Provo Library Children's Book Blog

Lexi's World Pop Pop Pop LLC. Available on the App Store. Lexi's World is an app that has been getting quite a bit of buzz since it was first re-released. In addition to being named a 2019 Honor Recipient of the Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media award, it has a perfect 5.0 out of 5 stars on the App Store which is pretty hard to come by. Lexi's World invites learners to explore a world where correctly spelled words come to life. Children learn to spell words in a wonderfully interactive setting - kids are led through the spelling of words by selecting whatever letter lights up. The graphics in this app might look a little low-grade at first, but the animations are really endearing and do a lot to bring the cause and effects in this world to life. This is a great preschool app for little ones learning to read, spell, and explore their world.

Coral Reef By Tinybop Inc. Available on the App Store. Coral reefs are said to contain the most diverse ecosystems on the planet and play an essential ecological role, but because they are located underwater they are hard for young oceanographers to explore. This educational app from Tinybop introduces the vivid world of a coral reef in an interactive world. Kids can act like a parrotfish and eat harmful algae from off the coral, or plant stinging plants and rocks to protect fish from invading sharks. With vocabulary in more than 20 languages and an accompanying caregiver handbook about these underwater worlds, this app is a pretty solid bet. It is also full of beautiful, crisp, graphics that bring the reef to life and are worth celebrating on their own. This app, best intended for ages 4-8, is perfect for budding marine biologists.

Play and Learn Science By PBS Kids Available as a free download from the App Store, Amazon, and Google Play. This free app was the first ever winner of the award for Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media which recognizes distinguished apps for an early learning audience. This app teaches basic science concepts to preschool and kindergarten age children with several different games and includes a "parents" side of the app with supplemental material and an explanation of core concepts learned in the games. This might all sound a little boring and school-y, but this app is seriously fun. For kids - it's fun, brightly colored, easy to use, and doesn't rely on text explanations as so many toddler apps confusingly do. One of my favorite games is called "Shadow Scenes" where kids can add things (like animals, plants, houses, etc.) to a landscape and watch how their shadows change over the course of a day. It's simple, it's effective, it's ...

  iMotion is hands-down the best stop-motion app I have seen.  It is educational and has a simple enough interface that kids can easily use it on any iPhone or iPad. The videos it creates are high quality and can be saved to a computer, or posted online to places like Facebook. Once your child learns how to use the app, prepare yourself for hours spent creating their own clever stop-motion short films. We used this app in one of our library programs. (I found that action figures and LEGOs are some easiest items to use for stop-motion.) The kids LOVED making their own film. Parents later reported that some of them went straight home and started making films of their own. In all, it is an app that should not to be missed.

  Every one of Sandra Boynton’s whimsical books are instant classics. But did you know that several of her titles have also now been made into clever interactive apps? The Boynton Collection includes four of these apps all in one package— The Going to Bed Book , Blue Hat, Green Hat , Moo, Ba, La La La , and Barnyard Dance . Each story is presented on the screen like a book, with digital “pages” that the child can turn. They can choose to read the story themselves or have a narrator do it for them. Each page holds fun little characters which can be interacted with by touching the screen. Much happy giggling will occur as young readers discover all the delights that each page holds.