The Best Educational Apps For 8-Year-Olds

As any parent would agree, 8-year-olds are full of energy and curiosity. At this young age, their brains are filled with new ideas and a thirst for knowledge. They can easily learn new skills and develop crucial foundational concepts in math, science, arts, and music. 

According to experts in science and education, this time in a person’s life is the most conducive for learning. With the right approach, you can inculcate a lifelong love for learning in your child.

8-year-olds have keen observation skills and are quick visual and auditory learners. They absorb information from their environments, and this young age is perfect for developing fundamental skills and supplementing their primary education.

Given today’s tech-savvy societies, many young children are exposed to smart devices like mobile phones and tablets. The best way to spend time with these devices is to make use of educational apps to lay down a foundation for future curriculums and build crucial soft skills.

Whether you’re a busy parent who wants to keep their children occupied or actively wants them to develop great foundations for creativity and self-expression, educational apps can be helpful. 

These apps allow your kids to have fun while learning and help them hone important developmental skills. To save you the trouble, we’ve compiled a list of the Best Educational Apps for 8-year Olds across iOS and Android.

1. Adventure Academy:

Adventure Academy features an open-ended exploration-based learning system and is our top choice for your 8-year-old to master key elementary learning objectives.

The app is an interactive learning program for kids and has a large collection of educational games, books, learning challenges, and more, all designed to help strengthen children’s skills. Your kids can discover and play thousands of learning activities to help boost abilities across many subjects, including math, language arts, reading, science, and social studies.

Adventure Academy was created by teachers and early learning education experts with a curriculum-first approach for kids in the 2nd grade all the way up to the 5th grade. This app is also great for homeschoolers, as it makes learning easy with bite-sized lessons and is perfect for learning on the go.

As your child continues on their journey through Adventure Academy, they can also earn amazing rewards for their accomplishments. Hundreds of clothing items, hairstyles, and looks in-game give a seemingly unlimited number of choices to customize their character. Also, they can earn their own 3D virtual home within the game that can be decorated with items.

The game also makes it easy for your kids to share their amazing experiences and adventures with their friends in a safe and secure environment. One account lets your play simultaneously with up to three other scholars on your individual smartphone, tablet, or computer device.

Kids can also complete quests and learning challenges with their friends to level up and advance their character’s abilities. This promotes collaboration and healthy competition, which makes kids enjoy learning.

The app is also 100% kid-safe and features a simple UI that provides kids with a stress-free learning and playing environment. Parents can also monitor progress, control the level of interaction through filtered chat, or block in-game communication entirely.

Trusted by teachers and designed by early learning education experts, Adventure Academy provides a safe learning environment for students and is a great choice for your child to learn.

Adventure Academy interface

The Good:

• Curriculum-first approach with fun lessons and adaptive difficulty for all ages
• Provides detailed progress reports and analytics to parents

The Not-so-good:

• After the free 30-day trial, the app requires a subscription to use

Available on: iOS, Android

2. Math Tango:

MathTango is a math learning app that makes learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division fun for kids aged 5-10 and is great for your 8-year-old. Your kids will learn with greater efficiency thanks to a unique, classroom-tested combination of math puzzles and classic “world-building” activities found in games. 

Your kids will progress through hundreds of math lessons as they earn monsters, complete missions, build out their own unique worlds, and discover even more fun and surprises along the way. And you can be sure that while they’re having great fun, they’re also learning!

The app features over 500 addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division puzzles covering more than 40 math levels, followed by review levels with more math puzzles for lesson reinforcement and advanced play.

The lesson plan wizard generates a customized, age-appropriate curriculum for every user. This ensures learning is stress-free for your child. The Common Core-based curriculum dynamically adapts, so a child advances only when they have mastered the current lesson.

Addition and subtraction lessons include nine unique puzzle game types that cover numbers and counting, patterns, odd and even numbers, addition, subtraction, and regrouping. Multiplication and division lessons include seven different puzzle game types that cover multiplying by various factors.

The gameplay is structured around two worlds, namely Island and Starbase. Each world has never-ending missions that are completed to earn unique characters and dozens of in-game items to customize the worlds.

The app provides parents with a 7-day free trial to test out that app before paying. With a premium subscription, you can fully enjoy the entire app even when the device is offline. Multiple user profiles on each device allow the entire family to learn at their own pace.

