fun apps

At first glance, Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector may look like a cute cartoony app for young kids to waste a few minutes of their day. Yet, it's one of the few apps in my household that has the parents, teens, and my younger tween all hooke…

When it comes to my range of talents, I'm sadly lacking in the music department. Yep, I'm pretty much tone deaf, unlike Kristen, the former music therapist, who puts us all to shame there. However I still really want my kids to get the b…

My kids get really excited about President's Day because it means a day off from school. But I'd like to make sure that they spend a little bit of time reflecting on our former presidents too, so I love an app that helps with just that. …

Welcome to our new weekly series on Cool Mom Tech that introduces you to some of our favorite free apps to download to your devices. Because as much as we love all the useful, fun, and entertaining apps we recommend here, admittedly we l…

If you're tearing through the list of snow day activities to keep the kids occupied when you're stuck indoors, allow us help you with two beautifully designed, really fun new apps we've discovered from Seedling . As in, the same company …

We're definitely fans of the way Avokiddo tackles educational apps for young kids. And its latest release, the DNA Play app keeps our praise parade going. This time kids get to delve into genetics, but it's not heady or complicated. Quit…

If you're looking for help tackling your 2016 New Year's resolutions, we're here to help. Check out these cool, free apps that our Editor Kristen featured on The Today Show this morning. Lark: To help you keep your fitness goals Lark (fr…

We're big fans of Santa around here, as you might have guessed. What, us risk making the naughty list? Never!) So if you're looking for some fun Santa apps to help bring the big guy to life on your phone, tablet, or laptop and make belie…

Sometimes I need just a little quiet at home over the holidays, you know? And since my kids are app-crazy anyway, they always think it's a treat to find cool new Christmas apps for kids that they haven't tried yet. While we have a few fr…

My entire household is pretty thrilled that Toca Blocks , the 30th(!) app from favorite app developer, Toca Boca , just launched today. I got an early peek at it, and I'm happy to report, it's just as fabulous as the others. And while To…

Is there really anyone who's happy to hear an alarm go off in the morning? Granted, mine is usually a kid yelling for breakfast or siblings fighting, but still. Whether it's a loud beep or a screaming baby, that's just no way to wake up.…

It's clearly an emoji world out there, which is why we were so glad when the diverse emoji hit our smart phones. And now, some love for our curly-haired friends from the smart folks at Dove. Available free on iTunes and Google Play, the …

Yes, we know our kids should (and do) brush their teeth without the help of an app every night. But in the spirit of Halloween fun, and you know, the bags and bags of candy headed our way, I've found three fun, free toothbrushing apps fo…

It's not like my kids need any additional reasons to get excited about Halloween -- the costumes and candy and thoughts of staying up extra extra late do that for them -- but still, it's nice that there are so many fun Halloween apps for…

With four kids in the house ranging in age from five up to 11, it's no small feat to find a tech toy that they can all play with, especially when it's something educational. Darn those age limits. But as I recently learned, that's not th…

We've found that our kids learn best if we give them the opportunity to be curious about things first, and that's what the exploration apps from Tinybop do so well. Whether you kids are interested in the human body , architecture , or bu…

Last year we fell in love with the Anki Drive app-controlled racers, calling it one of our top tech toys of 2014 . Earlier this year at Toy Fair, we got a look (and a very fun if brief test drive) of the brand new Anki OVERDRIVE and as o…

Warning: It's a jungle out there. No, really. There's a crazy, colorful jungle filled with wild animals and plants for kids to explore, and it's right there on your smart device. Since we always love the kinds of educational apps that ki…

Next up in our Back to School Tech Guide 2015, we're happy to share 10 of the best reading apps for little kids. Because as plenty of us parents know, getting kids hyped about reading isn't always an easy road. So when they're first star…

I have a kid who really wants to be creative, but usually needs a good push before he'll dive into a project, and now we've found an app that delivers on that so beautifully. The brand new WonderBox app hails from Duck Duck Moose , one o…

We love it when developers we adore take things up a notch, and that's exactly what Tinybop has done with their wonderful new app, The Everything Machine . The Everything Machine is on a whole new level from what we've seen from Tinybop …

Let's hear it for organizational apps this time of year! What would we ever do without them? After all, back to school also means getting back to routines, which can highlight some of our old systems for staying organized and keeping the…

Think for a minute about how far we've come in games design from the days of Asteroids and Space Invaders. Now, there are some stunningly beautiful mobile games for both iOS and Android that change the way we think about gaming apps. Hey…

Since so many of you write us asking for the best Android apps for kids , we are so honored that Google Play reached out too, asking us to be this month's expert kids' app curator in their family category! We get to join the likes of tru…