Sara Distin wrote:

We’ve been working on something special for teachers and students: Tinybop Schools brings our Explorer’s Library apps to the web, for classroom use, on any computer with web access.

While many point to coding as an useful skill for the future, it can teach kids something more powerful in the near term. Kids see that the incredible (and often magical) things they use on their iPhone or iPad everyday were made by people — just like them. 

The New York Times published a guide to choosing apps for your kids (including Tinybop apps 🤗 that you can find on the App Store and Google Play Store).

We know expressing gratitude has many benefits for our well-being. But, it’s not something that always comes easily to kids. Here are 20 questions to spark conversations about it every day.

Due to popular demand, we just released an update to The Creature Garden with a plethora of new parts to make a dream menagerie with!

The Human Body app lets kids see what’s under their skin — what’s otherwise invisible to them. This knowledge can alleviate fear and empower kids — whether or not they’re feeling well. 

In our new app, The Creature Garden, kids can create wonderful, incredible, fantastical creatures.

Tinybop apps are now on Google Play! Explore the invisible and awesome wonders of our world in Skyscrapers, Simple Machines, The Earth, Homes, and Weather.

Our favorite astrophysicist explains why, even if his kids don't want to be scientists, they're naturally born curious and they're going to be scientifically literate.

We usually include the most interesting links to things we’ve read, watched, and/or loved recently in our newsletters. But we thought it might be helpful to give you a little more detail as to why we found them interesting and useful.

We just released a big update for our very first app, The Human Body. In the app, kids explore an interactive model of the body — from the beating heart to gurgling guts — to discover what we’re made of and how we work.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2017 is the year of the rooster, a year of new beginnings and success for those who are patient and work hard. To celebrate, we added a new character to The Infinite Arcade.

We can’t wait to share our next app with you. Space, No. 8 in The Explorer's Library, will be ready to play next Thursday, December 1st.

Tuesday marked the end of a divisive election season in the U.S. It also marked a new beginning. Here's what we're looking forward to.

Me: A Kid’s Diary gives kids a safe place to tell their stories, express their identities and feelings, and to document the world around them. Kids can respond to 100s of questions about their feelings and preferences, their families, friends, schools, and homes to create vibrant, dynamic self-portraits in photos, GIFs, pictures, words, and recordings.

You asked and we answered: now kids can share their Infinite Arcade games with friends! 

Learn secrets and tricks to track and predict the weather with this handy little journal.

We adapted a classroom activity developed at The Academy of Talented Scholars (PS 682), in Brooklyn, so your kids can build robots and solve all your problems at home.

Sometimes two heads are better than one. To create the artwork for Infinite Arcade, two Tinyboppers huddled up in a pod and researched, played, and drew. And drew some more. 

Find hints and tips about everything you can build and play with in Infinite Arcade in the Infinite Arcade Manual.

We love exploring the science of the skies. Here you'll find some of our favorite kids' media for thinking about weather.

Jasu Hu is the illustrator behind the ethereal artwork in the sixth app in our Explorer's Library series, Weather. We asked her about her process, inspirations, and what's exciting about designing for kids.

Our sixth app in the Explorer's Library is here! Weather is an interactive model that lets kids explore the science we see and feel everyday.

Between the ages of 2 and 5, kids ask as many as 40,000 questions! It's a lot but it's also how they learn. Encouraging questions is one of the best ways to build habits for lifelong learning.

2016 is the year of the monkey! New monsters have emerged in The Monsters to celebrate. Play with them in the app and discover a secret to not being scared in The Monsters: A Guide.

The Robot Factory is now available for Apple TV. Build your robots on your iPad or iPhone. Test them on the Apple TV!

Raul built a time lapser with The Everything Machine app to capture all the snow accumulating on the street corner outside his window. See the video and how he made it. Then make one yourself!

Art makes us smarter and more empathetic. But as arts programs are cut from schools, it's increasingly difficult to expose kids to art. Here are some of our favorite resources for supporting and inspiring your future Banksy at home.

We're still a tiny team (only 22 of us have opposable thumbs!) but 2015 was a giant year for Tinybop. 

If we lived in a perfect world, kids would never have a reason to be scared. But we don't. Kids (and adults!) have all kinds of irrational and unpredictable fears. But a little empathy and creativity can go a long way in easing them. 

