Caregiver Resources

Apps for Kids

Homer is a personalized learning app designed to help kids ages 2-8 fall in love with learning. There are over 1,000 learning activities across all subjects, and the content is tailored to your child's age and interests. HOMER is an early learning software designed to help children develop their critical thinking skills. It features a variety of interactive lessons, stories, and activities that are tailored according to the student’s individual skills, age, and interests. Because the lessons are tailored to your child’s interests and abilities, not to mention they’re fun and entertaining, the app keeps their attention and ensures their screen time is productive.

codeSpark is a fun, engaging coding app that teaches kids basic problem solving, critical thinking skills, creativity, and a host of other valuable skills. Kids will enjoy playing on the app, not even realizing how much they're learning along the way as they get prepared for the world of tomorrow.  With an intuitive, word-free interface, kids can learn to code before they even know how to read.

Tynker is another fun and exciting way for kids to learn coding while developing problem solving skills. The platform offers a number of courses, activities, and puzzles to help kids learn coding basics while having fun. Tykner’s unique curriculum makes it so any age or skill level can learn to code starting with simple block coding courses and progressing to a variety of popular text-based languages, including Python, Javascript, HTML/CSS, and more.

Night Zookeeper is a highly rated online learning program helps kids with reading and writing, and unleashes their full creativity. Aimed at children aged 6+, Night Zookeeper makes reading and writing fun and engaging for kids with their innovative approach to learning. The online program offers a full Language Arts curriculum, which is taught through games, challenges, interactive lessons, collaborative projects and creative writing prompts.

Noggin is an app brought to you from the team at Nick Jr that is designed for kids ages 2-7. It's always-growing library of eBooks features your kids' favorite Nick Jr. characters, letting you read together or turn on narration and let your child explore the book at their own pace. The Noggin app boasts over 1,000 games, activities, eBooks, and more featuring some of the most popular Nick Jr. characters from shows like Paw Patrol, Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues, and more.

Brighterly helps kids learn math in a fun, offering interactive lessons led by expert math tutors with at least 5+ years of teaching experience. This math tutoring app matches your child to the right teacher for their specific needs. Each lesson is about 45 minutes long and ensures your child gets personalized attention as they learn math using custom Brighterly tools, fun games, and engaging activities.

Starfall is a digital learning app for kids that teaches letters, words, and sounds to children in an animated language. This app uses a fantasy-based approach to learning for creating curiosity in children to get more knowledge. Starfall’s teaching method focuses on the development of phonemic recognition, systematic phonics, words, communication, and comprehension.

Duolingo consists of more than 34 languages! And that is just counting the ones that use English as the base language. They are plenty of other base languages along with their subsequent language courses. The best part is Duolingo’s well-targeted and organized lesson plans. Each course has a set of modules, which includes lessons for each level. Once you pass a certain number of modules, the other module will be unlocked.

Busy Shapes is a smart learning app designed to assist toddlers and preschoolers. The app uses AI to strengthen a child’s intelligence and cognitive skills. It features a digital playground full of geometric shapes in different colors and sizes that toddlers can explore and match into their corresponding holes. It is a clever method that encourages the kids to start thinking logically instead of rote learning.

Prodigy is an online interactive mathematics game designed for elementary and middle school students. It assesses students’ proficiency in mathematics while they are immersed in a different fantasy world full of battles, treasures, and characters.

Helpful Websites

• The Children's Book Council: The Children’s Book Council is an association “dedicated to supporting the [reading] industry and promoting children’s books and reading,” making them an awesome resource for finding books students will love. Upon clicking “Find Books,” students are presented with a list of unique book categories to begin their search. Some of these categories include, “Hot off the Press,” “Seasonal Showcase,” and “Outstanding Science.” Another noteworthy feature is their “Kid Lit News,” which provides the latest in news relating to children’s books, such as the yearly What Kids are Reading Report.
   
• Bright By Text: At Bright by Text our goal is to make the most of everyday interactions between parent and child. Our text messaging service delivers actionable information from trusted early childhood experts to parents and caregivers of young children — from prenatal to age eight — to support healthy child development and build strong, resilient families.
   
• Kids in Mind: Movie reviews focused on appropriateness for children.
   
• Common Sense Media: We rate, educate, and advocate for kids, families, and school
   
• What Should I Read Next: When you know you love a book and want to use it to find the next selection. This website uses the previous read to provide a list of related books to select from—all of which will take you to amazon.com for more information. Another helpful tool on this website is the book’s search terms, click-able words that describe themes and ideas from the book, that will lead you to more choices within that category. These terms range from generic, to book specific, to extremely specific.
   
• Goodreads: If you want to find a new book, but don’t have a specific book to start with try Goodreads. Head totheir website and scroll down to “Search and browse books,” click on a specific category (i.e. “Children’s”) and you’ll be presented with books that are “New Releases,” “Most Read This Week,” and “Popular.” The findings can be broken down into additional subcategories. Provides a summary, star rating, reader reviews, and “Readers Also Enjoyed” making it easier to not only to find new books, but see if others actually enjoyed the book as well.
   
• AllReaders: search by author, genre, plot, setting or character. AllReaders is a great way to avoid judging a book by its cover—there are no pictures of any of the books. Each book profile provides a plot synopsis, highlights, plot and theme information, main characters, setting, and writing style. Links will take you to other books with the same themes. The information provided is specific and gives the reader a better idea of the “nuts and bolts” of the book. For example, a 12 year old girl may want to read books about other 12 year old girls. You can browse a list of “Books with storylines, themes & endings like [book you searched]”. Rather than deciding whether or not to read the book based off the synopsis, continue scrolling and see information such as: