11 cool STEM apps for kids

Science, technology, engineering and math are the future. Get your little one on the right track with these fun and educational STEM apps.

By Davina Sinnatamby

Updated May 09, 2017

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STEM apps – new

Hopscotch

This app lets your little coder learn with easy-to-follow tutorial and immediately apply what she’s learned by making her own art and games. Best of all, she can publish her video game and start playing it right in the app! Free, itunes.ca

SimpleRockets

Young budding scientists can create their own rockets and blast them into space all while exploring the solar system in this cool game. $4, itunes.ca

Noticing Tools

This suite of iPad apps makes learning science and math exciting by getting kids moving, collaborating and creating awesome projects. Free, noticing.nysci.org

Swift Playgrounds by Apple

Coding is the language we’ll all need to survive in our increasingly tech-centric world—and Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app is the perfect way to get kids interested in learning to code. In this iPad app, kids guide characters through an immersive graphical world, solving puzzles and mastering challenges—all by working with Swift, the programming language from Apple that’s used by app developers around the world.

itunes.ca, free, AGES 7+

The Robot Factory by Tinybop

This open-ended building game lets kids create the robot of their dreams: robot cats, robot samurais and even robots with tentacles! The sky’s the limit with 100 parts and nine colour schemes to choose from. Your little inventor can make her invention dance and record her own robot sounds, too.

itunes.ca, $6, (AGES 6+)

Odd Bot Out by Martin Magni

Meet Odd. He’s a one-eyed robot who failed a standardized test and got sent to the factory’s recycling bin. He needs your kid’s help to escape! He needs to be guided through 100 unique rooms filled with puzzle games, like building a bridge, designing a car and hitching a ride on a robotic centipede.

googleplay.com, itunes.ca, $3, (AGES 4+)

Crazy Gears by Seven Academy

Welcome to Crazy Gears, a digital playground based on the theories of mathematician and computer scientist Seymour Papert. Young learners must manipulate chains, pulleys and gears to pull themselves into the next level. There’s more than one solution—kids can challenge themselves to find the most efficient one.

itunes.ca, $4, (AGES 6–8)

Attributes by Math Doodles

This puzzle game lets kids explore math concepts through patterns. Challenges include grouping things according to similar characteristics, completing pattern sequences, and comparing and contrasting using a Venn diagram.

itunes.ca, $4, (AGES 9–11)

Thinkrolls 2 by Avokiddo

Get rolling in this cool game that combines fun with physics and logic. Kids can guide their colourful Thinkrolls through vertical mazes by moving the objects around them—expand an accordion to create a bridge or use a barrel to float across water. They can even teleport though walls by choosing the right wormhole. With more than one solution, this game encourages kids to learn through trial and error.

googleplay.com, itunes.ca, $4, (AGES 3–9)

The Everything Machine by Tinybop

The Everything Machine teaches your little genius about programming and circuitry while they create their own inventions using the hardware and sensors already inside your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Kids can combine the camera, microphone, speakers and screen to make a stop-motion camera, a voice disguiser, a kaleidoscope and more. Then they can save their machines to use every day. For more fun, kids can connect other devices and create more complex machines with friends.

itunes.ca, $4, (AGES 6+)

Robot School Programming for Kids by Next Is Great

R-obbie Robot crashed his spaceship. He needs lots of energy to return to his home planet. Players have to guide R-obbie through 45 levels of coding challenges to reprogram their new friend to move to a nearby battery so he can refuel.

itunes.ca, $5, (AGES 7+)