We’re honored to announce The Robot Factory is the iPad App of the Year! The Everything Machine is an App Store Best of 2015 around the globe. And Simple Machines is an App Store Best of 2015 in Australia and Canada.

Read our interview with the artist behind The Monsters, Tianhua Mao, in English or Chinese.

我们采访了怪物之门的艺术家毛天骅。以下是中英文的采访全录。

In our newest app, The Monsters, kids create all kinds of creepy, horrible, wretched monsters.

We'll be writing about everything from education to design, technology to production, community to kids and parenting.

On one of our favorite sites, The Kid Should See This, our friend Rion shares kid-friendly videos that are also entertaining and educational for us grownups. Here, she's hand-picked six about engineering just for us.

At Tinybop, we tend to think that STEM and creativity are always linked. But here are some links (ha!) about both for reading, exploring, and playing.

Our newest app, The Earth, lets kids discover our dynamic planet: from its fiery core to frozen glaciers. While we make sure to get the facts right in every Explorer’s Library app, we like to take a good look at all sides of a subject’s story. As Sarah Jacoby notes in her interview, fiction also plays an important role in helping us bring our apps to life.

Here are a few of our favorite finds, both informational and fantastical, from our dig into our planet:

The illustrator who created the artwork for our newest app, The Earth (which we think is pretty gorgeous; we’re biased but we’re not the only ones), has drawn for the New York Times, Travel + Leisure, and Pitchfork. On top of all that, she joins us at Tinybop HQ every day as a production designer. Here, the talented (if we do say so ourselves) Sarah Jacoby shares a little bit about her process, inspiration, and of course, her favorite kids’ books.

The fifth app in our award-winning series, the Explorer’s Library, The Earth, is ready to play!

We couldn’t be more thrilled with the response to The Everything Machine. It’s a Children’s Technology Review Editor’s Choice and an App Store Editors’ Choice! Best of all: y’all are building some pretty incredible machines.

We love WNYC’s Note to Self with Manoush Zomorodi. The episode “LEGO Kits and Your Creative Soul” is especially worth listening to if you’re curious about how play boosts your kid’s and your own creative abilities.

When I was a kid, I pined for those encyclopedias you could buy in the grocery store. I wanted the whole set but only managed to finagle a few of them here and there. Each volume was carefully selected based on the subject I was most excited about right then. Because each was full of information about subjects alphabetically adjacent, I ended up getting a lot more than I bargained for. But when, for example, my interest in seahorses inspired me to look up mangroves, I was out of luck.

We have good news for all of you with similarly insatiably curious kids: now you can get all six of our award-winning apps for $15.99 in The Tinybop Collection.

Our new app gives kids a visual programming language so they can make their own machines with the tools and sensors on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. They can build something as simple as a light switch, a kaleidoscope…or something to catch the monster that’s been eating all the ice cream.

We’re so excited: The Everything Machine is here!

For road trips or trips to the grocery store, here are some bright tunes to fill your family’s ears:

We’ve been huddled inside this summer, working on not one but two new apps! And next week The Everything Machine will be ready to play. It’s the second in our Digital Toys series of apps which are designed to empower kids to make anything they can imagine.

Happy midsummer! As is usually the case when things are a little quiet around here, we’re polishing up new apps (and other exciting things!) to share with you soon. To get you through the dog days, here are a few links we’ve liked as of late.

While every Explorer’s Library app is accompanied by a handbook designed to help adults support kids’ learning, we felt it was appropriate to make something for kids first and adults second for the first app in our Digital Toys series, The Robot Factory. The result is The Robot Factory Technical Manual.

This summer, stay up late one clear night and look at the stars. Here are some of our favorite resources for further learning about what you see up in the sky.

Whether you’re traveling or staying put this summer, here are a few of our favorite kid’s books, apps, and sites to inspire wanderlust for worlds near and far.

Every app we make gives us the chance to explore new ideas from different perspectives — including that of the artist we’re collaborating with to illustrate the app. For our newest app, Simple Machines, that artist was James Gilleard. Here’s a little more about his process, working life, and inspirations.

We released our new app, Simple Machines, this week. In Simple Machines kids can destroy a castle with a lever, make music with inclined planes, send satellites into orbit with a set of pulleys, lift fish tanks with screws, travel through a wondrous world with wheels and axles, and split an iceberg with a wedge.

