Along with carefully plotting your travel route, packing enough padkos, fuelling up the car, and getting into that holiday mindset, another vital aspect is to get your smartphone road trip ready! For the kids, boredom can creep in quite quickly when they are cooped up in the car for hours at a time. So, even if you are generally quite diligent about limiting screen time at home, a road trip is a good time to relax the restrictions. The key here is to ensure that the content to which your kids are exposed is of high quality and educational.
Read on for a roundup of the top 5 best apps to keep the kids busy when out on the road this summer.
Epic!
This is a fantastic reading app for children and contains approximately 40 000 kiddies’ books. It is ideal for kids under the age of 12 who already know how to read – but there is also a lovely ‘read to me’ feature for the little ones who haven’t mastered this skill just yet. While you have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use it, it comes 100% free from ads and other in-app purchases. Be sure to download a few books ahead of your trip to avoid heavy data usage!
The Baby Panda collection
If your children can’t get enough of the Baby Bus episodes on YouTube, they will adore the Baby Panda collection of apps. There are dozens of games available for kids from the age of 3 and up. From Baby Panda’s Airport and Baby Panda’s Summer Juice Shop to Baby Panda’s Dinosaur Planet and Baby Panda’s Art Classroom, these apps are 100% certain to keep the kids entertained for hours on end. They don’t take up much space and are free to play, but they are rather ad-heavy, which could lead to the children getting grumpy as a result of the periodic distractions.
Wow Kids
Wow Kids is an app development company that offers a diverse selection of learning games for children, all of which follow a charming fruits and veggies theme. They are ideal for kids between the ages 2 and 6 and focus on teaching phonics, numbers, colours, fractions, patterns, puzzles, and so much more. The games are bright and vibrant – guaranteed to hold the little ones’ attention. Unfortunately, only a few of each of the app’s games are accessible for free. The remainder of the offering can be unlocked after paying a small, once-off fee. The game files are also quite large and tend to take up a significant amount of phone space.
ABCmouse.com
The ABCmouse.com app is an early learning academy boasting a full online curriculum for kids between the ages of 2 and 8. ABCmouse.com focuses on science, mathematics, reading, arts and colours. It is a favourite amongst parents all over the world because it promises no ads, no pop-ups, and no external links, making it 100% child-safe. The only downside is the fact that, following a free trial for the first month, parents will have to pay R150 per month for their children to continue using it.
Wimpy’s World of Animals
Wimpy’s World of Animals AR cards come free with every Wimpy Kids’ Combo Meal and can be used to unlock the interactive and educational Miaotu App. Simply open the app, hold a card in front of the phone and the kids can watch an animal come to life, all while listening to some interesting facts about the animal at the same time. Along with the educational aspect, what makes this app stand out as a road trip must-have is the fact that it is 100% free to download, it is 100% ad-free, it requires very little data to run, and it takes up minimal phone space. Happy kids, happy parents! Here’s to a festive family road trip to remember.
