For under £5 - often for free - you can learn about everything from space to art to the Big Bang. All it takes is a bit of Augmented Reality, which you can access from your mobile phone.
Forget FOMO [Fear Of Missing Out]. If you’re a parent angsting about what to do with your kids during February half term, you may be experiencing FOSH – Fear Of School Holidays.
The juggle is daunting whenever the holidays swing around. Bill paying, fun making, deadline meeting. It’s a lot for parents. But February half term is particularly gruelling. For a start, having only just shelled out for Santa’s offerings, many of us feel too broke to book wall-to-wall indoor activities. The clocks don’t change until next month, so it’s also too grey to spend long afternoons in the park. Plus, it’s peak cold and flu season, so someone is guaranteed to be snivelling and shivering.
But panic not. There’s a wealth of educational, fun augmented reality (AR) apps that will transport your kids to space, turn them into scientists, or send them on a safari holiday for free (or for under a fiver).
“Often, kids can rotate 3D models, make virtual creations in 3D space, or experience settings in more realistic ways,” says Christine Elgersma, of Common Sense Media.
“Active learning is always more powerful than passive learning, and AR can bring interactive elements to the learning experience that watching a video or just listening lack. If there’s creativity involved, that’s really where AR can shine.”
Unlike Virtual Reality, AR doesn’t require a headset or any additional tech. Just download the app to your smartphone, allow it to connect to your camera, and off they go.
Civilisations AR app
Designed to accompany the BBC documentary of the same name, this app allows kids to spin a globe, pick a historical artefact from any region, and make it appear magically before them, in 3D, on top of their wardrobe or on the breakfast table.
They can spin an Egyptian mummy around, take a magnifying glass to it, turn it over, and even look inside it. Or look under the surface of a Renaissance masterpiece. There’s information on each artefact, too.
Free from the App Store or Google Play
SkyView Lite
Point your phone to the sky and it comes alive. The constellations, stars and satellites around you are all identified and explained. And you don’t need to travel further than the back doorstep.
Free from the App Store or Google Play
Big Bang AR
Made by the big brains at CERN and narrated by Tilda Swinton, this app takes you an interactive journey back in time by 13.8 billion years to discover how space, time and the visible universe were born. You can, quite literally, hold the universe in the palm of your hand. It is mesmerising, and a real education for all ages.
Free from App Store or Google Play.
DinosAR
Place a brachiosaurus egg on the coffee table then watch at a 3D dinosaur comes to life in your own sitting room. You can make them walk, eat and even snore. Just like Jurassic Park, without the blood and guts. Two dinosaurs come free with the app, a ‘dinosaur of the day’ necessitates the viewing of an advert, and more are unlocked with cash.
Free from App Store or Google Play.
Animal Safari AR
Funds won’t stretch to an African safari? No worries. With this app you can make giraffe, buffalo, elephants and more roam around the wilds of your back garden. Pick a position through your camera, then choose an animal (many are free but more require in-app purchases). You can feed it, learn about it, listen to it, photograph it and more.
Free from App Store or Google Play
Wonderlab AR
Created by the Science Museum in collaboration with the geniuses behind Pokémon Go, Wonderlab works like a treasure hunt.
Geospatial technology allows you to locate nearby points of interest on a map from lamp posts and post boxes to wind farms and bike racks. Walk to one, point your phone, and you’ll find interactive games and visual effects that illuminate the science that makes them work and log your discoveries, too.
“We know from our decades of engaging with young people that they are endlessly curious and eager to learn,” says Dave Patten, Head of New Media at the Science Museum Group.
“Our hope with the app is that through using this cutting-edge AR technology, it not only brings science beyond the classroom and museum walls into a contextual setting for young minds but excites them to explore more about how our daily lives are shaped by science.”
Free from the App Store or Google Play
The Keeper of Paintings and the Palette of Perception
Okay, so you do need to leave the house for this last one, but we promise it’ll be worth it. The National Gallery recently launched a new app aimed at 7-to-11-year-olds. Kids visiting the gallery are asked to help guide a fictitious Keeper of Paintings to find a lost ‘Palette of Perception’ – a magical object with special ‘power’ generating gems.
Users move through the real gallery, finding the paintings that are involved in the app’s story and solving puzzles, finding hidden secrets, and collecting the gems connected to each.
It’s entirely free, and as its story revolves around the gallery’s free permanent collection, downloading it unlocks a rare afternoon of free fun in the capital, as well as a sneaky way of teaching kids about the history of art.
Free from the App Store or Google Play
Useful links
The Keeper of Paintings and the Palette of Perception
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