I can’t think of anything that a mom needs more than a silent, still toddler every now and then – during potty time, church, the grocery store, out to dinner, cliffhanger Friday on general hospital…
Like most kids her age, there are very few things that holds my daughter rapt with attention. There’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, mashed potatoes, and her most powerful kryptonite, any movement on my iPhone. I spent the first 18 months of my daughters life trying to keep my iPhone out of her destructive hands. But as with many things on my journey into motherhood, I was going about it all wrong.
So I got the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Apptivity Case and scoured the web for the most immobilizing apps out there. These apps are diva (and momma) approved and we’re sharing them with you, because you never truly understand the phrase “silence is golden” until you have a toddler.
Peek a Boo Barn – Inside a little bouncing barn, friendly farm animals are waiting to pop out and surprise your little one by the sound they make. Just tap the door to find out who.
Toddler Preschool Quizzing – Brought to you by Toddler Teasers, this app entertains while teaching your toddler everything from shapes and letters to musical instruments and fractions. Check out other Toddler Teasers apps for more fun educational games.
Wheels on the Bus – Duck Duck Moose takes your favorite nursery rhymes, including Wheels on the Bus, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Old Macdonald and turns them into a fun educational experience. Check out the Duck Duck Moose to find more great games.
Bumblebee Touchbook – A simple, interactive learning activity from word recognition to counting. Includes a 3D-animated short movie and music by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Dr. Seuss’s ABC Book – Narration, background audio and enlarged artwork for each scene bring this children’s classic to life. Individual words are highlighted as the story is read and words zoom up when pictures are touched. Check out more great apps featuring Dr. Seuss books.
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox – Learn and have fun by helping monkeys pack lunch! Monkey Preschool Lunchbox is a collection of six exciting educational games for your preschooler that teach kids about colors, letters, counting, shapes, sizes, matching and differences.
Baby Games My First Shapes – Photo Touch is an exciting educational game that helps your child rapidly learn words by sight, sound and touch. The interface is so easy to use that even a 9 month old baby will delight in using this app.
Five Little Monkeys – A fun, interactive musical game based on the popular rhyme everybody knows and loves that teaches counting, opposites, reading and singing.
Jellytoon’s Toddler Skills – Six games to develop your toddler’s critical thinking and fine motor skills teaching shape and colors and counting. Plus you can track your toddler’s performance with easy-to-read graphs!
Sound Touch – Sound Touch relies only on taps, making it super easy for little fingers to navigate. There are six categories including animals, wild animals, wild birds, vehicles, musical-instruments and household. Tap a picture, and a real life photo of the item pops open, accompanied by the sound it makes. Tap the picture anywhere, and it disappears.
Zoola – Zoola is a fun and educational app that teaches small children about animal families and the sounds they make. The app offers more than 400 heart-melting HD photos of a mommy, daddy and baby of each animal type.
Learn to Talk – Learn to Talk is an innovative audio flash card application that facilitates language development in one to three year-old children. It uses both sight and sounds to teach toddlers basic vocabulary and early language skills.
Shape Builder – This app educates and entertains your little one with easy to move shapes that snap into place on top of silhouette puzzles. Shape Builder encourages cognitive thinking & fine motor skills plus exposes young minds to new music instruments, animals, produce, objects & the alphabet in a fun and engaging format with lots of sound effects.
Sound Shaker – This highly intuitive musical app is also incredibly amusing. It lets children create and play with chime, whistle, drum, barnyard animal and mystery sounds by simply tapping and tilting. Repeated taps generate new sounds, while longer taps grow sounds and trigger surprise animations. Tilting makes sounds spin and collide in whimsical combinations.
Elmo Calls – Pick up the phone, Elmo’s calling! Receive video calls, audio calls, and voicemail from Sesame Street’s own furry, red monster. Or, give him a call yourself. With Elmo Calls you can laugh, play, and sing with Elmo.
Thanks so much for this! We are going to be flying with him soon and will need to keep him semi still so I think I’m going to need to use all of these!
Good luck! Let me know how it works out!
Okay (gasp and shock obvious), I do not have my smartphone yet, but you’d better believe I am saving this post for the big day–6/18! Pinned it too! 🙂
Nice! Oh happy day it will be when you get it!
Peak a Boo barn has been a life saver a few times. But the screams that happen when it is taken away are awful! But the quiet time is totally worth it! Thanks for the great tips!
That is the only drawback to these apps. They’re hard to take away.
NEED to download some of these ASAP!
Ah, these look so fun! My sons are addicted to my husband iPad, I’ll have to take a closer look at downloading some of these apps. Thanks for sharing!