The coolest kids apps for your family road trips

With so many of our friends and family hitting the road for summer weekends now, we thought it might be fun to round-up our Cool Mom Tech staff's favorite kids' apps. So charge your iPad or smart phone and get downloading. Here's to a safe trip, with fewer "Are we there yets?" in your future. Of all the apps we have on our iPad, my kids really love the Disneyland Explorer app, which is perfectly fine with me. It's much cheaper than a trip to see Mickey Mouse himself, but still gives them a taste of all the magic. -Kristen A full year after downloading it onto my iPad, my six year-old comes back to Animalia again and again, the app based on Graeme Base's amazing book. There really is something new to discover every time she opens it. -Liz Pictureka has always been a favorite board game in our house, but now with the iPad app, we can take our keen search-and-find skills with us wherever we go. -Jeana Basically, DuckyTube is like kiddie crack around here. My kids feel like they're actually on YouTube since all the videos on their playlist come from there, and my husband and I don't have to stress about what they're watching (or accidentally watching), since we add everything through the parental controls. It's a win-win. -Pilar  Underwear is hilarious, especially in the hands of a four year old boy, and so's the awesome kids app called My Underwear by Illustrator Todd Parr. -Julie Where's My Water may seem simple enough: Dig a tunnel to send water flowing down to the underground-shower of Swampy the alligator, but--oh--it's much trickier than that. My nine-year-old bounces from level-to-increasingly-difficult-level like a plumbing engineer, and I love that she's really using her noggin instead of just mindlessly swiping the screen. -Christina My kids love anything Toca Boca does (especially their Hair Salon app), but their latest fave is Toca Kitchen. They adore putting fish into the blender (gross!) and think it's hilarious when the cat hisses at the lemon. Hours of fun, seriously. -Lexi For more cool kids' apps, check our archives. Or follow our Cool Apps for Kids Pinterest Board.