Silly Rabbit, Apps Are for Kids!

10 iPhone apps that'll keep your munchkins occupied, entertained, and learning on the go.

We’re not suggesting you buy an iPhone or even an iPod touch for your 6-year-old. But your favorite sidekicks can still get in on the fun--and stay out of your hair--if you dedicate a home screen on your device to apps just for them. To help you fill it, we tracked down the best apps for toddlers and older kids. --Leslie Ayers

Age: 5 to 7 Years

1. Toddler Flashcards ($0.99, itotapps.com) This set of digital flash cards works for tots 18 months and up, but they’ll probably need to be at least 2 to be able to swipe through the flash cards themselves. Each card shows the picture and word for an item--animals, objects, food, shapes, colors, letters, numbers, and so on--and plays audio of a woman clearly saying the word.

2. Old MacDonald ($1.99, duckduckmoosedesign.com) Sure, you could torture yourself playing kiddie music on your car’s stereo. But instead, you should launch Old MacDonald and hand your iPhone back to Junior to listen to the jaunty tune and control this app’s charming touch-sensitive animation. Leaving you blessedly free to enjoy your own music in the front seat.

Many of the elements in Old MacDonald will move (or be moved) when your child taps or swipes parts of the picture.

3. AniMatch ($0.99, limasky.com) We called it Concentration when we were kids, but AniMatch kicks the card-matching game up a notch, challenging your little one to find the identical animal faces--complete with sound effects, of course--on a board of 20 face-down tiles.

4. ABC Animals ($1.99, criticalmatter.com) This app makes learning the alphabet a zoological adventure, assigning an animal to all 26 letters and naming each animal as the child swipes through the letters. Double-tapping turns a letter card over and challenges your child to write the letter in upper- and lowercase on the touchscreen.

5. Make a Martian (free, 3dal.com) No educational agenda here; it’s just fun to build your own many-eyed alien by tapping different body parts on the screen to the left and right of your creation.

6. Preschool Adventure ($0.99, 3dal.com) This app offers six activities to help your preschooler bone up on key pre-K concepts: colors, numbers, shapes, body parts, animal sounds, and the ability to match slices of a picture correctly to make a seamless whole.

Preschool Adventure's undersea scene demonstrates the colors blue, purple, green, orange, pink, and red as seen "in the wild."

Age: 5 to 7 Years

7. iPuzzle Words Transportation ($0.99, portegno-apps.com) Once your kindergartener starts asking you how to spell, well, everything, you can satisfy her thirst for knowledge and expand her vocabulary with this app, in which she’ll rearrange scrambled letters to spell modes of transportation.

8. Curious George Coloring Book ($2.99, pbskids.org) Having this app on your iPhone negates the need to tote coloring books and crayons whenever you eat out. Your little Van Gogh chooses his George pic, then “colors” it in using hues from the palette.

Yeah, George looks a little green here. Chalk it up to artistic license.

9. Glow Doodle ($0.99, oodot.com) With an interface simple enough for an early reader to master, Glow Doodle turns your kid’s idle scribbles into four-color neon masterworks.

Just hope your little scribbler doesn't know how to copy the Coors Light logo.

10. Scoops ($1.99, nimblebit.com) In this accelerometer-based game, your child tilts the device to the left and right to catch scoops of ice cream on a cone, avoiding icky veggies like tomatoes and garlic. The goal is to stack like ice cream flavors, catch rainbow (wild card) scoops, and ultimately get the scoop that’s purple with yellow stars--maybe it’s Star Wars flavor?

Scoops will keep them so occupied in the car they might not notice you're driving by Baskin Robbins.