A list of apps for school-less children

Ireland closed it's schools for January. Some fortunate kids will have school online. Some schools will only give homework, relying on parents to homeschool.
I worked from home when my son was little. I also schooled him part time, at first because there's no public preschool where we lived, then because school rythme wasn't always adapted to him, and some of his teachers were not really interested in teaching him. I taught him to read, multiply, long division, this kind of things.
I did it with books, time, and…apps. Apps don't replace school, but they help along the way.

Computers aren't nice like Maman. If you want to communicate, build, or play, you have to follow the rules, there's no bargaining. It's a marvelous tool for teaching at home, especially if you are a loving and kind parent (stay like that).

Since monsieur E, now almost 14, had an additional vacation week, he volunteered to remember the apps he enjoyed the most, and wrote himself these reviews, with his little friends in mind, who are 6,8, and 10. Thank you!
My comments are in italic.
Click on the game title for a link to the Irish Apple store.

Monument valley:

Ages: 7 to adult included.

Monument valley is a very relaxing game about people with hats, crows, and solving mildly confusing puzzles in terms of perspective. I found it to be very fun when I first played it, but I needed help when beating the later levels. Overall, this game has very cute art, interesting puzzles to solve, and a loose but cute story.

My point of view: We played the first “season” by ourselves, and I helped with the most difficult puzzles. You can find cheat sheets online. The second season we played together, snuggled on the couch with tea and cookies. It's a fantastic game for a quiet time. From an educational point of view, it teaches logic, patience, and to think out of the box.

Terraria:

Ages:9 to apparently, teenagers.

Terraria is less about solving puzzles as it is about fighting big bad monsters. You spend your time in this game building houses for towsnpeople, mining and crafting increasingly crazy weapons, and beating the game’s many bosses(giant monsters that are harder to beat than the regular types). This game also allows you to play with your friends, and I spent(and still spend) a lot of time playing this game with my friends.

Maman says: This is the “playdate” app. Kids need to socialize too! There's a protocol to play online with others, and the kids leaned very fast to also open a phone app to talk while they were playing. You can't have more than 8 players so it's kind of a safety, too. Please supervise online playing closely as a parent (I do). Bonus point: inventories. You have to organize your inventories, keep track of your items. I used it as a metaphor to make my son understand why a bedroom needs to be organized, and why he wasn't allowed to help himself in my studio without asking.

Scratch:

8 to adult

(Online, not iPad, still worth it)

Scratch isn’t really a game as it is a tool for making games. With scratch, you can mostly make any game you can think of, as long as you know how to use the program, which is relatively simple. You can look up tutorials, but most of the basics are very easy to learn. I spent lots of time using this program to make any game I could think of, but most of them were very basic. Overall scratch is a fun program and is very easy to learn, and I had alot of fun with it.

Delphine says : Scratch is an initiative from the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for teaching coding to boys and girls. Knowing how to code helps with logic and math. It also helps to understand how a computer works. I really think that everyone should try, as it's an important way to understand our modern world. The process is similar to LEGO : you learn to code using blocks. As with LEGO, it goes from simple to complex, and is tons of fun. Remember that the best coders in Space history were women, and do teach girls too. Knowing how to code made my life that much better.

Minecraft:

Ages: 8+

Most people already know what this game is, but for anyone who doesn’t, here’s the basic gist of it: Minecraft is a game about building whatever you want. There are 2 main modes: Survival and creative. In survival, you have to gather resources and fight monsters, as well as building your creations. In creative, as the name implies, you can build whatever you want. Once you get bored of those modes, you can look into commands(Coding in minecraft), redstone(mechanics in minecraft), and mods(additions to minecraft, only on computer). Minecraft is a game I still spend alot of time playing today and is a must-have for anyone.

Maman’s point of view: a wonderful construction game, Minecraft teaches a lot of good skills, like understanding 3 dimensions, and how to move in a 3D world. There's a lot to learn an it’s a wonderful creative time for boys and girls. It's nice to have an older kid as a mentor to help a bit at first. It's also nice to have an adult digging in all the secure setups before allowing online playing, and even better to allow only online playing with friends from real life. When all is setup it's a lovely playdate app.

Scribblenauts:

Ages: 6-10

Scribblenauts is a game that is better for younger people, but is very funny and a great learning tool for practicing your spelling. In the main part of the game, you spawn items by typing them in a magic notebook, and use them to solve problems that people have, or puzzles in general. Some of the answers are hilarious and overall this game is quite fun.

Maman’s point of view: Ah, Scribblenauts, I love you so much! You're the easy, fun, and creative path to literacy and spelling. I used to spend hours trying to make my son spell correctly, and he didn't see the point at all…until he played Scribblenauts !

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