Wonderful Books Apps for Preschoolers
Whether you have some holiday travel on the horizon or you’re looking to entertain some little people during quiet time, eBooks and book apps are a wonderful way of entertaining, educating and enthralling little minds to the written word.
The iPad lends itself wonderfully to the reading of an eBook – a digital version of a traditional book. Book apps are generally digital interpretations of a story with enhanced features to extend engagement in a story – such as colouring in activities, puzzles or interactive elements on the screen. Such books are an excellent way to engage less motivated readers and to develop early literacy skills. We just need to make sure there’s not too much razzle dazzle on the screen to distract from the actual story. Here are some tips to help you choose the best books apps:
1) Background music is very distracting. Choose apps where you can turn it off.
2) ALL iPad time is majorly enhanced by co-playing with your child. Read the books with them and they will benefit from conversation and social interaction as well as enjoying story time. Just make sure your time is spent focusing on the story and not distracted by continually adjusting or troubleshooting the device.
3) Books where the story is fairly plain but there are puzzles and activities at the end are particularly good
4) Do not use any devices within two hours of bedtime. The ‘blue light’ – IE the back-light from the device, shines a type of light into your eyes that tells your brain to stay awake. Not great for getting the littlies to sleep, so print books are still best for bedtime.
With that in mind, here are some excellent interactive books apps for preschoolers aged 2-5:
Red in Bed
Very sweet introduction to colours for our youngest readers. Poor red is sick in bed and can’t go out to colour, so the other colours fill in for him, but get a few things wrong. Simple, bold drawings and basic interaction with quick responses make this a winner for little hands. Cool A totally adores this app, he thinks red’s ‘sick’ voice is hysterical. He also enjoys waking the little colour bubbles up when in bed and sending them to sleep at the end. Plus look out for the bonus secret colour bubble who likes to hang out with Indigo and Violet.
Monster at the End of this Book
This was one of our early favourites, based on a classic Sesame Street book of the same name. The story is funny, no annoying music and Grover is adorable. He’s scared there’s a monster at the end of the book and will do anything to stop you turning those pages! Which of course makes nothing more enticing… Wonderfully done and such a success that it spawned a second book app, Another Monster at the End of this Book, starring Elmo. Also worth getting. I just love Sesame Street apps.
My Naughty Shadow
A beautiful book created by a father for his young daughter. My kids loved this simple tale about a little girl’s cheeky shadow. Especially good if you have a little one afraid of the dark, it makes it easy to have conversations around expressing fears. I loved the gentle animations and beautiful illustrations whilst my kids especially liked the naughty shadow that jumps on the bed!
The Wrong Book
A very funny book pitched just right for engaging little readers. The animations are fun and do not at all overwhelm the story of a frustrated little boy trying to tell his story whilst being invaded by characters from other stories. One of my family’s favourites. I highly recommend all the apps of books by Nick Bland, they have been translated very well to the digital screen.
Rounds: Franklin Frog
On the more educational side we have the ‘Rounds’ series by UK app makers Nosy Crow. Get to know them if you love a good book app, all of their work is of a very high quality. Here young children learn about the life cycle of a frog. The audio is child-narrated which makes it more relatable for young ears and is accompanied by text highlighting which makes it easy for littlies to follow the text. Included are lots of fun features like the 100s of frog facts: did you know that frogs chew by pressing food against the back of their eyeballs with their tongues? Little kids will love learning about biology with this fun app. Also available in this series is ‘Parker the Pengiun’.
The Land of Me – Story Time
This app deserves a special mention for ingenuity as it seeks to engage the reader by making them an active part of the story’s creation. You can choose the hero, theme and ending for a tale, whether the story is happy, funny or sad, then watch it come alive. Littlies will need an adult on hand to help with this one, but this makes an excellent co-playing experience. This beautifully illustrated picture book is BAFTA nominated.
Additionally it is highly worth investigating the children’s section of regular online bookstores such as Apple’s iBooks. A veritable wealth of quality children’s literature is available there in eBook form and will save you a huge amount of extra weight in your luggage if you are heading away these holidays. When we headed overseas in July I stocked up our iPad with some digital copies of my kids’ favourite books such as those featuring the Octonauts, stories by David Walliams and other popular authors. Audio books are also available and can be wonderful for helping kids off to sleep during journeys or just at night at home. Frankly for jet lag audiobooks were a life saver!
Bio
Jessica Bee is a professional technology educator, founder of the tech parenting blog www.flyingstartkids.com and mum to two boys age 3 and 5. She reviews the very best apps for growing kids’ creative minds, along with ideas for other non screen related activities. She is especially passionate about assisting parents and carers through the modern day parenting challenges of managing children’s engagement with technology. She lives with her family in Sydney.
