The Adventures of Alex: Electricity is a new iPad app available in English and Spanish. It’s an educational ebook with a funny twist at the end.

Alex is a curious little boy who wonders where power comes from. Learn what types of devices around your house require electricity by tapping each object on the pages. Then, go with Alex as he follows the power lines to find out where they begin.

Alex travels for miles with his dog to investigate the source of the electricity. Get ready for a big surprise at the end of the story. Although Alex finally finds the power plant, he discovers that what’s creating the power is rather unexpected:

I like that this story integrates the truly educational with something slightly humorous. It makes it more fun for kids who might not be as curious as little Alex about la electricidad and could spark a funny conversation at story time.

Find The Adventures of Alex: Electricity in iTunes

Available for iPad

Recommended for ages 4-9

Price: $4.99

Visit the Adventures of Alex website for more info.

WiseKids, a unique app developer with a refreshingly global outlook, is launching its latest multilingual app: Shape the Village. With this app, kids can be creatively stimulated while learning about círculos, triángulos y cuadrados. There are 16 different corners of the “village” to visit and manipulate shapes. Like all the apps from WiseKids, this one has narration options in 8 languages, including English and Spanish.

It’s true that the music is cute and graphics are adorable, but this app was developed with much more than aesthetics in mind. WiseKids focuses on multiple intelligences (the idea that we all learn differently) and encouraging real learning through imaginary worlds. Knowing about the passion with which apps were created makes it more meaningful to share them with our niños.

One particularly unique feature of Shape the Village is the Workbook, which has printable materials related to the skills emphasized in the app. These would be excellent supplements for homeschoolers or teachers.

Find Shape the Village in iTunes

Available for iPhone and iPad

Recommended for ages 2-5

Price: $2.99; OR try the lite version for free

Check out more apps developed by WiseKids on their Facebook page and website.

All parents try to ease their children into new experiences. Historically, reading a relevant book has been helpful to prepare children for a change. Now, we have the great option of using educational multimedia to do the same.

The Luca Lashes/Luca Pestañas series of ebooks, apps, and activities is one way to do this. Luca is a young boy who gets nervous as he goes through lots of “firsts,” including going to the dentist and getting his first haircut. In Luca Pestañas Aprende a Cepillar sus Dientes, he is hesitant about brushing his teeth because of the scary-looking bristles on the brush, but he uses his magic truco of blinking his eyelashes to give himself courage and finally learns to do it.

Likewise, in Luca Pestañas y su Primera Clase de Natación, Luca is nervous about swimming until he remembers all the other “firsts” he has achieved with his eyelash trick.

Try these two or any of the other 7 Luca Pestañas books to acquaint your niños with new adventures, big or small. Between November 15 and December 15, visit the Luca Lashes Facebook page to enter a contest to win the entire series in the language of your choice: Spanish, English, Italian, or Chinese.

Find Luca Pestañas Aprende a Cepillar sus Dientes and Luca Pestañas y su Primera Clase de Natación in iTunes

Find Luca Pestañas Aprende a Cepillar sus Dientes and Luca Pestañas y su Primera Clase de Natación in Google Play

Available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Nook

Recommended for ages 0-4

Price: $1.99 each

Check out more about the Luca Lashes series here.

I especially like that the stories the developers chose are a mix of classic tales — think Caperucita Roja and Cinco Monitos — and contemporary stories, some of which I had never heard before using DeCuentos. In addition to a variety of stories, the videos present different readers with different accents. There are both male and female readers, which keeps it interesting.

Although nothing is a substitute for personally reading a cuento to your child, this app comes pretty close to the real thing.

Find DeCuentos in iTunes and Google Play

Available for iPhone, iPad, and Android

Recommended for ages 1-5

Price: FREE

Learning to read can be difficult, and sometimes as parents, we are unsure of exactly how to support our kids’ developing reading skills. That’s why having fun apps to assist us can make us feel more confident and even give us brand-new ideas for learning activities. Lee paso a paso and Lee paso a paso 2 are two great resources to have on your iPhone or iPad for those moments when reading practice with your child becomes a chore.

The first app focuses on matching syllables to pictures to form an entire word and counting syllables. For each letter, children practice beginning sounds as the app continuously asks which of three pictures begins with the given sound. This activity really makes the app multi-step and thus appropriately challenging for a child who already knows basic letter sounds but is in the process of learning to piece them together.

The second app is a bit harder. You must form an entire word by choosing the correct sequence of syllables. It’s like a memory game, confirming your choices with matching pictures. As you increase in level, you have more sounds to choose from.

Using these two apps to complement each other will ready your child for more advanced Spanish reading and perhaps relieve some pressure on days when reading seems too daunting a task.

Find Lee paso a paso and Lee paso a paso 2 in iTunes

Available for iPhone and iPad

Recommended for ages 4-7

Price: $2.99 each

Rosetta Stone®, an international language education leader, has introduced a new kids division! With the launch of the Lingo Letter Sounds app, the groundbreaking company brings its skills into the world of early childhood language acquisition. We are excited to share this development with you just as much as the app, since the backing of popular linguistic educators brings even greater legitimacy to the goal of our bilingual families.

Lingo Letter Sounds combines all the basics of a fun app – adorable characters, beautiful graphics, and cute games – with effective reading and speaking practice. Kids can play with letter sounds in bubbles to improve English reading skills or use the Spanish Speak & Learn game to see if their pronunciation of common words is good enough to make the characters move and dance.

