This post is sponsored by Lingokids
Kids of all ages learn best through engaging age-appropriate experiences designed to captivate their interests. With over 3,000 activities designed by experts in early childhood education, the Lingokids app features interactive games, songs, and videos that combine play, entertainment, and educational experiences. Keep reading for a full Lingokids review featuring an in-depth look at how the app is a safe, ad-free, interactive way for kids to learn and be entertained at the same time.
About Lingokids
Lingokids PlaylearningTM methodology seamlessly turns screen time into meaningful play to help young kids develop academic and practical life skills. With over 185 million families trying the Lingokids app and engaging more than 20 million kids every month worldwide through its platform (not only the app), Lingokids is the #1 entertainment platform for young kids.
The company continuously updates its educational curriculum that’s designed in-house by early childhood learning experts. Subjects like literacy, STEM, physical activity, socio-emotional skills, daily habits, and more cover 750+ learning objectives through age-appropriate content in one safe, interactive, and ad-free hub.
Lingokids content includes a neurodiversity section for children with autism, ADHD, dyscalculia & dyslexia. Content has been approved by the Child Mind Institute, The Autism Cafe, and multiple experts on neurodiversity.
This multi-IP platform is rich with curated content where beloved characters from globally recognized brands like Mickey and Friends, Moana, Frozen, Blippi, Pocoyo, and more come together with Lingokids original content to providing diverse educational offerings. Current partner companies and organizations include The Walt Disney Company, American Airlines, Moonbug Entertainment, Animaj, BBC Earth, NASA, Oxford University Press, and the World Literacy Foundation.
Since Lingokids makes safe and healthy screen time a priority, the app is ad-free. Parental control features guarantee a 100% safe digital environment for children. It’s also certified by kidSAFE, follows The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and information about game play stays on your device.
Beyond the app, families can enjoy Lingokids content across multiple formats. The platform includes podcasts for kids, physical workbooks, curiosity episodes videos on YouTube, and music available on all major streaming platforms.
Lingokids Review: Opening the App for the First Time
When you open the Lingokids app for the first time, you start by customizing your child’s experience by choosing their age and topics you’d like them to focus on.
I set my child’s age to 4 and selected math, literacy, life skills, art, science, and music. I left English and technology unchecked.
After customizing my child’s experience, I was taken to a payment screen for Lingokids Plus. Lingokids offers a free week as a trial and when it ends, a year is currently priced at $74.99 (normally $191.88) or $15.99/month.
I selected to try Lingokids for a week. Then I was shown a highlight reel of Lingokids content and asked to enter my birthday.
I was also given the option to create a profile to save my child’s progress on all my devices by entering my email, connecting it to my Apple account, or through Gmail. To get started, you can download Lingokids hereand begin customizing your child’s learning experience.
Customizing Learning Through Lingokids
The next screen asked me to enter my child’s first name or nickname. For the purposes of my Lingokids review, content is geared towards a 4 year named Sadie.
Lingokids asked if I wanted to make Sadie’s learning interactive. Through written text on the screen, the app told me “For Sadie to get the most out of Lingokids Plus, enable access to the microphone, camera, and gallery. It’s 100% safe- this data never leaves your device.”
I appreciated the message about safety, especially knowing that it will stay on my device. Without this, I probably would have chosen Maybe Later instead of Enable.
I tapped Allow three times to grant access to Lingokids to access my phone’s microphone, camera, photos, and use speech recognition. After about 10 minutes of initial set up, I had gained access to Lingokids Plus, the premium version of the app.
Learning with Lingokids
The Lingokids home screen features Your Daily Picks, Topics, Worlds to Explore, and What’s New sections. Each activity is centered around learning through Lessons, watching engaging animated videos through Theater, or activities encouraging social learning and collaboration via Family Time.
According to Lingokids, millions of children have completed at least one Lesson, showing a significant +90% increase in cognitive skills.
At first glance, the app is vibrant. There are many different things for kids to choose with a single tap after scrolling horizontally and vertically to see all choices.
Lingokids Review: Daily Picks
Daily Picks occupy most of the screen real estate. Daily Picks are shown through large rectangular icons that display characters and words indicating the subject. Daily Picks lessons are guided learning journeys that provide structured, engaging learning experiences.
There are guided lessons in key subjects including Math, Literacy, Socio-Emotional learning, Science (in collaboration with NASA), Nutrition (in collaboration with Stanford scientists), and Dinosaurs (in collaboration with BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs), among others.
4 year old Sadie’s Daily Picks included:
- Health featuring Elliot, the Lingokids panda
- Household Chores with Mickey & Friends
- Spelling with Elsa from Frozen
- Sorting featuring Moana
- Dinosaurs
- Animals
- Counting
- Division with Elliot
- Design with Billy, the Lingokids bird
- Addition, also with Elliot
Design- The Robot Game
I thought about what would have been of interest to my daughter when she was in preschool at age 4 and tapped on Design. This took me to The Robot Game, a game requiring dragging and dropping various parts to build a robot.
As robots parts are selected, the name of the body part is said aloud and the written word appeared in the upper right corner. I appreciated the inclusion of this early literacy skill for a 4-year-old, a former first grade teacher who knows the importance of kids making the connection between a written and spoken words.
The Robot Game involves decorating the robot’s body with colors (color names are spoken and shown on the screen as they’re used), activating the robot’s body parts, and making it dance. Verbal instructions, engaging interactions, and lots of positive feedback make this game a fun early STEM activity.
