Preschool educational apps - recommendations?

[thingymaboob]

Hiya,
My 4yo DD is starting school in September and we have a 4 month old too. When I look after her and baby together, I need a bit of quiet time to settle baby for nap and would like to get older DD using educational apps with headphones on the iPad - does anyone have any good recommendations please?
They use iPads in school sometimes too. She does have writing practice pads and millions of drawing and colouring books but (as much as I love this) she talks continuously whilst drawing and colouring and I just need a few 30 minutes in my day where she's preoccupied with a quiet activity so I can get baby to sleep (whilst it also is good for her development etc). I'm sure she'd happily watch cartoons on iPad with headphones but she watches a fair amount of TV so trying to move away from that. Baby won't go to sleep unless I'm sling, quiet with white noise so I'm trying my best to juggle everyone's needs!

Mine loves Teach your monster to read. She's 5 now and coming to end of first year at school and still plays it. It's good reinforcement.
Numberblocks are very good too. There's apps and shows.
Both def built a good foundation for school but didn't feel like schoolwork by any stretch of imagination.

reading eggs is great. My son did 20 mins a day throughout lockdown (he was 4 at the time) he loved it!

Look at the CBeebies apps. There's loads of things on that. Games and read along stories

Reading Eggs is great. My son, who’s 3 going on 4, uses the younger kids version and my DD, who’s 5 going on 6, uses the one for her age group.

I don’t love screens for his age but it makes me feel slightly better that it’s ‘educational’, and like you, sometimes needs must.

Teach your monster to read us what dd's school asked them to do during lockdown.

Also I recommend alphablocks and numberblocks As an alternative to other cartoons. It's brilliant and DD actually learnt a lot from it.

They are available on BBC iPlayer

Honestly, I wouldn't feel bad about using the iPad for 20–30 minutes if it helps you get the baby down. It sounds like you're already balancing plenty of other activities, so a bit of quiet screen time isn't going to undo that.
I'd just look for age-appropriate educational apps that focus on phonics, numbers or simple problem-solving, especially ones without lots of adverts or overstimulating animations. At that age, it's more about keeping them engaged in something calm than finding the "perfect" app. You're just doing what works to get through a busy stage with a baby and a preschooler.