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As Christmas approaches, some of you may be buying a new smartphone or tablet for your household. If you'd like to fill the new device with some apps to keep your little ones entertained before the big day, we've put together a guide to our favourite little-person apps of 2012 along with links to their reviews here on GeekMom if possible. Whilst these apps are mostly aimed at young childen, many will continue to entertain kids for many, many years as some apps appeal to all ages.
- Alien Buddies: Cute cartoon aliens teach letter, number and color recognition, basic counting, and problem solving through jigsaws, dot-to-dot puzzles and matching games.
- A Jazzy Day: Cartoon cats go on an adventure to learn all about jazz music, gaining an understanding of the different instruments and sounds in a jazz orchestra. The game also teaches both visual and audio instrument recognition.
- Animal SnApp: Farm by Axel Scheffler: From the illustrative pen behind The Gruffalo comes this matching game app with embedded stories. Beautiful illustrations and a nice simple structure make this perfect for your two year old.
- Chuggington Traintastic Adventures: A great app that kept GeekMom Sarah's three year old occupied on a trans-Atlantic flight. You don't need to be a fan of Chuggington to find this app amusing, but it certainly enhances screen time. There are four adventures to take part in, a variety of activities and episode clips to watch. If you enjoyed playing Rollercoaster Tycoon, you will enjoy helping your toddler build their own world using Build & Play mode. From the people who brought you Minnie Bow Maker and Dora's Ballet Adventure.
- Detective: Let your pre-schooler solve crimes as they learn skills such as observation, critical thinking and deduction.
- Finding Nemo: Experience the story of Finding Nemo as an interactive story book, learn to speak whale with Dory and have fun doing jigsaws, coloring pages and more.
- It's A Small World: Travel through beautiful landscapes inspired by Disney's "It's a Small World" ride as you learn about different cultures and places.
- LetterSchool: There is no better letter-tracing app out there than Boreaal's LetterSchool, which is perfectly suited for preschoolers who are just learning to write the alphabet.
- Maze Adventures: Generate infinite maze puzzles in six different themes and at four difficulty levels to help kids of all ages learn problem solving.
- Super Why ABC Adventures: The cast of Super Why teach the alphabet, letter recognition and early spelling.
- Team UmiZoomi Carnival: This app helped avoid a Thanksgiving day meltdown, and provided much needed rest for mom! Team UmiZoomi's friend Jake has lost his bunny at the Carnival, through this interactive story your child can aid Team UmiZoomi in a search and rescue. It teaches patterns, shapes and visual discrimination, has the usual sticker scene option that most Preschool apps have. It has a nice memory function and remembers where your child was when they accidentally turn the app off!
- Toca Tailor: Toca Boca turns children into fashion designers with Toca Tailor, which provides a variety of fun clothing, patterns, accessories, and customization to keep kids' creative juices flowing.
