Ten Best iPhone Apps For Distracting Young Children

We've all been there. You're in the grocery store, or doctor's office, or a restaurant and you need a five minute distraction for your toddler. And if you're a dad or mum on-the-go who doesn't keep a spare stuffed animal in their pocket, you're usually relegated to whatever you have handy. If one of those things is an iPhone or an iPod Touch, then you may not realize it or not, but you've got a wealth of toddler distractions just waiting to be explored.

I've combed through the iTunes Application store and tested out what I think are the ten best applications you can use to distract your young child. The emphasis here is on the word "young." I only included things that would be good for pre-school aged kids, which means I didn't pick any games or anything that would have a learning curve. I also didn't pick anything that required your child to shake the iPhone. It's one thing to hand over your $300 telephone to a two year old, it's another to hand it over and encourage them to shake it.

So here they are, in no particular order:

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Preschool Adventure ($0.99, 3DAL, LLC.):
Preschool Adventure is one of the few on this list that was written specifically for pre-school aged kids. It's an app that has four smaller activities inside of it: Colors, Shapes, Sounds and Body. With all of them, you touch the screen to make something appear and sound. So for instance, in the colors app, your child touches a splash of a color, and then a sea creature appears saying the name of the color and the name of the creature ("Pink Sea Animone" is, admittedly, kind of a mouthfull for children). I found the app to be very simple but engaging for a pre-schooler, and my two year old loved it.

Bubble Wrap (Free, Orsome Software):
Bubble Wrap is one of those adult time-wasters that can double as a diversion for your kid. The app itself is simple – you just get a field of bubbles like you were holding a sheet of bubble wrap. Then you touch each bubble to make it pop. As soon as you start, there is a timer to see how many you can pop in sixty seconds, but your kids will undoubtedly ignore that and just enjoy popping the bubbles.

Midomi (Free, Melodis Corp.):
Midomi is a distraction for your kids that you'll have to do with them, so it won't buy you any time, but it's cool nonetheless. Midomi is an application that will identify any song it hears, whether it is on the radio, being played live, or your own singing or humming. It's pretty amazing when you first try it, as it's quite adept at figuring out your tuneless humming. My kids and I had loads of fun thinking up songs and singing them into it to see if it could recognize the tune. Even better is listening to some of the songs it thinks you're trying to hum (especially the songs in Japanese).

YouTube (free, with iPhone):
Everyone who has an iPhone has the YouTube application built in, so some may think this one is a cop-out, but in reality it's one of the great diversions on the iPhone. This is how you get the most out of it. Get a free YouTube account, and in your free time (you are reading this after all) go and search for videos you think your kids will love. Mark all of those videos "favorites" and then when you log into YouTube on your iPhone, go right to your favorites and start playing them. I loaded my favorites with videos of Disney songs, and I can get both of my girls (2 and 4 years old) silent for the length of each song.

Scribble (Free, Zintin Software):
This one is kind of self-explanatory. Scribble is a simple app that lets you draw on the iPhone screen. You can choose colors and draw whatever you can manage to get on the screen. Better than drawing though, I've found it good for quick games of tic tac toe or getting my four year old to practice writing her name.

Vehicles ($0.99, iFRizzo.com):
I don't have boys, but this one is clearly for those of you with little XYs running around. Vehicles is a soundboard of all the cars, trucks and plane sounds they could fit onto one screen of the iPhone. The sounds themselves (cars, police cars, fire trucks, airplanes etc.) are about two or three seconds in length depending on which one you choose and can be played over each other for a true sounds-of-the-city symphony.

Koi Pond ($0.99, The Blimp Pilots):
This app is deceptively simple but mesmerizing to adults and children just the same. When you launch Koi Pond, you get a screen with Koi fish swimming underwater, with tranquil outdoor sounds playing in the background. When you touch the screen, the app makes it look like you are touching the water they are swimming in. This naturally makes the fish swim away, so you have to wait until they unwittingly swim again into your view. There are lilly pads to move around and food to feed them too (when you shake the iPhone food appears – thereby breaking my "no shake" rule) which makes them swim back into view more quickly. I know, it sounds really simple and boring, but both of my girls were fighting over the iPhone for a half hour the other day so they could see the fish.

Rulla (Free, LIngon i Korg Software Creations):
This one is a little odd, but kind of fun for a toddler who is learning to read. Rulla (terrible name) is a simple app that makes a message crawl across your iPhone screen, kind of like a news ticker. I think the original intention was to have a way club kids could shoot a message to each other across the
dance floor, but my kids loved thinking up funny messages to "make the phone say." It started with their names and ended up with "Daddy is a kitty cat."

Color Tilt ($0.99, IMAK Creations):
This one is kind of like Scribble, but is way cooler. It's an app that lets you draw by bringing your finger across the screen, but the color you're drawing in is determined by which way you are tilting the iPhone. It's a great use of the iPhone's capabilities, making any scribble look cool. And quite frankly, scribbling is about all you're going to get out of a two year old anyway.

Bubbles (Free, Hog Bay Software):
Bubbles isn't the same as Bubble Wrap, although it may seem like it. Instead of a static page of bubbles, with this app you draw your finger across a blank screen to create the bubbles. Then, as they fall down the screen you pop them with your finger. Simple, but interesting enough to stop a toddler crying in a shopping cart, believe me.

Photos (free, with iPhone):
Photos might be the eleventh suggestion, but everyone gets it with an iPhone (or any iPod for that matter), but in some ways I saved the best for last. The Photos app is the one slam dunk that my kids always want to use. Looking at pictures of themselves, friends and family always quiets them down, and it's gotten to the point that when my two year old sees me with my phone she asks to look at pictures. The trick to it though is to load it up with pictures you've been taking with your regular digital camera, not the iPhone. The pictures will look better and you'll always have more of them.

So there they are. If you have any suggestions or great finds yourself, please let us know in the comments below and happy distracting!