Top 5 iPad Apps For Preschoolers

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox has bright colours and engaging activities for younger kids

More fruity fun on Monkey Preschool Lunchbox

Tozzle - drag the picture in the top right hand of the screen onto the correct spot in the puzzle

Toca Builders - this robot builds from his backpack or knocks them down with his hammers

Toca Builders - this robot has extendable legs to place blocks in the vertical plane

Toca Builders - this robot paints the floor on a roller ball

Elmo Loves ABCs - find the item starting with 'O'. There is a video about an octopus after the child touches the correct item

Hard level on Eric Carle's Matching Pairs

IPads are a great way to keep kids busy on long journeys or while waiting for appointments. There are loads of great iPad Apps around which can help build skills, such as problem solving or creativity, as well as being fun. Here are five of the best I have found for 3 to 5 year olds, road-tested by my almost 4 year old.1. Monkey Preschool LunchboxThis fun App has a series of short fruit-themed activities to complete. These include simple jigsaws, simple matching pairs and picking the odd one out. At the end of each section the child can pick a 'sticker' to put onto their sticker board. The App is incredibly intuitive and engaging so kids can work out how to play without any help. There is some catchy background music too.2. TozzleThis App is packed with drag and drop jigsaw puzzles which get more complex as you progress through. This is a great one for problem solving and developing fine motor coordination.3. Toca Builders (by Toca Boca)Perfect for budding engineers! Build a 3D city out of coloured bricks on a grid floor. There are six robot avatars to use which can manipulate the bricks in different ways, for example laying in 3D with a crane, adding flat squares with a paint blow pipe, or laying bricks in 2D from a backpack. This game is challenging but still manageable for preschoolers and great to develop 3D awareness, planning and logical thinking.4. Elmo Loves ABCsThis App features Elmo from Sesame Street. Kids can practice tracing letter shapes with their fingers and finding items starting with that letter. There are also mini videos about words starting with the letter they have just traced. There is also a great music video library with several ABC songs. Overall this is a good learning letters App with enough variety and fun features to keep kids engaged.5. Eric Carle's Matching PairsThis App has several matching pairs games at different levels of difficulty, all featuring pretty drawings by Eric Carle. I like the variation on the standard matching pairs game, where instead of finding identical images you need to find associated images, for example a bat and a cave, or a penguin and an iceberg.For Top 5 Creative Apps, check out my article on MyKidCraft here What are your favourite Apps for preschoolers? Please share your suggestions via the comments forum.