27 Best Educational Games for Kids to Play Sorted by Subject
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Educational games make a great alternative for children who don't learn best through pencil and paper instruction.
According to educational nonprofit EDUCAUSE, a growing body of research shows game-based learning platforms “can create an engaging dynamic that inspires students to develop competencies and skills as they focus on the activities of the game.”
Regardless of the subject, educational games for kids can help you instill a love of learning in your own child. This applies whether they're learning through homeschooling, online learning or traditional classroom setting.
Below, we’ve organized some of the best educational games for kids by subject! Interested in games for a certain subject? Click one below and jump right to it:
Mathematics games
Prodigy Math
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Web
Age: 6 to 14
Cost: All in-game educational content is free, Memberships available
Prodigy Math is the engaging, fantasy-based math game used by over 100 million students, teachers and parents around the world.
It’s curriculum-aligned and helps kids master math skills in every major topic from 1st grade to 8th grade, including fractions, geometry and more.
After creating their own personalized math wizard, your child will compete in math battles against in-game characters, just like how role-playing games like Pokémon work. To win, they must answer sets of math questions.
The game also adapts in difficulty to suit your child’s learning style and grade level, helping them build key math skills. In one school district, research showed that students who used Prodigy Math mastered 68% more math skills on average when they used Prodigy Math!
Create your free parent account to follow your child's progress as they have fun learning math. You can also get a Membership to level up your Prodigy experience — packed with plenty of extra benefits for you and your child!
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Available: Web
Age: 8 to 14
Cost: $20 per month, $40 per quarter, $60 per year
This is a middle school math game aligned with the common core and TEKS curricula. Your child will be tasked with helping Alfred, an inventor, save Mathlantis — a chaotic and disordered world — by restoring the population’s math knowledge.
On this adventure, they’ll time-travel and meet famous mathematicians, help them regain their lost knowledge, and transform Mathlantis back to its original state.
Twelve a Dozen
Available: Apple App Store
Age: 8 to 14
Cost: Free, in-app purchases
Developed by Touch Press Games, this educational math game helps children understand the beginning thought process of algebra and explore longer, more complex algebraic equations.
In Twelve a Dozen, your child will join the numeric hero, Twelve, on a journey through a universe of numbers. She’s on a mission to rescue her family and the crumbling world of Dozenopolis from the destructive Ultimate Prime. And they’ll use their skills and understanding of core math concepts to solve puzzles.
Looking for more amazing math games for kids? Check our list of the 13 best math apps for kids in elementary school!
Art games
Start with Art!
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore
Age: 7+
Cost: Free, in-app purchases
Embark on a journey into the world of art, creativity, and visual learning with your personal Art Guides: Tickles, Furnace, and Ruby!
Start with Art! will walk your child through four foundational art lessons:
- Art as language
- Message in art
- Line
- Shape
It also has engaging “Creativity Builders” art projects designed to foster creativity, encourage problem solving, and enhance critical thinking skills.
Each lesson is aligned to Creativity Express, a multi-award winning visual arts curriculum that professional educators and former Disney animators created!
Available: Web
Age: 6+
Cost: Free
Tate is a family of four art galleries in London, Liverpool, and Cornwall. Its children-focused project, Tate Kids, lets children play free art-related games and quizzes, get help on art homework, and share their creations!
In addition to completing fun quizzes, kids can help robots save famous art in “Art Parts,” create their own landscapes in “My Imaginary City,” and more!
No matter what area of art your child is into, they’ll find something engaging, educational, and creative!
Colorfy: Coloring Art Game
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play
Age: 4+
Cost: Free, in-app purchases
No crayons? Run out of sketchbook pages? No worries!
Colorfy is a digital coloring book for kids of all ages, filled with high-quality images. With over 1000 pictures to paint, your child will have the choice of florals, animals, patterns, gardens, mandalas, famous paintings, and other creative images.
This coloring game also includes a new AR virtual gallery that lets your child see what their art would look like in the real world!
Language arts games
Available: Web
Ages: 6-12
Cost: Free to play, with optional Memberships for extra rewards
Prodigy English is a free educational game for kids that uses creative, sandbox gameplay to engage kids in English language skills. The game takes place on the player's very own village, where they'll collect resources and use them to build objects that can play in their own world.
Just like Prodigy Math, Prodigy English uses an adaptive algorithm that adjusts the questions students get based on their grade and ability. This can help them grow their reading and vocabulary skills – all while having fun!
Prodigy English covers Common Core reading and language skills from 1st grade to 6th grade, with more skills and game content coming!
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Web
Age: 4 to 18
Cost: 30-day free trial, then $9.99 per month
As outlined on HOMER’s website, their “mission is to provide the best educational start possible by offering personalized, fun, and proven learning products for children.”
This early learning program has two products: Reading and Stories.
HOMER Reading combines a child’s current reading level and their passions, in order to create a personalized learn-to-read plan. Using that child’s same interests, HOMER Stories curates stories they’ll love — from classic to contemporary.
Vocabulary Spelling City
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Web
Age: 4 to 18
Cost: Free, $34.95 per year (family annual membership up to five students)
This program is a K-12 supplemental literacy tool designed to help children at every learning level learn spelling and hone grammar skills.
Plus, it helps them build vocabulary retention and reading comprehension.
You can try out 40+ free online spelling games which come with pre-populated word lists. They also offer a premium membership that gives your child access to all of Vocabulary Spelling City’s games with customized lists, homework practice, and more.
Wallykazam! Letter and Word Magic
Available: Apple App Store, Amazon Appstore
Age: 3+
Cost: $1.99
Based on the children’s animated television series on Nickelodeon, Wallykazam! helps preschoolers learn early reading skills.
Kids will join Wally Trollman, his pet dragon Norville, the mischievous Bobgoblin, Gina Giant, and Libby Light Sprite in magical and hilarious adventures! They’ll play games and learn letter recognition, letter tracing, and phonics.
Available: Web
Age: 3+
Cost: Free
Room Recess provides a wide variety of educational games for kids to play during recess. This includes ELA topics, like nouns, sight words and phonics. Each topic has a mini-game made for it, with easy gameplay designed to encourage engagement in the subject. The platform also includes games for skills like math and typing, from pre-k to 6th grade.
If you're a teacher, you may find Room Recess extra helpful for its worksheets, ideal if you're looking to reinforce some of the content seen in the platform's mini-games.
Health and physical education games
GoNoodle
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore
Age: 5 to 12
Cost: Free, premium version available
The purpose of GoNoodle is to help parents and teachers get kids moving, with the help of engaging video content. As their app description states: “make screen time active with 300+ videos that feature kids songs, dance, yoga, mindfulness, stretching, and more!”
Whether you want to throw your children a dance party to get them moving or make cleaning up around the house fun, GoNoodle has the perfect video.
Learning Games for Kids: Health
Available: Web
Age: 4 to 13
Cost: Free
When it comes to health, it’s important that children learn about their bodies early to stay healthy. Although this website is outdated, there are 36 health-related games across four categories that will help children love to care about their health.From allergies and body parts to dental hygiene and staying fit, playing these games can introduce them to new concepts and help reinforce what they learn in school.
Available: Web
Age: 4+
Cost: Free
Disaster Master is an educational game for kids designed to teach them about staying safe from environmental disasters. Players progress through different 8 levels, each centered on a particular disaster challenge, like hurricanes and wildfires.
Use this game to teach both younger and older kids about the importance of staying safe and what they can do to protect themselves in an environmental disaster.
Science games
Tinybop
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Microsoft
Age: 4+
Cost: $2.99 per app, discounted bundles available
Tinybop can be summed up in three words: play, create, and learn.
Using educational apps and digital games created for curious and creative minds, children can explore the awesome and invisible wonders of the world!
Children will develop foundational science literacy while engaging with educational games about the human body, plants, homes, weather, space, animals, states of matter, and other exciting topics.
Toca Lab
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore
Age: 4+
Cost: Free with in-game purchases
Flowing from a belief that the power of play jumpstarts imagination, its games are open-ended, so children are encouraged to experiment and make new connections. The educational game developer Toca Boca creates digital toys from the kid perspective.
Among Toca Boca’s products, science-related ones include Toca Lab: Elements and Toca Lab: Plants.
In Elements, children will explore the exciting world of science and meet all 118 elements from the periodic table, as they experiment with lab equipment!
And in Plants, they’ll have the opportunity to see how plants evolve, while collecting up to 35 different plant characters!
Camp Wonderopolis
Available: Web
Age: 4+
Cost: Free
Science for kids is a website packed with fun games for kids to channel their inner scientist. From learning about food chains to mastering melting points, each topic includes mini-games to help engage kids in biology, chemistry and physics.
The website also includes other educational activities for parents and teachers to try with kids, like experiment ideas, quizzes and more.
Technology games
Tynker
Available: Apple App Store
Age: 4+
Cost: Individual and Family Plans available, starting at $9 per month
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, said: “In fifteen years, we’ll be teaching programming just like reading and writing… and wondering why we didn’t do it sooner.”
Recognizing its importance, Tynker has created award-winning coding courses that are fun and offer self-paced learning for all experience levels.
With over 3,700 fun modules, Tynker designed its lessons to motivate children to further advance their skills, while earning cool new badges! They’ll also have help along the way thanks to interactive explanations, how-to videos, mini-game previews, and more.
CodeSpark Academy
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play, Web
Age: 7+
Cost: $9.99 USD/month, with discounts available for longer subscriptions.
