Fun Educational apps for children that are actually worth their cost

Fun Educational apps for children: Finding the blinking things!

Love them or hate them – tablets, phablets, smartphones and smart-boxes are everywhere. Kids tend to love them, and with the best will in the world, screen time that kids have does tend to be at an all time high. For example, most households will have at least 4-5 smart enabled devices within the family. But are there any decent fun educational apps for children out there?

I absolutely hate the minefield of apps, app permissions, adverts, reviews and free vs paid options on most app platforms. Pretty much I’d download 10 apps hoping for something decent for the kids only to delete 9 of them because they weren’t up to scratch.

So wouldn’t it be nice if you knew there was a startup company that was actively engaged in making quality fun educational apps for children?  Trying to make a difference and providing a software option that not only worked (heaven’s above!) but attempted to link fun, creativity, and games along with educational content?

Well, maybe it’s here…

Fun Educational apps for children: Introducing Hopster

I was lucky enough to stumble across a group of dad bloggers looking to test out a service that suggested it would offer the qualities mentioned above. The service goes by the name of Hopster. It’s an app that includes an ever-increasing and evolving range of music, videos, games and creative endeavours for kids.

The service offers free apps on many platforms including big smart TV boxes and also tablets. Though strangely, it is not yet widely available on some tablets – including Amazon Fire tablets. Strange, because in my opinion, these tend to be the cheapest, most reliable and most practical tablets for children.

Once you’ve installed the app you’ll be able to sign in and try a limited version of the service. You can then choose from 3 packages – as behind the app is a subscription model. Don’t panic about the idea of a subscription as they offer a 7-day free trial in all of their subscription options. At the moment Hopster is offering a boosted 1 month FREE to readers of my blog, so to get this current 1-month free trial offer use the following Hopster discount code.

Fun Educational apps for children: How Hopster stacks up

*Most* parents will have had, at some point, the CBeebies apps installed on smart tech. The offering from Hopster feels a little bit like this in the sense it provides a colourful, narrated suite of sections and activities. All of which, of course, is without adverts!

Now the sections are always growing and changing, but broadly speaking the sections are split into educational games, creatives and popular education TV series/episodes.

If you’re a fan of children’s TV with an educational twang to it like, Blaze & The Monster Machines, Dora The Explorer or Amazon’s Tumble Leaf. Then you’ll love the offering from Hopster – a great mix of new and old (very old in some cases). All relevant today. In our household, Little Savvy (aged 4) delighted in the episodes from The Monster Math Squad. Forgive some of the series choices and their Americanisms, but overall they’re good offerings.

Games offer a good range of problem-solving, cause and effect, base literacy and questioning. Plus the creative suite is a firm favourite here too.

After free trials, the monthly base cost is £3.99 per month. When you consider most Kid’s entertainment TV packs are more than that, with Hopster you do genuinely seem to get good value for money. Used in combination with other software and offerings for boosting your child’s reading and learning, it’s really a great option to consider.

The target range for the app, I believe, is around 2 to 6 years. And I think they’ve pretty much got that right. Most 6-year-olds will probably be jumping to other options at their age though.

Subscribing for a year takes the monthly cost down to £2.92, so if you like what you see, that’s certainly a bulk option. Overall, I’m really impressed and I’ll continue to tweet or post on Facebook as my son continues to use the service.

Great Start Hopster.

For those looking to boost their child’s learning through apps and tech, look into my savvy ways to help your child read articles.

DISCLOSURE: Whilst this is not a paid article, the kind people at Hopster provided me with access to their service free of charge. However, as always, the views expressed in this article are my own opinions and findings.