After completing the first Daily Pick, kids are given the option to choose another activity or go back to the Home Screen. I was presented with Adjectives with Lingokids characters or Sequencing with Moana.
Adjectives with Lingokids Characters
Since most 4-year-olds can’t read words like Sequencing or Adjectives, they’d probably choose an activity based on the characters represented on the icon.
Some might choose Moana due to familiarity, but I wondered what Adjectives might look like for a 4-year-old so chose that as Sadie’s next activity.This Adjectives game was centered around hats.
Players are required to drag one of two baseball caps- a clean hat or a dirty hat- to place it on the head of the friend on the screen. The next set of hats were big and small.
As hats were tapped and dragged to be placed on the character’s head, the adjective appeared on the screen and was spoken, making this an interactive vocabulary lesson. It took less time to play Adjectives than The Robot Game, but I appreciated how much learning was packed into this game in a short timespan that could hold a preschooler’s attention.
Lingokids Review: Topics
Located below Lingokids Daily Picks are Topics. Topics are lessons arranged by subject area. The 7 topics for 4-year-old Sadie included:
- Lessons
- Gratitude
- Literacy
- Math
- Art
- Engineering
- Life Skills
As a mom of two college students majoring in engineering, I selected Engineering.
Engineering Spatial Cognition Puzzles: Problem Solving
Under the Spatial Cognition area, I tried Puzzle Path: Soccer, Engineering Tools: Technology Vocabulary, Engineering Materials: Recycling, and Engineering Tools: Tracing. Below is a Lingokids review with details about each of these mini lessons.
Puzzle Path: Soccer
Having taught middle school computer science, I love this game as a beginning coding experience! In Puzzle Path: Soccer, players are required to drag and drop pieces on a soccer field to help Lisa score a goal.
Straight and curved pieces are presented at the bottom of the screen to teach sequencing. These commands can be moved on and off the field easily as kids learn debugging. When ready to execute the program, players tap Lisa for her to run to the goal and score.
Engineering Tools: Technology Vocabulary
Technology Vocabulary caught my eye because I was wondering what words would be helpful for 4-year-olds to know to encourage a love of STEM.
The game is focused on camping in the forest and putting everything where it belongs. Objects such as a tent, fishing pole, campfire, flashlight, tree, and lake appear on the left side of the screen and outlines of each appear on the screen to indicate where they should go.
As objects are tapped, Lingokids says the word as they’re dropped into place. Unlike The Robot Game and Adjectives in Daily Picks, no written word to accompany these objects appeared on the screen.
I like this game for building fine motor coordination in preschool ages, but it would be more effective if kids this age could learn vocabulary words as part of the activity.
Engineering Materials: Recycling
Not all Lingokids experiences are interactive such as Engineering Materials: Recycling. Considered part of Lingokids Theater offerings, this 90 second video reinforces the importance of recycling different materials such as paper, food, plastic, and glass.
Kids learn how to sustainably dispose of materials through recycling and composting. This teaches them to take care of our planet with a catchy song: “Pick up a paper and put it in, in the recycling bin.”
I appreciated the relaxed and immersive content experience. The high-quality educational videos featured engaging storytelling, music, and characters. The only thing that would have made this recycling video and song better is if the words appeared at the bottom as they were being sung to teach kids the written word that accompanies the spoken one. This teaches vocabulary and one-to-one correspondence, essential skills for early literacy and pre-reading.
Engineering Tools: Tracing
Tracing a wheelbarrow appeared as an option so I selected it next. This is a simple activity that requires kids to trace an outline with their finger, building fine motor skills.
As the wheelbarrow was traced, the line turned green, was filled with dirt, included additional animations, and celebratory confetti.
This activity did contain the written word on the bottom of the screen and was spoken when the outline was completed. A small sound button to the right of the word also indicated it could be pressed at any time for the word to be spoken.
Lingokids Review: Worlds to Explore
This section features Mickey and Friends, Elsa, Moana, and other characters from Lingokids faces featured in round icons. Kids can select learning experiences with their favorite characters from Worlds to Explore.
Lingokids Review: Most Played Activities & What’s New
Most Played Activities includes learning games already played through Lingokids and the What’s New section provides kids and parents a chance to see the newest activities available.
Lingokids Review: Summary
With so many ways to learn about a variety of topics in age-appropriate ways, Lingokids serves as a single, safe, curated destination you can feel good about having your up to 8-year-olds kid use for both learning and entertainment. While Lingokids may categorize their educational experiences for kids as Lessons, Theater and Family Time, any time spent on the playlearning platform can reinforce learning and skills.
Collaborating with top children’s media brands uses kids’ existing affinity to known characters. This draws them into the platform to learn and keeps them engaging with Lingokids own characters as they learn.
As a parent and former teacher, I appreciate that the Lingokids’ catalog is constantly evolving to provide new and different learning experiences. As kids get older and need to focus on different skills, it’s good to have a platform that can age with them, instead of having to find another app that’s less familiar and could jeopardize their safety.
Lingokids offers a free week as a trial and a year of Lingokids is currently priced at $74.99 (normally $191.88) or $15.99/month.
Is Lingokids worth the cost?
My honest answer is yes. I spent extensive time looking at Lingokids and think if you’re giving your phone to your child for playlearning, you can’t beat Lingokids for high-quality educational content through a safe platform you can trust.
Download Lingokids here.
While this is a sponsored post, all opinions are my own and based on my perspective as a former teacher and parent. Images courtesy of Lingokids.
