Forrest is a tablet addict, no question about it. He’s been around for 4 years now, and I think it’s safe to say he’s been tablet obsessed for, oh, probably 3 of those years. At a minimum. When he gets up every morning, the tablet is the first ‘toy’ he goes for, and extra tablet time has become his reward for good behavior or trying a new food at dinnertime (and it might go without saying that losing tablet time is his most feared punishment). So I’m excited to share some of his favorite apps today in this sponsored post for Microsoft.
This tablet passion is a love I am happy to encourage. I love that he can play on the tablet by himself and feel so independent, that it keeps him entertained for such a long time (I can only build Legos with him for so long, I tell you), I love that they are easy to transport, and that there are so many fantastic apps out there to help him learn and develop. Downloading a new free app or game is almost always his preferred reward for good behavior, so we cycle through apps pretty regularly. I thought today I’d share 6 free apps that he’s been enjoying lately, that I think are awesome for a preschooler. Of course, he also loves silly and totally mindless games, but I’m trying to impress you here, of course, so I’m sticking with the ones that, as a parent, I think are the best and am eager to have him play.
Wonster Words This cute app covers phonics, letters, and everyday vocabulary, as well as a short silly monster video for each word. I think the monsters are adorable, and Forrest thinks they’re hilarious. I love that he drags and drops each letter into place for each word—I’m sure that practice will help him with spelling when he gets to that point.
Funbrain Jr. is one of our more recent downloads, but I’ve been impressed with it so far. Five cute monster-themed games teach counting, matching, letters, and shapes. The games are fun and attention-grabbing for young players, and the graphics are really cute, too.
Bitsboard Preschool isn’t the least bit flashy or cute like a lot of other apps out there, but it has so much great content—and I mean tons of content. A lot of ‘free’ apps have such a limited selection of activities if you aren’t willing to pay up for more, but this awesome app has puzzles, tracing, flashcards, matching, spelling, bingo, memory games, and more for tons of different categories (like animals, colors, letters, and even emotions and concepts like ‘across’ and ‘below’). It’s not very eye-catching, but it’s a really impressive learning app with so much content.
Music Matching with Lisa Loeb has the cutest graphics, if you ask me. It’s a simple matching/memory game featuring tiles of cartoon animals playing instruments, so kids are matching the image on the tiles as well as the little sound/tune that plays when the image appears. I love the musical component in this app.
Paint Sparkles For longevity, you sure can’t beat a painting/drawing app. We’ve had this one on various phones/tablets for years now. Darcy enjoys it at 1 year old (it’s just about the only app that catches her attention, other than staring at herself in the front-facing camera—humility, thy name is Darcy), and at 4 years old, Forrest still plays with it fairly regularly. A favorite feature is snapping a picture of himself with the tablet’s camera, then coloring on top of it.
Puzzingo I certainly can’t write about Forrest’s favorite apps without including this one, which has been his long-time favorite for months now. Truth be told, I think it’s obnoxious . . . but maybe I only think that because I’ve been hearing the theme music day in and day out for months. This app comes with quite a few fun puzzles, but also has a new free puzzle download every day. And as tired as I am of this app, I have to give it some credit—he’s learned lots of new words from the puzzles. His most recent vocab acquisition: villain, from a superhero puzzle.
If you don’t have a tablet yet, want to get an additional one specifically for the kids to use, or think a tablet would be an awesome gift for someone you love this season, you certainly don’t have to break the bank when tablet shopping. The HP Stream 7 Signature Edition Tablet is available right NOW at Microsoft Store or MicrosoftStore.com, pre-Black Friday, for only $99! And it even comes with Office 365 personal (with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) and 1TB of OneDrive online storage, which is a $69.99 value, all for FREE.
You can find the HP Stream 7 Signature Edition Tablet in the Microsoft Store at this awesome price before Black Friday. Hello, that sounds wonderful to me, because I am not one of those enthusiastic shoppers who hops out of bed at 3AM to snag Black Friday deals. No and thanks. Go ahead and purchase it at this awesome price before the holiday shopping madness sets in, and scratch one awesome present off your Christmas list!
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Microsoft. Thank you for supporting Maybe Matilda sponsors!
We need a tablet for Ramona in the worst way. I've somehow avoided it for this long, but when it's road trip time...it's tough. I'll have to check those apps and that tablet out!
ReplyDeleteI feel you. Forrest did speech therapy for a bit, and they recommended getting him a tablet because they were so great for development, and I remember being totally appalled at the thought of getting a CHILD their own tablet when I didn't even have one at the time. Flash forward a few years, they're so much more affordable now, and I am SO tempted to get him one of his own so he isn't constantly running the battery down on mine :-)
ReplyDeleteI have been using Wonster Words with a kindergarten class I teach and they love it. I ran into a glitch when I was trying to purchase the rest of the levels and in contacting the designers they told me about their teacher "plan" giving me access to the entire app for free! Because they asked, I told them I learned about the app from this post.
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome!
ReplyDelete