12 Best Android Apps for Kids 2012
1. ABDUCTION!
Imagine for a moment that you are a cow and your cow friends have been abducted by aliens. Now it’s up to you to save them! Follow the platform trail as you hop ever higher upwards into space, grabbing power-ups and rescuing friends as you go. Watch out for parachute bombs and other hazards. Destroy the mothership if you can, and make sure you don’t fall.
Best part of Abduction? You can set it to kids mode which prevents the cow from ever falling. Why don’t more platform games do this? It’s great for frustration-free learning.
2. FRUIT NINJA
Use your finger as a blade to swipe and slice various pieces of fruit that fly up in the air in this juicy action game. In classic mode, you also have to avoid the bombs. It’s very simple, but the best things often are — also no gore and questionable ethics!
At the end of every round, you are served a Sensei’s Fruit Fact such as “In some parts of the world, trained monkeys are used to harvest coconuts!” Sweet.
3. JEWELLUST
A connect-three puzzle game with an ancient Egyptian flavor. Swap and line up matching jewels to burst them and collect tiles before time runs out. Advance through 30 levels in 7 pyramids and choose from survival and story mode.
Compete on leaderboards, if that’s your thing, or just entertain yourself and your kids when you have a spare moment.
4. DOODLE JUMP
The insanely addictive platform jumping game is now available on Android. Tilt your device left and right to make the Doodler jump from platform to platform, avoiding the brittle brown logs that break and make you plummet earthward. You can even exit the right side of the screen and come in on the left.
Jump, jump, jump your way to the top and try not to think about the many hours you’re spending doing it. This too shall pass.
5. GEOCACHING
Geocaching is hands down the most fun you can have with a smartphone. People hide small trinket-filled boxes all over the world, and upload the coordinates to a website. You use your phone to navigate to the hidden boxes (called caches). When you find one, take a trinket and leave a trinket and sign the log.
Sound easy? Sometimes it is. Other times not so much. It’s not a cheap app, but it’s the most fun you can have for $10 and you’ll use it over and over again. What kid (or adult, for that matter) doesn’t love a treasure hunt? Try it.
6. LABYRINTH
The classic maze-navigation game of your youth has come to the Android. Control a steel ball by tilting a wooden labyrinth, but don’t fall in the holes along the way. It has over 1,000 levels, so you won’t run out of gameplay options anytime soon.
Try the free lite version first, to see if your kids warm to it. If they do, download the paid version.
7. MONKEY PRESCHOOL LUNCHBOX
Introduce your toddlers to colors and letters from home well before preschool. Young children will think this is a game, but moms and dads will feel good in knowing it’s completely educational too.
In each individual game a monkey asks you to complete short tasks like counting fruit, touching the corresponding word that the monkey asks for and matching cards with fruit on them. The goal is to finish these and fill the monkey’s lunch box. When you complete a game the monkey flips and squeals, then sends you on to the next game.
8. ONE FISH TWO FISH RED FISH BLUE FISH – DR. SEUSS
This delightful and much beloved classic comes to life with a few choice interactive touches. Dr. Seuss still poses such ridiculous and enchanting questions as: “Did you ever fly a kite in bed? Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head?” and kids still love it.
They’ll have so much fun, in fact, that they probably won’t even notice they’re learning to read.
9. ANGRY BIRDS
Did you think we were going to skip Angry Birds? No such luck. This hugely popular app has become part of the collective consciousness and with good reason.
First of all, we love the silly story line. Evil green pigs have stolen the birds’ eggs and are now hiding out in their castles. It’s up to your kids to wreak revenge on them using (of course!) little red and blue birds and a giant sling shot. Huh?
There are almost 200 levels of gameplay, so it’s unlikely your kids will ever run out of fortresses to assault. Once they conquer a level, they can re-play it to improve their score. In the (very likely) event they don’t conquer a level on their first try, they can just try again!
10. WORD MIX
Remember the anagram-style word games we all used to play as kids before school vacations? Teachers would hand around dittos that challenged us to make as many words as we could out of a phrase like “Happy Holidays”.
This app does the same. You get a random set of letters and a set amount of time to form as many words out of them as you can. Not only is it fun, it builds vocabulary too.