Math Tango interface

The Good:

• Fully fleshed-out math curriculum with fun lessons and adaptive difficulty for all ages
• Contains no ads and is KidSAFE Certified

The Not-so-good:

• Limited access without a premium subscription

Available on: iOS, Android

3. IXL:

IXL is a personalized learning app for your kids. This app has a large active community of students and is proven to accelerate student achievement by letting them master different academic skills anytime, anywhere.

IXL’s full curriculum of over 8,000 skills lets students of all levels learn the exact topics they need, whether they’re reviewing past concepts or exploring new territory. Immediate feedback and step-by-step explanations help students work through their mistakes and make lasting progress.

Preschoolers can use their curriculum all the way up to 12th grade. Maths starts from skip-counting with pictures and goes up to graphing quadratic functions. Young learners can interact with dynamic problem types that bring each concept to life. 

This app also helps build strong readers and writers. From comprehension to composition, IXL breaks down each concept into highly targeted skills that help students grow at their own pace. All the questions engage students as they learn new vocabulary, correct grammar mistakes, analyze text, and strengthen their writing skills.

As parents, this app provides you with real-time diagnostic pinpoints about your child’s current knowledge level in math and English. As students answer questions, they’ll receive personalized recommendations on the best skills to learn next!

Interactive features include drag-and-drop questions, graphing tools, handwriting recognition, and more. Colorful awards highlight your child’s accomplishments and make learning fun!

Parents and educators can view reports on all progress on the website and use analytics to tackle any trouble spots. Your kids can continue learning as question difficulty adapts to challenge students at just the right level and help them grow.

The app lets your kids practice ten questions each day for free. With a premium subscription, you’ll get access to a fully personalized learning experience with a comprehensive curriculum, meaningful guidance, and progress tracking.

IXL Interface

The Good:

• Fully fleshed-out curriculum with fun lessons and adaptive difficulty for all ages
• Provides detailed progress reports and analytics

The Not-so-good:

• Limited access without a premium monthly subscription

Available on: iOS, Android

4. Bookbot Phonics:

If your kids are having a hard time with reading, don’t worry! You can give your child a boost with Bookbot, a virtual reading assistant that will listen to your child read aloud, helping them along the way.

This app contains a vast library of free books from a variety of genres and has something for everyone. By reading aloud and learning with the playful book bot, your child will gain valuable confidence as their reading skills improve.

Parents can customize their child’s book bot avatar, personalize their profile, and select a reading level in the setup menu. This level ranges from A to F and determines the difficulty level of the reading material. The best part is that this difficulty changes adaptively as your child’s real-time reading skills improve.

Bookbot listens to your child read out loud, giving feedback as they go. The library contains hundreds of phonics books to build reading confidence. Words and syllables are spoken to help pronunciation, and words are highlighted as they’re read.

This read-aloud method is a proven approach that dramatically improves fluency and accuracy. The app also awards your child with stamps as they progress to boost morale and encourage them to read more. 

Bookbot has been developed by a team passionate about creating a learn-to-read app that is based on scientifically proven techniques. Using a phonics-based approach endorsed by numerous reading experts, Bookbot will help develop your child’s reading confidence at their own pace. 

Bookbot interface

The Good:

• Hundred of illustrated books with a read-along feature
• Kid friendly with no ads or additional purchases 

The Not-so-good:

• Contains in-app purchases

Available on: iOS, Android

5. Khan Academy Kids:

Experts in early childhood education thoughtfully designed this award-winning app to guide young learners on a journey to learn key skills in math, reading, phonics, writing, social-emotional development, and more.

Khan Academy Kids includes thousands of lessons, activities, books, and games that are ideal for your child. The app is perfect for learning at home or in school. Parents can choose lessons from the app’s library for their kids or use the personalized learning path that automatically adjusts to each child’s level.

Once you open the app, you can complete a free email signup and customize features for your kids. The app contains 15 books to teach kids important skills like empathy, self-confidence, problem-solving and appreciating different cultures and perspectives.

The app’s contents follow a robust curriculum that covers reading and literacy along with phonics, letters, spelling, and comprehension. Math skills include counting, numbers, addition, subtraction, shapes, and measuring.

The various puzzles found throughout the app put an emphasis on building logic, focus, memory, and problem-solving skills. The vast collection of activities, books, and videos lets kids read on their own or follow along with recorded audio narration.

Teachers can also use this app in a classroom environment to quickly and easily find lessons by standard, make assignments, and monitor student progress through a suite of teacher tools. This app is perfect for 8-year-olds to polish their academic skills and move on to more advanced concepts.