This coding game for kids covers many different skills needed for programming, including creativity, logical thinking and problem-solving. It includes characters called the Foos, who guide players through puzzle games where they'll encounter and learn coding topics like sequencing.
Like many of the educational games listed in this article, you can access it via web or through a device running iOS or Android.
Gamestar Mechanic
Available: Web (App access required)
Age: 10+
Cost: Free
In partnership with E-Line Media and the Institute of Play, Gamestar Mechanic is an online game and community with the sole aim of helping children learn the guiding principles of game design in a highly engaging environment.
There are three components to Gamestar Mechanic: Play, Design, and Share.
Here’s a quick overview of how it works:
- Your child will start by going on an exciting single-player quest to learn about the principles of game design, while earning “sprites.”
- After exhibiting a certain level of mastery, they can use their sprites to design their own original games!
- Then, if your child wishes, they may publish their game in Game Alley as well as review and collaborate on other players’ games.
Have you thought about a STEM program?
If your child loves technology games, they might benefit from a STEM program. STEM programs help kids build key STEM skills – all while they have fun!
Learn more
Available: Web, Apple App Store, Google Play
Age: 2 to 11
Cost: Free
Starring some of children’s favorite television characters, the social studies games on PBS Kids explore culture, different environments, identity, governance, science, and more.
Not sure there’s something for your child? PBS Kids offers a variety of styles of games — fromJet’s Planet Pinball to learn about our solar system to Fidgits to the Rescue! where they build structures to help victims of environmental disasters. There’s something for every type of learner.
iCivics
Available: Web, Apple App Store, Google Play
Age: 8+
Cost: Free
In 2009, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded iCivics to reimagine civic education. Since its inception, her vision has been “to cultivate a new generation of students for thoughtful and active citizenship. Civic knowledge is a prerequisite for civic participation. Yet for decades, civic education had largely disappeared from school curricula and the repercussions are undeniable.”
Taking a game-based approach, iCivics transforms abstract concepts into problems that every child will face in real life.
If it’s used in your child’s class, they’ll have a class code to sign in. If it isn’t, they can still make their own account to play engaging and educational games that will help make them better citizens!
One Globe Kids - Friends
Available: Apple App Store, Web
Age: 6+
Cost: Free, in-app purchases
This social studies game allows children to “meet” other kids around the world through photo- and audio-based stories called “A Day in My Life.” Choose from places like Haiti, New York City, the Netherlands, or Indonesia to hear each storyteller’s language as well as learn geographic, cultural, and political facts about each country.
Depending how your child would like to explore each friend’s story, they can choose from three different approaches: Adventure, Start to Finish, and Conversations.
History games
Available: Apple App Store, Google Play
Age: All ages (However, children under 16 are advised to have an adult present.)
Cost: Free
With this engaging app, Civilisations AR puts puts history in your hand with the BBC’s first ever Augmented Reality app. You and your child will discover things like ancient Egyptian secrets and reveal hidden layers beneath Renaissance masterpieces.
Whether at home or on a walk in the park, you can use Civilisations AR to bring realistic, to-scale artifacts to life. Become the explorer as you move, scale, and rotate the collection. And, if interested, use features like the “Spotlight” to reveal audio guides and special features, or the “X-Ray” to discover some of history’s greatest secrets.
History for Kids: All Civilizations Learning Games
Available: Apple App Store
Age: 7+
Cost: Free, in-app purchases ($2.79 to $13.99)
Children will have fun discovering the ancient world and exploring through games and adventures. With vibrant colors and high-quality images, they’ll find themselves engaged with the history of 14 different civilizations.
Kids also get to create their own avatar! And when they do, playing the game will allow them to level it up so they can unlock some awesome prizes.
Geography games
National Geographic Kids
Available: Web
Age: 6+
Cost: Free
Parents may remember the National Geographic Kids magazine. Now, children can engage with the same fun aspects of the magazine online.
To learn more about geography, head over to their website for some fact-filled, fast-paced fun! There are many educational quizzes, funny fill-ins, and action-adventure games to play.
Available: Web
Age: 6+
Cost: Free
Where on Google Earth is Carmen Sandiego?
Your child will just have to hop on the internet to find out. In collaboration with education publishing company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Google Earth created a series of Carmen Sandiego games: The Crown Jewels Caper, Tutankhamun's Mask Caper, and The Keys to the Kremlin Caper.
Your child will help Carmen Sandiego track down burglars working for a global criminal organization called VILE. Flying from continent to continent, players interview characters to gain clues that help track down the burglars while testing their geography knowledge.
Ready to see the impact educational video games for kids can have?
Gamification in education need not be limited to the classroom. Encouraging your child to spend their screen time playing educational video games for kids not only strengthens their skills in various subjects but can also help transform them into lifelong learners!
Social studies games
PBS Kids Games