Best grammar and punctuation apps for kids

SPaG Bronze: KS1, £3.99, Apple and Android

Although this collection of apps, written by a headteacher, is not the most flashy, it offers kids a great grounding in the grammar concepts they need to know at each stage of the curriculum.

Squeebles Punctuation, £2.99, Apple and Android

The Squeebles have already helped thousands of children get to grips with maths and English concepts, and their newest app, Squeebles Punctuation, doesn’t disappoint.

Designed in association with primary school teachers and suitable for children aged five to 11, it features four different game modes: Punctuation Placement (move punctuation to the correct place in a sentence), Possessive Apostrophes (drag apostrophes into the correct places), It’s or Its? and Contraction Capers (give the correct contraction for a given phrase, e.g. you have = you’ve). Your child’s task is to answer questions correctly and help save the Squeebles from the Grammar Ghost and the Punctuation Pest.

There are varying levels of difficulty to suit your child’s age and stage, and they rescue 24 Squeebles characters as they play. They also earn stars to use as credit in the Balloon Race game, incentivising their practice.

Grammaropolis, £5.99, Apple and Android

Although Grammaropolis is an American app, so you need to be aware that some spellings are different from British English, it’s a fun introduction to grammar for kids, using music and animation to make grammar concepts stick.

It focuses on eight different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections), each of which is presented as an animated character with its own personality. There are catchy music videos and digital books to help your child understand how each part of speech works, and over 400 quiz questions for each to test your child’s knowledge.

As your child follows the map through Grammaropolis and learns about new parts of speech, they earn badges for progress, and the app records their attainment on each quiz so you can see where they’re doing well and what they need to focus on.

Grammar Express: Tenses, £4.99, Apple and Android

One important area of grammar for primary school children to master is verb tenses and how they operate. This app, ideal for kids in upper KS2, will give their understanding of tenses a good workout.

Grammar Express: Tenses includes notes explaining how each English tense works, including the various forms of present, past and future tense, irregular verbs, and the verb ‘be.’ These notes are quite technical, so be prepared to help your child read through them. They can then test their understanding with comprehensive 50-question quizzes, which require them to identify the tense being used, or choose the correct tense of a verb to complete a sentence. They can choose whether to be timed or not. At the end of each test, your child can review their answers and see which ones they got wrong.

The app includes over 1000 examples of using tenses, and over 750 questions, with a progress meter so you can see how your child is doing. There are also Grammar Express apps for parts of speech, prepositions, nouns, and more.