The best part is that Khan Academy Kids is completely free, with no ads and no subscriptions necessary. With its constantly updated library of songs, videos, and lessons, this is the perfect educational app for your young ones to develop foundational skills.

Khan Academy Kids interface

The Good:

• Five whimsical characters encourage children to think and learn
• Kid friendly with no ads or additional purchases 

The Not-so-good:

• Some issues with difficulty scaling as your child progresses

Available on: iOS, Android

6. BrainGymJr:

BrainGymJr offers daily brain games on mathematics, English, and real-world skills with customized difficulty levels for your child. Children between the ages of 5-12 will enjoy learning with over sixteen gamified formats, including crosswords, grid questions, and audio stories.

BrainGymJr reinforces class concepts and teaches real-world knowledge learned in school through application and problem-solving. Your children will receive a fresh set of exercises on topics ranging from math and English to real-world skills every single day.

These exercises come in fun and engaging formats, helping kids develop a problem-solving approach. Unlike worksheets, there are instant answers and explanations on attempting each question. Additionally, this app contains more than 30,000 educational games & stories for practice.

Every child is unique and has a different level of understanding when it comes to academics. Hence, this app’s program is tailored to each child’s ability by setting the difficulty levels from 1-15 for each subject. Instead of standard worksheets, daily puzzles are sent based on your child’s unique abilities.

The app rewards regular participation and accurate performance with points, badges, winning certificates, and global leaderboard scores. Your kids will also unlock rewards in the BrainGymJr shop.

Fresh puzzles are shared daily, and correct answers earn more points. This motivates children to practice every single day. Kids can also collect points and redeem them to take jump tests and race to the next level.
It helps build confidence, improves interactions, and sets the foundation for strong logic, reasoning & critical thinking skills. If you’re looking for an app to help develop a strong your child’s math and language, this is a great choice.

BrainGymJr interface

The Good:

• Supplements school learning with fun puzzles 
• Robust rewards system with certificates and prizes

The Not-so-good:

• Requires a subscription to use after the free-trial

Available on: iOS, Android

7. Thinkrolls Logic Puzzles:

Thinkrolls Logic Puzzles help set your child’s mind into motion with 26 hilarious characters who guide your kids through platformers and physics puzzles.

Your kids will have a blast navigating their Thinkrolls through a series of obstacles in brightly patterned mazes. Each chapter introduces a new object with unique physical properties that kids discover through hands-on manipulation. 

Your children will encounter and use force, acceleration, buoyancy, heat, elasticity, and gravity to get their Thinkrolls where they need to go. This game incorporates a wealth of educational content into a fun platformer adventure.

It appeals to children’s natural curiosity and challenges them with gameplay that fosters creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. There are 104 easy and 103 harder levels organized into eight chapters that gradually build upon successive lessons to strengthen observation, reasoning, problem-solving, spatial cognition, and memory.

As kids try different combinations to clear a path through the maze, they intuitively learn through trial and error. Kids must also plan out their moves in advance, use precise timing and rely on their memory to reunite their Thinkroll friends. 

‘Biscuit’ allows kids to get accustomed to fine motor skills, while ‘Rock’ gives them a crash course in Newtonian physics as they discover that dropping a heavy boulder will generate enough force to break through the ground.

Other chapters like ‘Lift’ feature levels that are a culmination of everything your kids have discovered so far. It has them coordinating all the elements as they synchronize the movements of two different lifts.

The game can be purchased for a one-time payment on both the Appstore and Play Store. The best part is that the game is language-neutral and COPPA-compliant, with no ads or in-app billing.

• Track progress for up to 9 player profiles

Thinkrolls Logic Puzzles interface

The Good:

• Features 207 mind-sharpening puzzles that enhance logic, problem-solving, and memory
• Available in multiple languages and is kid-friendly (COPPA certified)

The Not-so-good:

• The app is not free to use; you must purchase it first

Available on: iOS, Android

8. Hopscotch:

Hopscotch is an iOS-exclusive app that allows young minds to develop creativity through coding and art. Kids can use block codes and sprites to animate their own games.

Aimed at elementary and middle school children, this app is perfect for your 8-year-old and lets them create, play and learn through code. Using this app, your kids can start from scratch and become published game designers!

Hopscotch features detailed video guides to use in a kid-friendly coding environment. Using these, kids can create animations, art, and of course, their very own games. These games feature pre-designed cartoon characters, or you can create your own.

