Best Apple Pencil apps for kids

A perfect app for aspiring artists, Procreate offers hundreds of brushes, artistic tools, and a graphic engine. If your little one loves drawing then they can create anything from sketches to paintings and even animations.

One reviewer said: "I love this app, it’s so easy to draw with. I’ve been using it for about a month and I’ve compared it to other apps and this is by far the best iPad art app. This makes people who aren’t great at drawing amazing. I’m not that good myself, at least not for detailed drawing, but this made it easy."

Your little one can experiment with all styles of artwork with this app. It is incredibly realistic with both real world and digital art forms including watercolours, thick gloopy paint and 3D. A must for Apple Pencil owners, it is has Art Set brushes with many additional expressions and great levels of sensitivity.

One user commented: " I would recommend this app to any artist who wants to do natural-looking media on iPad. It has more brushes that have realistic effect than any program I’ve seen. It is clear that they didn’t just create a brush engine and then try to recreate every media through that engine, but actually tried to figure out how to give each media type as authentic a look and feel as they could."

This versatile app is perfect for all ages. It is a mobile art studio which lets kids create their own artwork using realistic crayons, markers, paint brushes, colouring pencils, stickers, roller pens and even more.

A reviewer said: "I would recommend this for all ages. It works for drawing any and everything, from complex sketches all the way down to random doodles."

You won't need to search for a pen and paper with this app which is great for writing down thoughts, making lists, or even sketching. With a variety of paper templates, and backgrounds, your little one can choose to use tools including pencils, highlighters, text and even audio. You can also import documents for older children to mark up and annotate.

One user said: "This app is still the best app I’ve ever used. I’ve got so many people to use it, and I use it every day. It is the most useful iPad app ever! I plan on continuing to use it indefinitely, and I am amazed by how many awesome updates and things that keep adding to it, great job Notability! Keeping innovating!!!"

This award-winning colouring app will help your little one (and you!) unwind and relax. It includes thousands of colouring pages, tools and brushes so you can draw, paint and colour just as you would on paper using 30+ different pencils, markers and brushes. For beginners there is a tap to fill mode and for more experienced artists, you can choose from freehand, automatic and advanced modes. Plus you can import your own images, or even use Pigment as a sketchbook.

One reviewer said: "No contest, hands down, the best coloring app out there if you want a real colouring book experience without hauling your colouring books and tools around with you. I’ve tried a bunch. Tap and colour isn’t colouring - for me, anyway. It’s cool for my 3 year old granddaughter so it’s nice to have that option, but Pigment really makes use of the Apple Pencil, it feel like colouring. I LOVE being able to import my granddaughter's colouring book pages. That way, we can take the best of them with us!"

If your little one is a fan of My Little Pony, they will love this great colouring app. Using an Apple Pencil on their iPad they can colour hundreds of images from My Little Pony, plus as they colour they can collect stars to create a museum. It's a fun colouring app for kids to encourage creativity and imagination.

One user commented: "Very fun app for kids even though it’s 4+, we all get to play it. I’m not finished with it yet but it’s very fun and educational for four years olds."

Kids can choose their favourite Disney character to colour using this fun app. From Mickey Mouse to Frozen's Anna and Elsa, the cast of The Lion King and Toy Story and many more heroines, heroes, princesses, side-kicks and villains, your little one will love using their Apple Pencil to recreate their favourite Disney characters. They can choose from brushes, crayons, markers and magic tools to work with, and the Magic Colour tool fills in the colours perfectly for younger children who might not be confident colouring themselves. Plus, once the character is complete it turns into a sticker that can be played with in magical 3D sticker books.

A reviewer said: "It worked out really well for my daughter and I, she loves a lot of the characters and locations on this and she’s autistic so this held her attention for a long time without over stimulating her. She also has some issues with her motor functions so the fact that the game includes options to help children stay inside the lines and choose the right colours for them when colouring in was a really nice bonus. The backgrounds are lovely and I don’t mind paying for something that some thought and care has gone into."