Thrifty Thursday: Fun Preschool IPad Apps for Free

Are you getting a iPad, iPod, or iPhone from Santa this year?  Have one that you aren't using that much?  Did you know that it makes a great educational tool for little ones? 

There are even some new cases to protect these expensive devices from the clutches of the little destructive hands.  Fisher Price makes one for the iPad and one for the iPod/iPhone.  My little man is now almost 4 year old (sniff sniff) so he is getting much more responsible but he has been using the iPad for a long time and if I saw these years ago, I would have gotten one!!

My son loves to play with the ipad and I have found a few great apps out there for him to play with.  He likes to play educational games about reading and numbers.  He also loves to watch videos through some great viewers available for free.  He has his fair share of strange choices that don't get played but he knows that I will "buy" him whatever he wants on the ipad as long as it is free.  He usually picks age appropriate choices but sometimes I have to saw no.  The ipad is a great tool and make sure that you use it!!!

Games

Preschool Memory Match is a great memory game where it says the name of the things that it matches and turns over the cards if they aren't matched so that they can keep going.  When they clear the board, there are a few noise makers which they can play with or go to the next memory match.

Hungry Fish is a number, addition and subtraction game with fish chasing the answers.  My son loves making the numbers and feeding them to the fish so he has learned some basic addition to play.  (There is a Hungry Guppy game for the younger ones but it doesn't seem to be free yet so keep looking if you are interested).

Lego Duplo Zoo is a game where you travel with a giraffe and rabbit through different levels to bring a present to Lion.  After the levels are played, the kids can go back and play them in any order.  My son love putting the bandaids on the giraffe after he gets hurt so I see that level more than others.

Jake's Neverland Pirate School is a school with different classes like sailing, pirate band, and map and spyglass to earn Badges of Honor and Pirate Certificate upon completion.  Each class practices different skills and helps with fine motor skills.

Mickie Mouse Clubhouse Road Rally is an interactive episode with activities with shapes, counting, and problem solving with Mickie and the gang.  My son could spend forever playing this one and I actually had to try to stop him once but if you want a little quiet time, try this one!!

Video Players

PBS Kids Video plays short clips from a variety of different PBS shows and can choose based on show and clips will continue to play automatically.  There aren't many full shows or long clips with the kids shows but it is perfect for short attention spans.

PBS Kids Sprout plays short clips from a limited set of Sprout shows and can choose based on show but we have problems on the iPad 1 with it crashing but they say it works better on newer iPads.

Disney Junior plays full episodes from Disney Junior channel but only has the last one or two of each individual show.  It is great for us because we don't have cable so my little guy wouldn't be able to see Mickie Mouse Clubhouse and Jake and the Neverland Pirates without it and now he loves Disney.

iTube List is the YouTube viewer that you can choose the videos that the little ones can see with only adding videos from PBS or Nick.  It is really neat but plays the next video automatically and doesn't let them choose like the normal YouTube app does.

There are also a ton of great coloring and puzzle apps out there based on what your child is interested in so I highly recommend doing a quick search because there are lots of FREE ones!!!!  I hope that you like this list and let me know what some of your kids favorite apps are :)  There are tons of great ones out there but we only "buy" the FREE ones!!