When you are searching for the best baby apps for the ipad, the most important things is to find something that is affordable (preferably free), have limited in app purchases, and most importantly is educational and fun for your baby. One thing you should also realize is that just because an app is fun for you doesn’t mean it’s fun for your baby. It all depends on how much your baby “clicks” with it.
Baby Piano
Baby piano and music games for kids and toddlers by Bimi Boo Kids
Price: Free
Good Points
This app is nice that the piano really does behave like a piano. If you swipe the keys, you won’t get a dead note, but all the keys. It’s colorful and as you press the keys, the notes fly out. It’s a pretty interactive game.
There are free mini games in total. The first one would be the piano I just mentioned.
The second one would be a sea creature catching game. This involves the player moving the boat around trying to catch different sea creatures like shrimp, fish, and crabs flying down from the sky. This lets your child recognize different sea creatures which is pretty cool.
The last free game involves having a scrolling mode from left to right. Your child’s job is to catch the food that’s flying towards your character from the right to left. There are different foods like cakes, drum sticks, and different fruits. At the end, there will be a giant birthday cake waiting for your child.
Bad Points
There are way too many in app purchases in this game. The three free games I just mentioned are the only free games out of nine. I haven’t tried other games, but you can always download more free games from elsewhere. The piano itself also has a problem. You can play different instruments, but the other instruments have their higher notes and octaves locked.
You can try this game here if you want to see if you like it for your little one.
Baby Rattle
Baby Rattle with Child Lock Free by Kiddoware
This game is a simple rattle with three free features including:
- Sea creature rattle – The first rattle involves shaking a bunch of sea creatures like rattles. You can press on them or shake the screen to interact. However, they don’t tell you the name of the animals. It’s simply there to keep your child entertained.
- Christmas rattle – The second rattle involves a bunch of iconic christmas theme objects that can used as rattle
- Safari – The third rattle involves a bunch of animals like tigers and lions being used as a rattle.
Phone
If your child likes to imitate you making phone calls then you should consider getting this app.
Phone For Kids – Fun Activity Center for Children by TabTale LTD
Price: free
To be honest with you this app doesn’t look very cute at all. However, remember what I said earlier, it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not, it depends on whether your child likes it. Despite how it looks, it is packed with a bunch of free games. It has in app purchases too, but it also has a lot of free features.
4 phone games
It literally only has two phone games. One phone is like our normal phone, making beeping noises. The second cartoonish looking phone actually speaks out the numbers as you press on the keys. This helps your little on learn numbers while playing a “real phone” like an adult.
The other two “phone games” simply have cartoonish keypads like looks like phone. However, the function entirely differently. One of them have different instruments on different keys so that your child can learn what each instruments sounds like. The other one has a different kind of motor vehicle like a school bus, or fire fighting truck so that your little one can learn what each vehicle sounds like and looks like on the road.
There are also other free extra games (these are not in app purchases) including:
- Piano – The piano doesn’t have all the keys, but it has all seven notes.
- Doodle pad – It has a doodle pad where your child can just draw whatever she likes. Each color you select also reads out loud what that color is. It helps your baby learn to identify colors.
- Text message – What kind of phone doesn’t allow text messaging. This app is no different. It has a text message feature for your child to play around with. However, nobody will respond like the phone.
- Four seasons – There’s also a game where your child can learn the four seasons and what the environment looks like under those season conditions.
- Alphabet keyboard – There’s also a keyboard where your child can press and learn to identify letters of the alphabet
- Animal game – This is a game where the animal and it’s respective spelling. It’s good to teach your baby how to spell different animals. There are five different animals only.
- Fruit game – This game seriously reminds me of fruit ninja. The difference is that the game will give you unlimited chances to slash the fruits. There are only five different types of fruits only.
- Bingo game
- Compass game – This teaches your little one how to identify the four directions of north, south east, and west.
- Key rattle – This doesn’t teach anything. It’s simply three keys rattling.
Lumi kids park
LumiKids Park by Lumosity, Early Learning Play for Kids – By Lumos Labs, Inc.
Price: free
This nice little app actually includes three educational games of its own. They include:
color matching – you play as these colored flying fuzz trying to collect matching color dots. If you are a blue fuzz, you collect blue color dots. If you are a yellow fuzz, then you collect yellow color dots. The purpose of the game is to learn to recognize color similarity. There are also different challenges like being penalized if you touch a “X” shaped box looking thing
Shape/color matching game – you drag small shapes to their respective larger shapes. There will be triangles, squares and circles in the forms of little bacteria looking things. Sometimes you will have to drag small bacteria looking shape to a larger shape of a similar polygon, or you have drag the small shape to a larger polygon with the same color.
Hide and seek – This game involves a little big head friend hiding behind bouncing animals like seahorses, chickens or whales. You have to find where the little guy is hiding.
Thanks for the thorough reviews of the baby apps.
The phone one immediately jumped out at me because my little one just LOVES to imitate me making phone calls and it sounded like there are lots of free games with this app, unlike the other ones.
What I’m wondering is how easy is it for my child to accidentally make an in app purchase while playing on the phone? I’ve read crazy stories how toddlers have racked up big credit card bills making in app purchases so I’m concerned about that.
If you want to prevent your child from from making unauthorized in app purchases from the ipad, then do the following:
That’s all. From now on, all in app purchases will require your permission. You will also be required to set an extra password for restrictions
These games look like fun fun for the little ones! Im interested but have some questions, What age do you recommend little ones can start playing this from? How long would you limit their play time on these devices? And do you recommend any protection devices for your expensive ipads and smart phones?
Thank
Trev
These apps are educational and fun for little children so they can get extremely addicting. If your child is younger than 2, I don’t recommend more than 20 minutes each day. That time frame is still a little long, but spread it out and let them play it during “emergencies”. As for protection, get some tough casing.
Thanks for the great review. Yes we recently purchased an ipad for our child to use. I am glad that you took the time to explain that the “free” games really do have a cost involved with them after all. I didn’t realise there were so many ads and in-store purchases. I will need to look out for this in the future. My favourite game is the Lumi Kids park. I like the educational component of it. I was just wondering if these games were transferrable to our phones (androids) or is it apple specific? Thank you
The idea of baby apps is very cute. I will however stress the importance of letting your baby/toddler be creative and also, letting them be bored. Perhaps not out in public when you’re trying to get them to be quiet. But at home, I feel these are great practices. Rewarding with these apps may be an option.
I have to agree about the Phone 4 Kids app. I thought it was rather dull, but my kiddo loved it when she was a baby. She especially loved the feature of calling someone. We only let her play with our phones in situations where we needed a distraction for a small amount of time, like when were standing in line at the grocery store. This one app provided entertainment for many of our little one’s early years.
What ages do you think the other apps would be appropriate for? The Phone 4 Kids kept mine entertained between 1-3 years of age. Would you say this would be the same for the other apps?
Every kid is different so I really doubt there’s an “age group” where these games will be helpful. However, they are certainly a great distraction like you mentioned.
Even though I don’t want to give my baby phone I understand that nowadays we can’t avoid this. However, my doctor said that we shouldn’t give a phone to a child younger than 2 – do you have any other information?
Apps you have listed seem to be nice and I will definitely download them when the time has come. Currently, my baby is just pressing the Home button all the time 🙂