Excessive screen time is a serious concern among parents today, with many limiting the amount of time that their children spend on smartphones and digital devices. Nevertheless, in a digital age when screens are omnipresent, digital devices can be a powerful teaching aid when leveraged appropriately, reaffirming lessons, improving equity and inclusion, and bolstering home-school connections.
Smartphone apps and games not only help to keep children occupied, by they also encourage them to learn, explore, and express themselves. For parents looking for apps that are not only fun but educational, there are a plethora of options to choose from. In this article, we look at six of the best educational smartphone apps for children in 2025.
1. Bedtime Math
Free to download on iOS and Android, Bedtime Math seeks to do for mathematics what bedtime stories do for literacy: transforming math into a fun bonding exercise between children and their caregivers. The app presents users with a daily math problem to work out with their parents. Each exercise centers around an interesting fact or short narrative, posing questions at four difficulty levels, starting from pre-K through elementary school. One of the few children’s educational apps that have been scrutinized in a peer-reviewed study, Bedtime Math has been shown to significantly boost participants’ math scores, as well as help parents to negotiate their own anxiety surrounding the subject.
2. Duolingo
This well-known language learning app offers free courses in more than 30 languages, presenting fun lessons in which participants can practice listening, reading, writing, and speaking new languages. Interactive games like this provide children with real and creative learning avenues, expanding opportunities to enhance their skills and knowledge, according to a study published in the January 2016 issue of Participatory Educational Research. Providing a fun and interactive app that enables users to practice through word identification, audio, and short, easy exercises, Duolingo is suitable for children aged 10 and over and is free on iOS and Android.
3. Thinkrolls
Thinkrolls is an app that teaches physics and logic through puzzle games. Using fans, gear, and balloons to help their favorite characters navigate a maze, children can hone their logic and physics skills, as well as develop their problem-solving and critical thinking capabilities. Targeted toward children aged 2 to 8 years old, the app invites participants to unleash their inner genius through more than 2,000 interactive activities and games, offering the perfect blend of education and fun. Thinkrolls encourages children to develop their reasoning skills through the power of play, cultivating a passion for science and math, developing their natural curiosity, and expressing their creativity.
4. Pok Pok
Pok Pok is a Montessori-inspired, low-stimulation game designed for children aged 2 to 7. This simple, calm app incorporates open-ended games covering a range of activities, inviting children to build big cities or invent, design, and playtest toys. Pok Pok is a powerful learning tool designed to empower children to play by their own rules. Recognizing that children learn best when experimenting freely and following their own instincts, Pok Pok helps them to develop cognitive and socio-emotional skills while at play. The game encourages open-ended play without limits. The app does not limit children with rules or center around winning or losing to create addiction or disappointment. Instead, it focuses on exploration, invention, and expression.
5. Gus On the Go
Available for tablets or smartphones, Gus On the Go is tailored to 4- to 6-year-olds. Providing bite-sized lessons in basic vocabulary, this simple yet efficient teaching framework delivers age-appropriate content that is engaging for children, incorporating animal characters and maps. This language learning experience enables youngsters to learn French, Spanish, Hebrew, Greek, or a host of other languages by diving into classic stories with a fun, engaging twist. Children can meet new characters and make them move. Gus On the Go allows them to explore new languages through a fun, familiar story. With 10 interactive lessons, enthralling games, and engaging vocabulary reviews, learning a new language has never been so much fun. Gus On the Go is currently available in 30 languages, including German, Mandarin, Portuguese, Croatian, and Danish.
6. Kahoot! Numbers
Developed by DragonBox, Kahoot! Numbers is available on iOS and Android and is aimed at children aged 4 to 8. The app introduces number sense, addition, and subtraction via cute characters called “Nooms.” Designed to resemble Cusenaire rods, a math learning aid that exposes children to arithmetic operations in a hands-on way, Nooms help users to develop familiarity with addition, subtraction, ranges, and fractions. Targeted toward children aged 6 to 9, Big Numbers invites participants to follow Nooms on more complex adventures, solving long addition and subtraction questions to gather and trade resources. Essentially serving as a digital extension of class-based math manipulatives learning, Kahoot! Numbers helps children to understand theoretical math concepts in an easy-to-digest way. For older children, the developer’s DragonBox series enables them to continue their journey with a game focused on Euclidean geometry and algebra, among other topics.