It can be difficult to figure out what apps are best for your 7-year-old to have on their iPhone or iPad. My 7-year-old just got an iPad and I decided to do some research on what app is appropriate at their age.
What is the best app for a 7-year-old’s iPad or iPhone? At this age, socialization and creativity are key to a child’s development. There are few apps that can be used for that. When choosing an app for your 7-year-old go beyond the simple arcade game. Go for the apps that help express their feelings and unleash the creativity they hold.
Some parents can find it extremely difficult to find apps for their children. Or more so apps that are appropriate for their age and ones that give some real benefit to their learning and development. While it is hard to believe, it is not hard to find an app like that. There are tons of apps available that can be beneficial to your child and their minds!
Best App for a 7-Year-Old’s iPhone
There is an abundance of options to choose from when it comes to games available on an iPad, but there are two that are the most popular. They tend to 7-year-olds specifically, and each game is safe for your child to use under your supervision or without.
Minecraft
You may or may not have heard of this app called Minecraft. It is super popular with kids and even adults. The reason this game is so popular is because of its easy access and fun gameplay. The best part? There are benefits to letting you 7-year-old play this game.
The basics of the game is that you create an avatar that is spawned within a world made of virtual blocks. Your avatar then goes around collecting items to which they can create things such as hammers, axes, shovels, houses, and other simple items that create a life-like experience but through a screen.
Minecraft inspires confident exploration in your child. Unlike many other video games that hold strict rules, Minecraft is like an open environment. To which you can freely roam your virtual world without having to complete any tasks.
Another aspect of this video game is that it prompts creative thinking. The basis of the game falls on the user to build and create their own homes and items. And there is no limit or restrictions to how big they can build their homes, how wide, or how extravagant.
Teamwork is also another great theme the games teaches to those who choose to play. Your child can spend hours playing solo missions throughout the game, but families can be set up onto personal servers so that they can have friends join them in their world.
Of course, there can be some hesitation for parents to let their child participate within multiplayer adventures simply because of the fact that the child may not know who they’re playing with.
(Just make sure to keep watch to who your child plays with on the multiplayer mode.)
But this multiplayer feature can be of good use when it comes to building social skills since children can interact with their friends through this video game.
While I can go on about many other features this game teaches your child, I’ll just list a few more below:
- Teaches problem-solving skills by having them figure out different recipe combinations they need in order to create tools.
- It teaches them resource management because the items you collect are numbered, and every time you use a different resource your number in that item goes down.
- Geometry skills are taught by having to develop spatial awareness within the game. As they build structures with blocks your child will learn quickly what can be possible with six faces of a cube.
If you are wondering about the appropriateness of this game for a 7-year-old don’t worry. This game was rated for people ages seven and up. There is even a version for children ages four and up!
While there are some weapons that children use within the game to fight off monsters the parents can set the game to “Peaceful” mode which eliminates all chances of the child coming up against a monster within the game.
While Minecraft does hold some educational value in its gameplay, it is important to have a game initially designed for your child’s education developement installed into their iPhone or iPad.
Flow Free
This game is designed to be played like a puzzle, as time goes on it increases in difficulty, causing your child to think more critically about their next movie.
The premise of the game is to solve the puzzles, and you have to use spatial reasoning in order to make sure your move helps you win.
The game has over 1,000 free levels you can play on and solve to the best of your ability.
It is important to have games that challenge your child mentally otherwise the value of playing apps on their iPhone becomes more of a waste of time. Instead of a way to challenge them.
Best App for a 7-Year-Old’s iPad
Toca Boca Hair Salon 2
This app is great for any child ages 5 and up. Though it can be especially fun for a 7-year-old girl any child can find fun the app. The Toca Boca Hair Salon app is about choosing one of six people to style their hair.
After they chose their person, the app will then move to a new page where the character is sitting in the stylist’s chair. You child will then be able to choose and play around with the different options the app provides.
A fun detail about the game is how after or even during the styling of the character’s hair they can change facial expressions and even make sounds to how they feel about the style.
That can be quite funny for a little one to experience!
This app is great for children because of the educational value that it has. It helps kids use their imaginations to create hairstyles that maybe you would not necessarily see in real life.
The app has the child make their own decisions about what tools to use or how they want each character’s hair to look like. Throughout this process, they even start to develop some style preferences.
Even begin to learn the use of colour, motion, hair length, and the many fashion accessories they can use on the characters head.
Somethings that parents may want to know about this app and the appropriateness of it would be that it is simply a game about hairstyles. There nothing alarming about it that would have you restrict your child from playing with it.
My little one found this game to be very entertaining and fun to mess with!
Overall, this app is very kid-friendly and easy for them to use. There are a ton of creative routes your child is able to take within this game and they may not even get sick of playing around with it!
While Minecraft does hold some educational value in its gameplay, it is important to have a game initially designed for your child’s education development installed into their iPhone or iPad.
Spell Tower
This is a word game app, it has five different modes to play one and it is called Spell Tower.
This app is great for a wide range of children, they can start up the game by playing on the no-pressure beginning “tower” mode. Though if they feel like they can move on, the mode can be changed to a more challenging setting.
This game can be introduced to your child once they are beginning to read (or even before to help prepare them). The game conditions them to be able to recognize words that they know.
They can play around with language and learn how to spell. Which can make their schooling experience a bit easier in that department.
Related Questions
How long should a child play video games in a day? This depends on the preference a parent has for their child, some may only let their child play a maximum of three hours a day on any video game or digital device. While some parents have no limits at all. Though, there is no positive or negative effect on kids who play 3 hours a day compared to those who play none.
How long should a 7-year-old sleep? It is recommended by the Sleep Foundation that a 7-year-old should sleep about nine to eleven hours a night, but some may not be able to get that amount. So an appropriate time would be seven to eight hour or twelve hours.
