Apps to Help Your Kids Get Ready for Back-to-School

Are you bummed that summer is ending, or ecstatic to be shipping everyone off to school? Either way, implementing some techie tips to get your kids organized not only makes your life easier, but teaches them to take responsibility too. Here are a few apps that will help make the transition back-to-school a little less painful for everyone.

Let Apps Make Learning Fun
Going through flash cards is so boring. Doing math drills on mom’s iPhone is much more fun. Math Drills Lite is a free app for iPhones that lets your kids practice their skills and even time themselves (great for learning those multiplication tables).  Remember Mad Libs from your childhood? Learning pronouns, nouns, adjectives and all that is so much better when you can create funny stories. Making Mad Libs from your device is even more fun — you can even email your creation to others. Mad Libs is free for iPhone and you’ll want to play it too.

Teach Your Kids How Manage their Money
Both of my kids receive an allowance, and we always are in disagreement on how much money each of them has. Worse — I rarely have cash and tend to give them a lot of I.O.U.’s. Bank of Mom for iPhone ($1.99) lets you set up an “account” for each of your kids and track the money they have received or earned. You can also track their TV time and computer minutes – great if two kids share a computer. Older kids can learn about saving and even earn interest.

Reward Your Kids for Good Behavior and Chores
If your kids are more on the “get a star for doing chores and good behavior” path, try the iReward Chart for iPhone ($3.99) to keep it all organized, on you at all times, and to save some money on all those stickers.

How are you getting ready for school this year?

–Angela Skinner Mullen