Discover the best apps designed to make learning at home easier, more engaging, and highly effective for students of all ages.

EYFS

Following a nationwide competition to find the best educational apps for parents to engage young children in learning at home, a panel of experts has approved 6 with a focus on early literacy, language and communication.

These apps cover activities ranging from interactive story books, handwriting exercises using Artificial Intelligence, and educational video games.

The 6 apps - published on the Hungry Little Minds website – are part of the government’s drive to help parents make informed decisions about the use of technology in creating positive learning environments at home.

The 6 apps published on the Hungry Little Minds website include:

• Lingumi (For children aged 2-5): Sets of learning games, speech recognition games and video-based games to help with a child’s grammar and getting them speaking their first words early on.

• Kaligo (For children aged 3-5): The first digital handwriting exercise book using a stylus and tablet, built using AI and co-created with teachers, occupational therapists and neuroscientists.

• Phonics Hero (For school-aged children): Over 850 fun, varied and motivating games take a child step-by-step through the 44 sounds, the reading and spelling of words, and how to conquer sentences.

• Teach Your Monster to Read (For school-aged children): Covers the first two years of learning to read, from matching letters and sounds to enjoying little books, designed in collaboration with leading academics.

• Navigo Game (For school-aged children): Focuses on developing skills that underpin reading, including phonics, letters and sounds, designed by UCL Institute of Education and Fish in a Bottle.

• Fonetti (For school-aged children): The world’s first ‘Listening Bookshop’ interacting with children by giving visual cues in real-time as they read aloud and highlighting where the most support is needed.

KS1 and KS2

• Brushes Redux: A simple and intuitive digital painting app that lets kids create vibrant artwork with a variety of brushes and colors.

• Animate Everything: A fun app that encourages children to bring their drawings to life through easy-to-use animation tools.

• Shadow Puppet Edu: An interactive storytelling app where kids can create narrated slideshows using photos, drawings, and videos.

• GarageBand: A powerful music creation app that lets kids explore instruments and compose their own songs with ease.

• Scratch Jr: A beginner-friendly coding app that introduces young children to programming through colorful characters and creative stories.

• Bee-Bot: A coding app that teaches basic programming concepts by guiding a virtual robot through fun and engaging mazes.

• Daisy the Dinosaur: An introductory coding app where children learn sequencing and logic by making Daisy dance and perform tricks.