We travel 6+ months out of the year and I am always looking for great apps to use on our travels. I love having tablets for my kids and they are a great tool to make the travel side so much more enjoyable. If you want tips that go beyond tablets for travel check out my post on How to Travel with Kids Without Losing Your Mind.
My first piece of advice here is to buy a good tablet. I have bought an Amazon Fire, a Samsung Galaxy, and an iPad for my kids over the years.
When our kids were little we purchased the Amazon Fires and to be completely honest I was not impressed and it was not a great fit. They would often freeze up, run out of storage, and didn’t have the ability to run the apps the kids loved. Tegan is also visually impaired and the fire did not have great accessibility for him.
So what do we use today? Well, we actually have two different kinds and they both work great. We got Tegan an iPad. We did this because apple has superior products when it comes to accessibility. He can create zoom windows to see things better and we can use it as a magnifier as well for some things. Rylan has a Samsung Galaxy Tablet and she has owned this for over 5 years and it is still doing great. It is not as expensive as the iPad, but it does everything we need it to do for her.
When it comes to apps that really depends on what you want the app for, so here are my Top 3 Apps in the categories of education, games, and entertainment.
Education Apps
This is my go-to for travel and they overall have great options for learning in the car. Not only do they have the Khan Academy for advanced topics, but there is also Khan Academy for kids which caters to the preschool to 2nd grade. The best part…it is FREE. I love good free apps! It works for android or apple and it is self-paced and interest-led.
Here is my constant struggle for education apps in general…accessibility!! Ask Jodi, this topic gets me angry and reeling at just the mention of it. My son who is visually impaired and has dyslexia can’t use it alone, he needs help to navigate and use it. I just wish they could have an option to read questions and answers to him and make it easier to navigate. It doesn’t do that and I really can’t find anything that does. The kid version called Khan Academy Kids is great for little kids, but they really don’t have anything that is geared towards elementary/middle school age. Even with all that it is still a great option to work with kids on the road.
This year we decided to start learning Spanish together in preparation for an upcoming trip. I was looking for a fun way to learn and play with the language and found this app. My daughter loves Duolingo. She is so motivated to keep her practice streak and has fun learning new words and then trying them out on us. It is free and really well done. It works with android or apple and it offers motivation to keep practicing. What I wish, always, is that it has better accessibility for vision disabilities and I wish it had a version geared more toward kids. It doesn’t have any “games” where kids could play with the new vocab they are learning
This is by far my favorite education app for my kids. They will both get sucked into learning something new and will watch endless videos on photosynthesis, the first thanksgiving, and windmills. There are two versions for kids, BrainPOP and BrainPOP JR, which have been great for different levels. This is just a really fun way to learn about history, science, technology, math, and even the arts.
It is super engaging, works great with android or apple, and is interest-led, but it costs money. There are options for homeschool families, but something you should look into if you don’t homeschool or if you do under an umbrella school is to see if your school already has rights to it. My kid's elementary school prior to homeschooling gave us access to it and now their umbrella school gives us access to it. Something to look into before you buy anything. The best part for me is the accessibility for my son, he can navigate this and learn all on his own.
Gaming Apps
TOCA BOCA has so many of my kid's favorite games and this has been true since they were 3! The best part about loving an entire collection of games is that you can find something for every age. It is hard for me to tell you what to get but here are my top 3 favorites:
1. Toca Nature: This is a world where you get to build an ecosystem and create a world of habitats that bring to life the animals in the area. You get to interact with the environment including the animals.
2. Toca Lab: This is a fun game that allows you to be a scientist in a lab. It is colorful, fun, engaging and it makes my kids laugh. There are two versions, Plants and Elements. Both are really fun.
3. Toca Kitchen: There are several variations of this game from Toca Boca, but my son’s favorite is Toca Kitchen Monsters, where he prepares food to feed to a monster. So ridiculous and yet so entertaining. The monster responds to the food you make him and it has my son rolling on the floor laughing.
Like I said before there are so many games we love from Toca Boca so you need to go check them out because these are only 3 of like 10 we have loved and played.
These games are some of the best games I have ever seen for little guys. They have so many fun options for toddlers, preschool, and young elementary age. They are actually a subsidiary to Toca Boca, which now makes so much sense to me because their games are just as good. We have played so many of them and have loved them all but check out Sago Mini World, Sago Mini Roadtrip, and Sago Mini Bug Builder…you won’t be disappointed!
This is by far my kid's favorite game to play. It is for kids 7+ but I am going to make the argument that this game has been one of the most creative inducing apps we have ever played. I can’t even scratch the surface of what this game is, but here is the gist, it is like legos on hyperdrive and your kids will learn so much from playing. Through creating and building my kids have learned geology, circuits, architecture, and farming techniques. The things they can build and create here literally blow my mind. This game taps right into my son’s strength which is really design. His ability to create and build is strong and this app celebrates that creativity. To be honest I really didn’t understand what Minecraft was all about until I finally got it for my kids. They also play together a lot! They create worlds together and collectively teamwork to build together. It has been one of the best games they have ever played and I am always shocked what can be learned from a world made of blocks.
Entertainment Apps
My kids have found a love of podcasts that is up there in their love for audiobooks. Pocket Casts is a great podcast app that allows you to download episodes of their favorite podcasts before your trip. Check out my blog How to Travel with Kids without Losing Your Mind for some of our favorite podcasts.
I really do understand the love and hate for what is Amazon, but it has some amazing pieces that make travel entertainment easy. We have many movies that we own digitally through Amazon and we actually download their favorites to their tablets. You can download what you own, the Amazon originals and many of the prime shows available. Just make sure you have everything you want downloaded before you leave the good internet.
My favorite is audiobooks for my kids. They devour audiobooks! Hoopla is a streaming service that allows you to borrow audiobooks, ebooks, and more for free from the library!! We spend a good hour a week downloading and borrowing books for our kids to listen to through this app. It is easy to navigate and use and if your kids love stories as much as mine do you will not be disappointed.
The best part…
All of these apps are on their tablet so they can entertain themselves while you can sit back, drink your drink, eat your food, and stare out the window for a hot second while they quietly entertain themselves. That is what a tablet brings to travel. We make sure that they get to use their tablets only on the journey, so these devices keep their joy and excitement. When we finally get to where we are going the outdoors does the rest. So don’t be afraid to tap into that peace and quiet, there is no shame in wanting to just enjoy the ride.
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