Early childhood and elementary school learning involves more than reading, writing and arithmetic. Young minds develop within young bodies, so it is never too early to foster an appreciation of physical wellness. These apps best teach nutrition, fitness and the human body to young children.
Discover Your Body HD (iPad $2.99)
Discover Your Body HD is colorful, kid-friendly, and intuitive app for children. Without much assistance they will explore the human body from the biceps to the trachea to the spinal cord. Detailed models are age appropriate, and there is enough variety to keep children engaged. The sound effects are perfect for reinforcing content without being too noisy. Discover Your Body HD has games for assembling body parts into a cartoon girl or body. Children can also move parts of the human body to their correct spots to demonstrate their understanding. The games are easy to play but involved enough to keep the attention of older elementary school students. With plenty of activities and interactive items to explore, this app will have a great shelf life with your kids.
Fitness Kids (iPad $2.99)
Fitness Kids teaches children how much fun it can be to be active, by offering examples and motivation for 25 different exercises. The colorful backgrounds and fun music offer a stimulating experience while the real-life examples act out the poses for each level. We love that this app gears specifically to childhood activities like crab-walk and wheelbarrow, while staying organized enough to offer educational value. This app could be improved by an easier-to-use interface. Kids will keep coming back as their abilities grow as there are several different difficulty levels. The training portion of the app keeps track of progress so you can keep an eye on how they are progressing.
Coach's Eye (iPad $4.99)
Coach's Eye enables students to record each other performing a skill or activity using the built-in camera on the iPad. The video can then be played back in slow motion so that students and teachers are able to collaborate and analyze the video to provide ways to improve. Having the ability to replay the video of their movement over and over again gives the student a better understanding of their skill level than just simply being told. Coach's Eye also provides notation tools that can be used during playback, and then saved to the camera roll and exported. Coach's Eye can be a great tool to use for pre - and post-assessments.
Toca Doctor HD (iPad $2.99)
This app teaches just the basics of how the body works, through puzzles. Your kids can mend broken bones, kill infections, and navigate the digestive path - all presented with fantastic eye-catching art. What we love best about this app is the easy-to-use interface and stunning animated graphics. With 21 minigames in all, your child will have depth of options to choose from and explore. It's designed perfectly for kids starting from a very early age, and offers enough of a depth of puzzles to keep them interested, while teaching an overview about the human body.
Eat-And-Move-O-Matic (Free iPad)
Eat-And-Move-O-Matic is a fantastic app for elementary school students. Children can figure out how many calories are in common food items, and how much time they would have to spend walking, swimming, or biking to burn those calories. Full of interesting facts and simple illustrations, Eat-And-Move-O-Matic is the perfect way to help children make healthy choices. Besides being a great conversation starter, Eat-And-Move-O-Matic will help children think about choosing healthy foods and how to get moving. It's colorful, easy to use, and intuitive. The message comes across right away.
Educational apps featured in this article were curated by appoLearning Experts Monica Burns, Chantelle Joy Duxbury and Karen Marshall.