Best iPad Apps for Toddlers
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Your little one has probably been trying to play with your iPad since she was old enough to grab it. (No matter how many times you take it away!) Now that she’s a toddler, you might have decided it’s time to loosen up the reins just a little bit and let her explore more. So what are some of the best age-appropriate apps to start with?
Despite the many caveats that come with little kids and screen time, there’s no shortage of toddler iPad apps that are both educational and engaging. The key is using apps with your child, instead of, say, handing her your tablet while you’re trying to get dinner ready. (Which can be tempting, we know.)
Using apps together can help her make connections between things happening on the screen and things that happen in her everyday life, which promotes learning.
As for when exactly it’s OK to start checking these out — and how often you should be using them? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends avoiding digital media for toddlers younger than 18 to 24 months (unless it's video chatting). You can let toddlers as young as 18 months be exposed to a little bit of digital media, but make sure you’re watching or playing along with her. Once your child turns 2, start watching the clock: She shouldn’t be in front of screens for more than an hour a day, tops.
Here are high-quality picks that your toddler — and you! — are guaranteed to love.
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Best Overall Toddler App
Busy Shapes
This award-winning app is about more than teaching kids to recognize a circle or a square. It encourages your child to learn how objects of different shapes relate to each other, which can help promote sensorimotor development. Even cooler? The app adjusts the difficulty automatically, depending on how your LO tackles each level, to keep her challenged. This is one of many educational kids' apps created by Edoki Academy, so you can always move on to a different one later.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for 3-Year-Olds
Highlights Monster Day
Developed by the children’s magazine Highlights, Monster Day is designed to help kids explore the world around them and foster kindness and compassion. After choosing a monster buddy, your little one can help her new pal through her daily routine — from feeding him bagels for breakfast to tucking him in at night. The app is technically for kids 3 and up, but with parental guidance, it’s tons of fun for older toddlers.
In-app purchases? Yes
Best Toddler App About Healthy Habits
Duckie Deck Collection
Take advantage of your toddler’s natural urge to call the shots and discover new things with this beloved collection of colorful mini games. What happens when she picks fruits and veggies, feeds animals or turn on the lights? She’ll delight in finding out the answer each time.
In-app purchases? No
Best Animal-Themed Toddler App
Farm 123
In this interactive farm book, toddlers can hone their counting skills by helping Farmer Jo round up her animals. As your tot starts to learn her numbers, she can head to the back of the book to play mini games like finding, bathing or petting a certain number of animals.
In-app purchases? Yes
Best Toddler App for Potty Training
Pepi Bath 2
Try this one when you’re ready to introduce potty training (or are just dealing with an I hate brushing my teeth/taking a bath/getting dressed phase). This role-playing app turns basic personal hygiene activities into a total blast. Your tot can care for her furry friends by helping them take a bath, brush their teeth, use the potty and more. Best case scenario? She gets excited to do all those things on her own.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for Car Fans
Trucks
Pull out this app next time you’re in a place where your truck-loving tot can’t crawl around with her favorite vehicles. She can run a truck through the mud and take it to the carwash, help fix a flat tire, make dirt piles with a dump truck, sort trash for the garbage truck and more.
In-app purchases? No
Best Ocean-Themed Toddler App
Fish School
Have a little one who loves playing with sea creatures in the tub or watching tropical fish swim around in their tank? Build on that interest with this underwater-themed app, which offers eight educational activities geared toward helping toddlers learn letters, numbers, shapes, colors and more.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for PBS Viewers
Play PBS Kids Games
If your toddler loves Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood or Dinosaur Train, she’ll go crazy for this app, featuring more than 120 educational games from beloved PBS shows. The games are geared for kids ages 2–8, so it’s worth previewing the app to find game options that are best suited for your tot.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App for All Ages
Peekaboo Barn
Take a virtual farm visit to learn the names of animals and the sounds they make. Younger toddlers will get a kick out of opening each barn door to reveal a new furry friend, while older ones can try guessing which animal is which by listening to the sound they make.
In-app purchases? No
Best Musical Toddler App
Baby’s Musical Hands
Simple and fun, Baby’s Musical Hands was developed by a dad who wanted a fun app for his toddler son. Each of the 15 brightly colored squares plays a different piano, guitar or drum sound, encouraging budding Mozarts to flex their musical muscles.
In-app purchases? No
Best Simple Toddler App
Balls
Toddler apps don’t have to be complex to be really, really fun. Your tot will love directing brightly-colored balls around the screen, which make a fun chiming noise when they hit each other.
In-app purchases? No
Best Toddler App With Planes
Sago Mini Planes
Pick your airplane, get your passengers on board and go exploring! This app encourages budding aviators to fly through enchanting habitats and make exciting discoveries — like popping balloons mid-air, seeing rainbows or even catching up with flying pigs.
In-app purchases? No
Best Open-Play Toddler App
Eli Explorer
Tots can tag along with Eli, a cute rabbit with propeller ears, to explore his colorful, interactive world in this open-play app. While playing, they’ll work on vocabulary development and understand the relationship between cause and effect.
In-app purchases? No
Best Food-Themed Toddler App
Bubl Ice Cream
Looking for a sweet twist on the average toddler learning app? Bubl Ice Cream lets your LO build her own ice cream cone, stacking each scoop on top of the other. With help from six adorable pals, she can also explore four different "worlds" and learn how to say ice cream in 18 different languages.
In-app purchases? No
Best Children's Book-Themed Toddler App
Hungry Caterpillar Play School
This app is a subscription service that allows parents and kids (ages 2–6) to access new content monthly. Based on the beloved books by Eric Carle, your toddler will recognize the characters in a variety of puzzles, games and more in the app.
In-app purchases? Yes
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