10 back to school apps will help you manage your family and life.

Back to School is upon us!  Here we go again, be prepared to be busy…take a deep breathe while you still can!  LOL!

To make your life more manageable, we compiled a list of back to school apps to help parents manage life or at least help make it more fun.  Here are our go-to apps…

Best Back to School Apps for You

 1.  Life360 – Locating Your Kids

Unequivocally, the Life360 is a must-have of all back to school apps.  The Life360 free app gets placed on all of your family member’s phone. 

Once installed, each person can see in the app where everyone else is located. 

Perfect for keeping tabs on your children when they are away from you.  Also, perfect for your kids to keep track of you. 

No need for your child to text you to see when you’re coming to pick her up, she’ll know by looking at the app.

You can also set up geofences around your children’s school so you know when they leave the campus.  One of the back to school apps you’ll use frequently with many helpful features…and it’s free.

2.  Google Photos – Ultimate Family Album

Another one of our favorite back to school apps is the free Google Photos app, essential for backing up and cataloging your family’s pictures. 

Google Photos can automatically back up your photos from your phone to the cloud. 

As you label your family and friends’ faces, Google’s face recognition AI software will catalog people by their face and name and put them in albums by a person’s name, so you can see how your children have grown through the years, from babyhood to today.

Use the app to create fun movies and slideshows.  You can also search for “Christmas,” “Sedona,” even “forest” to take advantage of the AI software’s advanced search techniques.  It’s another “must have” app.

3.  Overdrive – Your Library, Online

If you haven’t used the free Overdrive app, you’ve been missing something!  Connect your family’s library cards to Overdrive to have access to your local library’s eBooks.  Overdrive supplies eBooks to libararies all across the country. 

From children’s books to the latest mysteries to history books to the 2019 version of the latest AP or SAT books, I cannot say enough the convenience of being able to check a book out as you think of it rather than going to the library. 

Checking out eBooks is such an amazing convenience.  eBooks can be read on any device, just download the free Kindle Reader.

Overdrive is one of our favorite back to school apps for kids and parents!

4.  Trello  – Organize Your Stuff

Are a list maker?  Where do you keep track of your family member’s health info? What about all the websites you need to keep track of your kids’ grades, school registration, educational resources? 

And your home projects, travel information, contact and history information for utility companies for your home?

We all suffer from information overload.  Finding a central repository to keep your notes, lists, and information is helpful in trying to maintain some control in our busy life. 

Trello is a kanban board style free app that helps you visualize and organize lists, tasks, and steps to help you succeed in organizing or completing projects.

Great for keeping track of information you will need to review frequently or infrequently. 

Add text or paste text, you can even attach pictures and documents onto your Trello cards for visual aids.  Trello uses cards, columns, and colors to help you make more sense of your information.

It’s easy to move the cards to different categories and boards, making it a covenient and fun way to manage life’s necessities.

5.  WebMD – Doctor in Your Pocket

Along with school comes colds, the flu…you name it!  Well, sometimes you can’t name it, making it harder to dicpher whether you should take your child to the doctor or not. 

The free WebMD gives you the convenience of researching possible health issues, trying their Symptom Checker, getting first aid help, and more at the tips of your fingertips. 

Find out more about prescribed drugs…and which pharmacy chains have the lowest prices.  Find doctors and specialists in your area, keep health notes and contact information saved for future reference, and get reminders to help you remember doses for you or your kids.

6.  Flipp – Weekly Circulars at Hand

It’s overwhelming at times to keep track of where the best deals are at which stores.  Forget about keeping all of those paper circulars, I never seem to have them in the car with me when I need them. 

Enter the free Flipp app.  Now you can browse over 1,000 circulars from retailers including groceries, general merchandise, home improvement, pharmacy, automotive, sporting goods, electronics, pets, baby & kids, and more through the app. 

They are updated every week, as each retailer’s new ad comes out.

Search for a particular item easily through all circulars.  Easily clip products you’re interested in and Flipp will keep track of items per store for you. 