It’s our hope that playing and experimenting with each simple machine will not only help kids learn about how they work but also give them an appreciation for simple machines in the world around them.

We can’t get enough of robots. Here are a few of our favorite robots books, robot movies, and robot apps from Loves.

For every Tinybop app, we work with a different artist to create original illustrations. For our newest app, The Robot Factory, we had the great pleasure of working with Owen Davey. His visual work is playful and elegant — a combination that appeals to adults and kids alike. Needless to say, we were quickly smitten.

Owen’s created kids’ books about an astronaut dog and imagined bedtime adventures. He illustrates the crazy addictive game TwoDots. Somehow he also manages to find time to play guitar in a band and…answer a few questions from us!

The Robot Factory is now on the App Store! We’re super excited to have this app out in the world for kids to play. In The Robot Factory, kids can build, test, and collect all the robots they can dream up.

The Robot Factory is the first in our second series of apps, Digital Toys. While we’ve already released three apps in the Explorer’s Library (and have a new one coming out mid-May!), Digital Toys has long been in the works. Here are some notes from our adventures in bringing it to life.

Loves is a cornucopia of the books, films, and music we fondly remember from our own childhoods as well as the apps, sites, and other new media that we discover while researching for our apps. Here are a few favorites for exploring science, technology, engineering, and math.

It’s back! The incredible immune system is ready to battle viruses and bacteria in The Human Body. Download or update your app to get it!

While two animated films captured our attention on Loves this week, we staked out a special space on our shelves for the solo picture-book debut from one of our favorite illustrators…

Loves is back! We’re always nose-deep in wonderful books, apps, videos, and websites for kids. But we’ve admittedly been a little behind in sharing the best of what we’ve devoured with you. While there’s already lots to, um, love on Loves, we’ll be adding new posts at least twice a week — your supply of good finds for kids of all ages won’t run dry.

Here’s what we’ve dug into most recently:

We’ve released three apps we're super proud of. But to make the most amazing apps, we need to know what you and your kids think.

Want to tell a friend she’s the top sheep in your flock? Wish you could send your sweetheart a scraggly monster? You’re in luck…

We updated Homes just in time to deliver valentines all over Brooklyn. Slip love notes through your neighbors’ doors, sweeten ‘em up with a box of chocolates, or let a flock of lovebirds loose in the treetops.

Here’s the best of what we watched and read this cozy, snowy (though not that snowy) week in Brooklyn:

As he was working on his super sweet book app, Hat Monkey, children’s book illustrator Chris Haughton went through a process that’s all too familiar to us… — weeding through tons and tons of apps to find the diamonds among lots and lots of rough.

But he dug up some pretty great apps, including…

We pore over stacks of research as part of creating every app. When we were building Homes, a few things were especially inspirational:

We’re skedaddling for the holidays so we’re leaving you with this list of things to read and do till we return in January. Here’s hoping your end o’ year is merry and bright, full of fun and delight!

We’ve updated Homes for the holidays. Decorate brownstones in Brooklyn with sparkling lights, wreaths, menorahs, or kinaras. Watch the snow fall or play with Frosty. Deliver presents in the car or down the chimney!

Long weekends are good for long reads, here’s the best of what we devoured over the holiday — because we do agree, you are what you eat! Bookmark these for your next few days off.

We’re thrilled to be a part of Apps for (RED). Today through December 7th, 2014, 100% of the proceeds from The Human Body — including in-app purchases of the new immune system and urogenital system — will go to (RED)’s fight against AIDS. All (RED) monies go to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

The Human Body & Apps for (RED) from Tinybop on Vimeo.

Stop-motion animation maven Kelli Anderson put together this sweet video celebrating The Human Body, in all its bony, heart-beating glory. And we edited this new cut just for Apps for (RED).

One of the most fun parts of putting an app together is choosing the right artist. For Homes, we were so pleased to work with award-winning illustrator Tuesday Bassen. Tuesday filled each home with joyful, playful, and sometimes, personal details.

Here, she shares a little bit about her own home, her working process, and her inspirations and influences.

We’re so pleased and proud to share: our new app Homes is here!

It’s been pretty quiet over here but we’ve been bustling behind the scenes in the studio, spinning all our energy into a beautiful new app. The third (!) in the Explorer’s Library is scheduled for release in a few weeks and we can’t wait to share it with you.

