LearnEnglish Kids: Playtime

What the app is for

LearnEnglish Kids: Playtime is a British Council app for children aged 6 to 11 who are learning English. Its main content is a library of animated videos: songs, fairy tale retellings and grammar chants. The listing also describes games and activities, which it calls ad-free, aimed at reading, listening, speaking and grammar.

The videos are written by the British Council's language learning experts. Because everything is in English, the app suits a child who is already reading simple text or is starting to pick up the language by ear.

Songs, fairy tales and grammar chants

The library holds more than 100 videos, grouped into themes: fairy tales, classic children's songs and grammar chants. Titles named on the listing include Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Jack and the Beanstalk, Old MacDonald, The Wheels on the Bus, Incy Wincy Spider and a set of Tales of Shakespeare.

Each video has subtitles that can be turned on or off, which the listing says helps children read and listen at the same time.

Watching videos offline

The listing says all the videos can be downloaded, so a child can watch them without a connection. The download is for the videos themselves, and the subtitle setting carries over to each one.

Practising speaking with the record activity

Each animated video comes with a listen-and-record activity. The child hears the narrator say the words from the video, repeats them, and records their own voice. The recording can then be compared with the narrator's pronunciation.

The listing says this repetition is meant to build speaking confidence over time, which makes it the app's main tool for the speaking part of learning English.