I use Flipp lately to check out the latest Back to School specials for the kids, I love a good deal!  Just by touching an ad item, flipp draws a yellow circle around it and the item is placed in my shopping list.

Now, when I go into the store, I click on the shopping list to see which items I’m interested in at each store, it’s super handy. 

I often use Flipp to check my favorite grocery stores as well.  Oh, and it’s a lifesaver if you’re a big Black Friday shopper!  😉

7.  Gboard – The Handiest Keyboard

The free Gboard is not actually an app, per se, but a download you get from Google Play or the App Store.

It’s basically a keyboard for your phone that includes Google search with web results and predictive answers, like you’re used to from Google. 

In addition, Gboard makes it easy to find fun GIF’s and emoji’s to include in your texts. 

Your search brings about fun relevant graphics in seconds…your kids will be so impressed and your emoji and gif prowess!

Gboard also includes voice dictation to make it easier to dictate your text messages. 

If you have Google Translate downloaded on your phone, there’s even a spot for it on the Gboard to help you translate and send back your texts. 

Gboard packs a lot of punch into your messaging app, one that you use frequently throughout the day. 

The free app has now surpassed over 1 billion installs on the Google Play Store, so you know people love it. 

Gboard is one of our fun back to school apps that help parents communicate with zest with their kids.

8.  Bitmoji – Emoji Yourself

Speaking of having fun in texting with your kids, another fun emoji type apps is Bitmoji.  The free Bitmoji app helps you create a personalized emoji of yourself. 

Start with taking a selfie of yourself within the app, then you can customize it further to change your hairstyle, eye color, eyebrows, eye shape, and more. 

After you finalized your Bitmoji, the app creates all sorts of fun Bitmojis with your character.

The Bitmojis are endless with Happy Birthday, Hump Day, Sayings like “no bueno,” Laundry Day, “Preparing for Takeoff,” “Hellooooo?,” Happy 4th, and hundreds if not thousands more, all showing your fun new mug as a part of the graphic. 

The free app has categories but you can also search for something in particular to convey your mood.

Best yet, you can access your Bitmojis through the Gboard-Gallery-Albums method to add your fun graphics to your texts.  A fun endearing way to keep up with your kids. 

Oh, and if you’re a Snapchat user, your Bitmoji can be added, make it fun to send combined Bitmoji graphics of your character with your daughter’s or friends.

9.  Artkive – Memorializing Your Kids’ Artwork

Do you have more kid drawn artwork than you have refrigerator space?  Wall Space? Ceiling space? 

Although it is possible to store away all of your kids’ artwork, it’s not feasible, unless you have TONS of extra space.  With each new year comes more precious artwork.

Artkive helps solve this problem by allowing you to upload pictures of each artwork piece and store it in their free app. 

After uploading it, tag whose artwork it is, what age or grade, and any additional description tags to help you find it at a later time.

It’s a great way to keep the artwork long term without worrying about it getting bent, ripped, or thrown away. 

And best yet?  It takes up no physical space in your house! 

Easily share artwork with family and friends.  Artkive makes it easy to print out books of art featuring your budding artists. 

It’s a great solution to remember your child’s masterpieces without it collecting dust!

10.  Kinsa – Keeping Track of Temperatures

Although Kinsa is a free app, it is also a thermometer that you need to purchase. 

The cheapest thermometer is only $20 bucks and it integrates with your phone and app to take and track the temperatures of your family members. 

You can also add symptoms along with each reading.  Adding symptoms is easy with a simple touch on each symptom your child has.

Kinsa is perfect for keeping track of your family’s illnesses and answering the doctor’s question, “how long has she been feeling this way.”

Kinsa can also help you keep track of reoccurring illnesses to bring up to your doctor or urgent care staff.

After you’ve added the symptoms, use the WebMD app to look into what might be ailing your sick child.  

This is our short list of the best back to school apps for parents, there are so many more. 

Take further advantage of your phone by incorporating these apps to help organize your life and have fun doing it!