Mindless web-surfing doesn’t only kill valuable time; it also distracts kids from their studies. Thankfully, your middle schoolers can get engaged with apps that can help them improve their problem-solving skills and explore their creativity.
Here are six awesome middle school apps that will keep your kids entertained while improving their brainpower. Some of these apps are entirely free, while others offer in-app purchases with various subscription plans.
1. Notability
Notability is one of the simplest middle school apps available, yet its functions are nothing short of amazing. It is designed for taking notes, making it an excellent tool for kids to collect and organize their thoughts on their devices.
With the app, students can digitally jot notes in the class and write down ideas and questions at home so they can remember to ask their teacher in school.
It also lets kids convert handwritten notes to text and even record lectures that they’ll conveniently listen to afterward.
Your kids don’t have to worry about dealing with clutter or losing pieces of paper because all their jottings and sketches are accessible across all their devices. They can even automatically back up their notes to a cloud service for recovery and archiving.
Notability supports Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, and Box. The app is not free, though. Let your kids have full access to all the fantastic functions at only $1.99.
Notability is available only on Mac App Store and is compatible with macOS 10.13 or later.
2. Study Blue
One way to help your children learn quickly is by using flashcards. With the Study Blue app, kids can access up to 400+ million flashcards and resources from over 10 million students, all in the palm of their hands! This is undoubtedly one of the best middle school apps available.
Youngsters can seize every waiting opportunity to quickly learn something new or refresh their memories from their portable companion. They can convert long and boring bus rides or any other wait time into productive study time without feeling like they are studying.
Students can create personalized digital flashcards for free and share them with others, too! They also have the option of adding audio and images to their study materials – just anything to help them learn faster.
On top of it all, middle schoolers can set study reminders, quiz themselves, and even track their progress.
The Study Blue app is available for free on Google Play Store and iOS App Store.
3. Weebly by Square
Weebly is a widely popular mobile app, with over 50 million users across the globe. Young school students can use the intuitive drag-and-drop app to create and share their ideas on their personal blogs or websites right from their iPad or iPhone.
Children can upload images directly from their photo library and choose different design elements to make their websites as impressive as they wish. The educational app is loaded with tons of free, responsive themes to customize websites.
Weebly is available for free on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. Note that Weebly offers in-app purchases for domain name registrations. Parents need to monitor how their middle school student sets up and uses their blogs and websites with this app.
4. Clue Story – Interactive Story with Riddles
Encourage young school children to read and comprehend with Clue Story. The mobile app takes away all the boredom from comprehension so much that kids don’t notice that they are exercising their literary muscles with the interactive stories and riddles.
In this story, kids are the heroes and are in charge of the storyline. They need to overcome hurdles by reading and thinking hard to solve puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers.
The goal is to read through chapters, watch videos, gather clues to solve riddles and do some smart detective work. There are 1,500 free clue points to help kids complete the challenge. In-app purchases for points are available at different prices starting from around $0.99.
Clue Story is available for free download on Google Play Store and iOS App Store.
5. Elevate – Brain Training Games
Keep your kids’ brains extra sharp with a set of brain training games from one of the most powerful middle school apps available.
Elevate is a collaborative effort of education experts, and the games are based on effective educational techniques. It contains 35 brain games designed to enhance kids’ comprehension skills, cognitive skills, speaking skills, and to improve overall attention.
The brain games are adaptive, so every user can find personalized training that adjusts over time for maximum results. This is a better way for your kids to use their pastime instead of idling away with unhelpful video games.
Elevate comes as a free app on Google Play Store and iOS App Store. There’s also a premium version with different subscription options. There’s a 7-day free trial to test the app and decide if it’s something you want for your middle schooler.
6. Black Blue
Young students can stay busy for hours with the Black Blue simplistic but powerfully entertaining app. Kids can play the puzzle game by themselves or with each other on a single screen.
There are no eye-catching characters in this educational game. Instead, it is a minimalistic game focused on helping children to hone their problem-solving skills.
The app includes calming music and the echo of beautiful sound effects to help users relax and focus on the task at hand. It has 72 hand-crafted levels, so there are many puzzles to keep kids’ minds busy for a long time.
Black Blue is available at about $1.5 and offers in-app purchases. Download the app from Google Play Store or iOS App Store.
Conclusion
Mobile apps are the way to go if you’re looking to improve your middle schoolers’ comprehension abilities, problem-solving skills, or you want to help them organize their thoughts and notes. After all, they spend quite a significant amount of time on their devices and computers.
Make learning fun for them with these apps, instead of wasting time with entertainment that doesn’t improve their brainpower.