My favorite feature of this app is the sheer amount of content. Though there are just two game modes (and one toy shelf for viewing the toys you’ve earned), there are enough words to provide two hours of playing time! This is unique in the realm of free kids’ apps. Also, check out your child’s progress in the Parent Corner.

The opportunity to practice spoken Spanish with this app is resonant of Rosetta Stone’s most commonly used technology-based methods for picking up language skills. Instead of just spelling or reading words, kids speak them into the device and get immediate feedback. This is much more fun than having a parent approve of and correct their pronunciation!

Download this first release from the renowned developer and let them know that we want more like it in the future!

Find Rosetta Stone® Kids Lingo Letter Sounds in iTunes

Available for iPad and iPhone

Recommended for ages 3-6

Price: FREE

Today, I’m sharing a different kind of app with you. Generally, we prefer to review only apps with a Spanish language option. However, we’re making an exception for Voyager Kids because it is such a fantastic resource for globally-minded kids, like the ones we are hopefully all in the midst of raising.

With four categories (Travel, Learn, Explore, and Play) and tons of fact-filled pages inside each one, Voyager Kids is a wealth of information about animals, plants, landmarks, culture, and travel.

Kids can read about and see breathtaking pictures of countries and regions and then test their knowledge with games. One of the most unique games is called Aviator, in which you choose the correct word for each letter in the “aviator’s alphabet.” This one is a challenge even for some adults!

I particularly love the Travel section for SpanglishBaby families. Even if you don’t have an international trip planned anytime soon, your kids can virtually explore the Wonders of the World and come up with a list of new places they’d like to go. This is a great way to start a conversation about other languages and cultures, using your child’s immersion in the Spanish language and Latino culture as a basis for understanding others.

Find Voyager Kids in iTunes and Barnes & Noble Nook Store

Available for iPad, iPhone, and Nook

Recommended for ages 6 and up

Price: $3.99

Check out more about Voyager Kids on Edissey, Inc.’s website and on Facebook.

PlayTales Gold! is my favorite kind of app. It offers endless entertainment and bonding opportunities for kids and parents. PlayTales Gold is an interactive library with a wide selection of kids’ stories, games, songs, and personalizing options.

Sesame Street is also one of my favorite classic kids’ shows because of its wide array of characters and its integration of Spanish.

Now these two great educational offerings are coming together. PlayTales has teamed up with Sesame Workshop to bring us four new multilingual ebooks. Your kids can read fun titles such as Elmo Loves You! in English, Spanish, German, and Italian.

This partnership truly reinforces the global reach of Sesame Street programming and gives us yet another way to make learning in English and Spanish more exciting for our Spanglish speakers.

All of PlayTales’s books download quickly and remain saved in your library, and each has “Read to Me” and “Auto Play” options in case you don’t want to read it yourself. New titles are added every week, which is especially useful for kids whose reading levels are rising and whose homework includes nightly reading. Apps like this save us from having to spend a fortune updating our home library!

PlayTales Gold offers several different subscription options: monthly for $4.99, semi-annual for $9.99, or annual for $19.99.

Find PlayTales Gold! in iTunes and Google Play

Available for iPad, iPhone, and Android

Recommended for ages 1-12

Price:  Various subscription levels (see above)

Check out the PlayTales website for more info and to begin downloading your copies of the new Sesame Street books.

The Giveaway!

We are giving away one annual subscription to one winner AND a monthly subscription to FIVE winners for a total of SIX winners! All you have to do is leave us a comment telling us who you’d like to share this prize with. Then, enter the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It’s never too early to start teaching your baby to use technology. Curlew Apps is a developer that aims to introduce early language skills to children through fun, educational apps. La Caja Mágica is an app that has just the right amount of repetition for little ones to learn new words. Touch the “magic box” and it pops open to reveal a new toy each time. The app includes real photos of the toys, so that your child can identify them in real life.

The words and sound for the 10 pre-set toys are originally in English, but parents can change the written words and recordings to Spanish easily by going into the app’s settings. New toys can be added to customize the toy list so it better represents your toddler’s toy box.

As with some of the best early language apps, La Caja Mágica serves its purpose via simplicity. It’s easy for the smallest of hands to interact with and the sparkling box is more exciting each time it opens.

Find Magical Box/La Caja Mágica in iTunes

Available for iPhone and iPad

Recommended for ages 6 mos-2 years

Price: $3.99

Check out more from Curlew Apps on their website.

With 7 animated chapters and 6 interactive games, Deep in the Rainforest is a truly comprehensive bilingual app. This is a great geography supplement to an elementary education, since it focuses specifically on the Amazon. In addition to having authentic Spanish narration, the regional focus on South America gives this app a cultural edge.

Take off with your pilot, Amanda, in a small plane and travel through the rainforest with a native boy named Yapariwa. He’s searching for his lost brother. While you help him, learn about all the animals and local customs. Between chapters, you can play games such as a puzzle, matching, and hangman.

I like that it takes quite a bit of time to get through the entire story, and that you can skip around to different parts if you want to replay games or refresh your memory about a rainforest fact. For kids who are just starting to learn about maps and other cultures and seasoned geography lovers alike, Deep in the Rainforest is a well-designed app.

Find Deep in the Rainforest in iTunes

Available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch

Recommended for ages 5-10

Price: $1.99

Check out more from developer Kitu Kids on their website, Facebook, and Twitter.