone or tablet, so your child can learn about the latest advances in science, fun facts from around the world and inspirational stories about talented and gifted kids.

iPhone or Android

3. WWF Together

The WWF puts a ton of work into helping preserve endangered animal species. This app allows children to learn more about a wide variety of animals, and all the hard work that goes into protecting them and their habitats.

iPhone or Android

4. Pet Bingo

A fun little app that allows small kids to nurture cute pets while at the same learning about basic math. It is the best way to get your kids excited about math and help them quickly develop their math skills.

iPhone or Android

5. NASA app

Help your children learn about space and explore the known universe through HD images, while staying updated about launches and watching the latest NASA videos, all with this official NASA application.

iPhone or Android Advertising

6. Duolingo

All it takes is an hour or two a day to learn a new language fairly quickly, and this app is structured as a fun game, complete with video game-style lives and points, enabling both children and grownups to learn several major languages.

iPhone or Android

7. My First Classical Music App

Introduce your child to the wonderful world of classical music, with information on the lives and works of famous composers. Let them learn about various instruments and how they sound, and much more.

iPhone or Android

8. Stack the States

There are many grown-ups that don't know basic geography, but, luckily, this app can teach kids about the different states in the US form an early age. It helps kids learn fun facts, as well as the geographical location of each state and their capitals.

iPhone or Android

9. Stack the Countries

Once a child has mastered geography on a national level, they can move on to learn about the different countries from around the world, stacking them in their right place and memorizing capitals and other interesting facts.

iPhone or Android

10. Focus on Plant

An app for somewhat older children, which allows them to learn tons of information on plant biology, complete with lots of pictures, diagrams and the ability to take a quiz to gauge their progress.

iPhone or Android

11. My Incredible Body

Children have plenty of questions about their body, and parents can't always give the best answer. Well, this is where My Incredible Body, the essential anatomy app for kids, comes in. It teaches important facts about the human body in a way that's fun and easy to understand-great for kids and adults alike.

iPhone or Android

Books

12. Book Creator

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Combine creativity, fun and reading with this cool app that lets kids create format books, add images and create covers for them-so that they can enjoy what they are reading more and share it with their friends.

iPhone or Android

13. Peepo and the Unfinished Story

Peepo is a character in a story that is unfinished, and he needs some help from the reader to complete characters, backgrounds and more, so that the story can play out. This app for kids combines reading and storytelling with a variety of interesting games.

iPhone or Android

14. Me Books

A bookshop with a wide variety of children's books, suitable for ages 2-10, where you can browse and find the best bedtime stories. Whenever your child wants to hear a story, you will be ready and soon they will be able to read the stories themselves.

iPhone or Android

15. Free Books

A vast collection of over 23,000 titles, with a large number of classics that are in the public domain, as well as some more modern titles, all to be had for free, with a one-time purchase option that unlocks several thousand audiobooks. It is a great option for children aged 9+ and adults as well.

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iPhone or Android

16. Grimm's Bookshelf

Access a multitude of classical children's stories, with a twist! The app allows you to browse interactive pop-up books, with unique 3D pop-up games that will get your child to completely immerse herself in magical fairy-tale worlds.

iPhone or Android

Creativity

17. Sketchbook Express

A fairly advanced application for painting and drawing, designed with tablets in mind. It can allow both younger and older children to have hours of fun and create great works of art, with access to a number of tools and a 2500% zoom feature.

iPad or Android

18. FriendStrip Kids Pro

The app allows your kids to snap creative pictures and put them together to create a great comic book. There are a variety of useful tools, so with some DIY costumes and a bit of imagination they can make and share all kinds of adventurous comics. Advertising

iPhone or Android

19. colAR Mix

A coloring book that brings your creations to life as 3D animations. There are a number of interesting drawings to color in, each with their own unique animation that you can play upon completing the drawing.

iPhone or Android

20. ArtKive

A virtual archive for all your children's artwork, which you can tag and share on social media, or just show it to everyone. This way you won't have to despair when there is a need to clear up the fridge door for new art.

iPhone or Android

21. Bord

This simple but incredibly fun app is best suited for smaller children who can't really navigate the more complex drawing apps. You can use it to draw shapes, teach children letters and numbers and, of course, create some fun chalk drawings.

iPhone or Android

22. Shake-a-Phrase

Shake your phone and come up with funny random word combinations. Get a few laughs at the weird sentences and learn about language at the same time, with tests available to gauge your grammar skills.

iPhone or Android

Cognitive skills

23. Fit Brain Trainer

Keeping your child's mind engaged and allowing them to exercise their brain is just as important as physical exercise, and this app provides you with 360 games that help train different cognitive skills like memory, problem solving and concentration.

iPhone or Android

24. Little things forever

The app features big beautiful, visually impressive designs made from lots of smaller items of different shapes and color, where your child has to find the right items form a randomly generated list. It promotes concentration and visual recognition skills, and is very fun and engaging.

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25. Memory matches

Have your kids play around with this app to keep them entertained and help them work on their memory. It is a classic game of matching identical cards on boards ranging from 4×4 to 8×8 for varied level of complexity, depending on your child's skills.

iPhone or Android

Fun and smart games

26. Cut the rope 2

A worthy successor to the first iteration of the title, Cut the rope 2 features cute candy-eating aliens, logical puzzles that can get quite tricky and hours of potential fun. It is colorful, fun and forces your child to think.

iPhone or Android

27. Angry Birds Space

The legendary birds now travel to space, which means your child has to factor in things like a planet's gravitational pull, which affects the path that the birds take. It is a good way to teach kids about basic physics and space in a visually stimulating way.

iPhone or Android

28. Toca Builders

A collection of builders with unique abilities in a sandbox world, where your child can create unique structures out of different colored blocks and snap photos of their work. It is an excellent way for your child to get creative, without making a huge mess on the floor, like with Legos.

iPhone or Android

29. Toca Hair Salon 2

This is another cool game with a lovely visual style that combines playfulness with creativity, allowing kids to create a variety of different hairstyles. With a large number of different characters, tools, hair colors and accessories the kids can really let their imagination run wild. It's also a good way to help smaller children overcome their fear of going to the hair dresser.

iPhone or Android

30. Scribblenauts Remix

A game that lets kids, and their parents, create multiple unique solutions to problems by summoning different creatures and objects by typing out what you wish to create. There are 50 levels available and you can finish each one using a wide variety of approaches. Your child is only limited by their own imagination, which she is encouraged to use extensively, and her spelling skills, which will be improved significantly through playing the game.

iPhone or Android

You are sure to find a few useful apps in this extensive list, apps that will allow your child to learn and improve in different areas, all while having plenty of fun. These apps are excellent for channeling your child's creative energy and satiating their thirst for knowledge, and you'll often find yourself using some of the apps as well.