It even teaches kids how to code popular mobile games like Crossy Roads, PokemonGo, and Flappy Bird. As you become a better programmer, Hopscotch will continue to challenge you and can be used all the way into high school.

One of the best features of Hopscotch is the community-based learning environment which promotes collaboration and team skills. Kids can create and share their apps with friends and family or see the code for their peers’ projects. This helps collaborative skills and promotes healthy competition.

Hopscotch is COPPA certified and safe for kids to use. The app does not feature any ads or third-party links and is completely safe for kids. A free 7-day trial lets parents preview the features before committing to a monthly or yearly subscription.

STEM concepts with an emphasis on coding are beautifully merged with colorful illustrations that kids will love. This app is perfect for boosting creativity and providing kids with a solid foundation for coding.

Hopscotch interface

The Good:  

• Free-to-use app
• It contains detailed video tutorials to teach kids coding and animation
• Extensive community-based learning

The Not-so-good: 

• Not available on Android
• Requires a premium subscription after the free trial is over

Available on: iOS

9. ReadingIQ:

ReadingIQ is a comprehensive digital learning library app for kids aged 2 to 12, and it is perfect for your 8-year-old to read and learn. This app is designed by early education experts to align perfectly with your child’s reading ability and grade level. 

This app gives your child access unlimited access to thousands of? leveled books for learning and follows widely adopted leveling standards for preschool through 6th grade. The entire collection has been expertly curated by teachers and librarians, with content across all genres.

The ReadingIQ app features thousands of books, including award-winning titles and childhood classics from popular publishers, as well as the entire ABCmouse library. This ensures everyone finds something they enjoy reading and can learn at their own pace.

ReadingIQ’s unique features intelligently organize various book titles to make it easy for your child to find the perfect book to match his or her interests. They can choose from picture books, graphic novels, popular series, chapter books, and nonfiction titles on every academic subject! 

ReadingIQ is like an anywhere, anytime personal learning library that helps your child grow as a reader. In fact, according to research, reading just ten pages per day can help in increasing your child’s reading proficiency by up to 10%.

You can also find exclusive ABCmouse titles on this app. The reading level lets you find age-appropriate books that your children will love to read and learn from. It aligns with the school curriculum and is great for homeschooling as well.

Lastly, the app also has engaging comprehension quizzes to help measure and test your child’s reading skills from time to time. If you’re looking to learn different languages, the app also contains hundreds of books in Spanish for all reading levels.

The app gives parents detailed stats and allows for easy tracking and monitoring of their child’s progress. The UI is clean and simple, and the app provides a 100% safe and kid-friendly environment for your child to explore.

ReadingIQ interface

The Good:  

• A kid-safe environment with no ads or third-party links
• Book titles are available for all reading levels, and different languages too

The Not-so-good: 

• Requires a premium subscription after the free 30-day trial is over

Available on: iOS, Android

10. SplashLearn:

With its unique approach to learning math and reading through fun games, SplashLearn is a great app for your 8-year-old to learn and grow! This app promises to inspire a lifelong love for learning with its carefully selected curriculum suited for kids from Preschool all the way to Grade 5.

One of its many features includes a vast library of 4000+ reading and math games, educational activities, and books. These cover fundamental topics necessary for overall academic development.

SplashLearn also provides you with personalized daily growth plans for your child to make learning effortless. This ensures they always feel comfortable and can learn at their own pace.

New educational activities, books, and stories are added regularly to keep the content fresh. The app also uses motivating rewards and narrative-driven reading and math games to make learning fun.

The math is arranged by age group and allows your child to supplement their elementary education. Addition and subtraction strategies, place value, telling time, flipping coins, and rotating the clock are some of the topics covered. Older kids can learn new concepts such as multiplication, division, and fractions.

Reading is another fun adventure that is conquered from the basics; everything from phonics to sight words, books to stories, and reading comprehension, this app enables kids to read their first book within weeks.

Your kids will learn essential literary skills like letter sounds, the alphabet, spelling, sight words, and phonics. The app also has a variety of bedtime stories and books, so it becomes a daily habit for your kids.

You can try out their learning program over a free 7-day trial period. After the trial, users must subscribe on a monthly or annual basis to continue using the app. Overall, this is a solid learning experience for young kids to practice and develop math and reading skills through fun learning activities.

SplashLearn interface

The Good:

• Kid-friendly UI and safe design with no ads
• Curriculum-based learning that complements school education

The Not-so-good:

• After the free 7-day trial, users are required to subscribe to a premium membership

Available on: iOS, Android