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As a parent, two hours in a car with an unhappy child can make you rethink the trip. Four hours on an airplane can make you consider jumping. I was once on a flight from Lagos to Abuja and the passenger’s child cried throughout the trip, at one point I gave my iPad to the child just to make the crying stop which helped a lot.
Traveling with kids isn’t for the fainthearted, armed with a bit of knowledge, the right tools, and some planning, keeping kids comfortable and entertained during the course of a journey can be an easy task.
Choosing the right app can be just as confusing as deciding what to pack for your kids when traveling. So we’ve combed through dozens of the latest apps to determine which are the most useful for keeping your kids busy during a trip. These apps will guarantee you have a trouble-free experience, and a happy kid!
Unless noted, all apps are free and available for Android and iOS.
Here are 10 apps for keeping the little ones quietly entertained on the plane. Best of all – most of the apps don’t even require a large cash investment.
Sago Mini Road Trip
If you have a car-crazy child – especially a toddler or young pre-schooler – Sago Mini Road Trip puts your kid in the driver’s seat to visit friends in far-off places. Kids help Jinja the Cat pack her suitcase, select a car, and then control the speed of the driving as the cat speeds along on a side-scrolling road.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire
- Skills: Thinking critically, imagination
- Price: $2.99
- Pricing structure: Paid
Angry Birds
Kids drag and tap their finger on the screen to aim and launch birds out of a giant slingshot to collapse structures and destroy the pigs that are hidden on and inside them. By observing how the birds behave in flight, they’ll learn how gravity and momentum affect objects of different consistencies (such as ice, wood, and rock). Players can retry a level as many times as they want without penalty, leaving them free to experiment with different strategies until they’ve mastered the level.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire
- Skills: Thinking & Reasoning: hypothesis-testing, solving puzzles, strategy
- Price: Free-$.99
- Pricing structure: Paid, Free (The free version of the app contains third-party ads.)
- Release date: March 17, 2011
PicsArt Kids
The main menu offers three modes — Draw, Color, and Learn — plus a gallery for displaying work. Kids select a background in Draw mode, then select colors or Dice mode, which adds various effects and options randomly. Color mode offers semi-stereotypical coloring-page themes, including animals, transportation, monsters, and princesses. Learn mode offers mazes and dotted-line scenes for tracing practice as well as open-ended, shape-based drawing lessons. Kids can tap to erase, delete, or save finished art to the gallery.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire
- Skills: Digital creation, Fine motor skills, Imagination, Producing new content
- Price: Free-$3.99
- Pricing structure: Paid, Free
Artie’s Magic Pencil
Young kids who are new to apps will especially connect with this easy, adorable story-and-drawing combo app. The absence of complex instructions and the clear, on-screen visual prompts are perfect for new app users. Artie’s Magic Pencil keeps things simple, focusing on only three basic shapes and 15 objects to draw. The option to print drawing worksheets is an extra way for kids to practice tracing, which is helpful since drawing on paper differs from drawing on a screen. Once the journey is completed, kids might not be eager to replay, but parents can take the fun offscreen and help kids build objects out of simple shapes.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire
- Skills: Thinking & Reasoning: part-whole relationships, fine motor skills
- Price: $2.99
- Pricing structure: Paid
PJ Masks: Moonlight Heroes
Choose from your favorite hero characters Catboy, Gekko and Owlette to play with and journey across the moonlit rooftops, and through the night, collecting as many orbs as you can. But beware of those pesky villains, they’re up to mischief again. The PJ Masks are on their way, into the night to save the day.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire
- Skills: Teamwork, Friendship, part-whole relationships, fine motor skills
- Price: free
- Pricing structure: free
Peg + Cat: The Tree Problem
Silly Cat keeps getting stuck in tall trees! Kids build bridges, ramps, and stairs to help him climb down. There are six “worlds,” each with a different challenge. For example, kids adjust geyser heights in Dino Valley, roll snowballs at the South Pole, and move hanging cloud decorations on Broadway. Each world has five levels of increasing difficulty. If kids need help, they can tap a question-mark icon. When kids start, only level 1 is unlocked; once all levels are unlocked, they can choose which level to play.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire
- Skills: Problem solving, solving puzzles
- Price: $2.99
- Pricing structure: Paid
Sprinkle Junior
On each of 30 levels of SPRINKLE JUNIOR, kids find a hose, a landscape, some silly alien beings, and a series of small fires. Kids must move the hose up and down to aim enough water at the fires to snuff them out. Once all fires are out, kids pass the level. Sometimes kids also have to manipulate some objects in the scene to pass the level — for example, put out fires on four little blocks and then feed them to a monster-looking alien. All levels are always unlocked and kids have unlimited water and time, but there are no instructions or hints.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android
- Skills: Problem solving, solving puzzles
- Price: $1.99
- Pricing structure: Paid
My Very Hungry Caterpillar
Kids progress through five levels of counting games where they tap foods from the popular children’s book to count them. In Level 1, kids tap the food, causing holes as if the caterpillar took a bite, and then hear the narrator count and name the food. In Level 2, kids tap only the food they are instructed to tap for the caterpillar to eat, and in Level 3, kids tap only the stated number of food items. Level 4 combines the tasks from Levels 1 and 2. Level 5 is a timed game where kids tap as many of the foods the caterpillar chooses within one minute.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android
- Skills: listening, following directions, vocabulary, counting
- Price: $1.99- $2.99
- Pricing structure: Paid
Ready Jet Go! Space Explorer
Jet and his friends are here to help kids explore and learn about planets and constellations in READY JET GO! SPACE EXPLORER. Kids can play in two ways: Swipe or move the device to scan through a generic sky, or turn on location services and tap the compass icon to have the app match the sky exactly as kids see it from where they are. Tap on constellations and planets to learn a few fun facts about them, color the constellations with some simple drawing tools, or play hide-and-seek with Jet using clues to figure out where he’s hiding.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android
- Skills: Using and applying technology
- Price: Free
- Pricing structure: Free
Subway Surfers
Like most endless runner games, there’s a threadbare plot to Subway Surfers. You run, trying to dodge capture and obstacles, swiping up to jump or down to slide. Swiping side to side lets you switch tracks as you run. Along the way, players collect coins, which can be used for power-ups, but those same power-ups are also sprinkled along the tracks.
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android,
- Price: Free
- Pricing structure: Free
Aside from these apps, we deeply suggest downloading some kiddie shows or movies to your device. A much-loved service provider is Netflix, which allows you to download all of the content that you want while online, and lets you watch it later, offline. It’s truly worth deleting half of what’s on your device to add a show that will give you some peace of mind 🙂
When planning your next trip don’t forget to book your cheap flights at Travelstart and check the Black Friday deals from Nov 20th to 27th 2017.