In the meantime, here are a few items of note (in case you missed our newsletter) and a little peek at the artwork in the new app.

One of the most mysterious systems in the human body actually sends signals you can see all over your skin: goosebumps. Those tiny pins of flesh can rise when you’re suddenly spooked by something, when you hear an inspiring song, or when you’re cold. How do so many different things trigger the same response? And why?

Goosebumps are a reaction of the nervous system, which is responsible for all of your senses; it channels a steady stream of information between your brain and body, interpreting everything you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. But just why goosebumps appear is traced to something a little less elegant: our animal ancestors.

As George A. Bubenik, a professor of zoology (of course!) explains over on Scientific American: Tiny muscle contractions cause your skin to round up when you get goosebumps; they also make every hair stand straight up. This was useful when we had more fur for a couple reasons. For one, it helped to keep us warmer when cold and, for two, made us look bigger when scared. Next time you see a dog and cat cross paths, watch for the fur on their backs to rise as they size each other up.

A working model of the amazing machines we live in, The Human Body shows what we’re made of and how we work. We’ve created a handbook of hints and insider intelligence for you and your kids. In these posts, we’ll peer into the sometimes-strange truths behind the worlds in our apps.

The heart is a robust muscle. It bustles blood through the whole body, fighting gravity to send fresh blood to the brain, while gravity pulls blood to your other parts below the heart. When astronauts rocket into space, there’s less gravity to ease blood down. More fluid than usual floats into their necks and heads making their faces and neck veins swell.

Scientists at NASA have an experiment that shows how gravity affects your blood flow—here on earth: let your hand dangle below your waist for a couple minutes. Big veins, full of blood, will pop out. Now raise the same arm above your head for a minute. All the blood goes rushing down and those puffy veins disappear.

A working model of the amazing machines we live in, The Human Body shows what we’re made of and how we work. We’ve created a handbook of hints and insider intelligence for you and your kids. In these posts, we’ll peer into the sometimes-strange truths behind the worlds in our apps.

We built an even better Human Body. It’s hungrier, speedier, and more sensitive. In the updated version, feed the body a broader diet—including corn on the cob, an apple, rice, pizza, and birthday cake—set bees free to see how the nervous system reacts to their stings, and shine a flashlight into the eye to watch the pupil dilate.

The Human Body 2.0 is a faster friend to Airplay and includes three new languages: Flemish, Afrikaans, and Welsh. (Now we’re talking in 57 languages!)

Download the update on the App Store.

The last few weeks have been so wild and wonderful. We’ve enjoyed glowing write-ups in Fast Company and Wired. We hit the #1 spot in the education section on the App Store in 63 countries. And now, we’re honored to announce that Apple has selected The Human Body as App of the Week.

As App of the Week, The Human Body is prominently featured on App Stores around the world. (We love the way our banners look in all those languages!) And, the app is free but only until end of day, September 25th, 2013. If you haven’t downloaded The Human Body yet, now’s the time.

We’re thrilled to offer so many more of you a chance to play the app. If you’ve already purchased the app, we can’t thank you enough for being an early supporter.

To get the best deals and important updates on our apps in the future, sign up for our newsletter. (Subscribers always get first dibs on new apps at introductory prices).

We’ve been listening closely to your feedback over the last few weeks. And we’re pee-leased to let you know, you can now add the urogenital system to The Human Body for $.99, from the Parent’s Dashboard.

Stylized illustrations and interactions include the kidneys, bladder, and genitals, letting you and your child see the truth about tinkles with this in-app purchase.

While building The Human Body, we thought long and hard about the best way to present this system. It was the most polarizing among parents, and from the start, we knew we wanted to give parents the choice to add the layer or not. This is one of the reasons you can decide to add the system from the Parent’s Dashboard. It’s also there because we’ll never market directly toward your kids (that’s something we take seriously).

What else is new? For easy access to facts and discussion prompts, The Human Body Handbook can now be downloaded directly from the Parent’s Dashboard. While The Human Body is designed to encourage unguided exploration, we know some people like having a bit more information at hand, so we’ve made it more easily accessible. We’ve also made a few smaller improvements and greatly improved the app’s stability. Go to the App Store on your device to download 1.05 if you haven’t already.

As ever, if you like what we’re doing, we’d greatly appreciate it if you let us know what you think about the newest version by posting a review on the App Store. Thank you!