Whatever the reason, the fact is that more and more children are ending up with iPhones (and iPod touches) in their hands. To help you find apps that are age-appropriate, fun and perhaps even a bit educational, we’ve compiled the following list of resources. Happy tapping!

PicPocket Books

I just discovered PicPocket Books on Twitter last week, and I’m dying to try out one of their mobile picture books. They reproduce printed books for the iPhone and build in a bit of interactivity along the way. The pictures on the iPhone are the sames ones that kids love in the printed books, and your child can choose to have a narrator read the story with words highlighted as they are read. My favorite feature is that a child can touch unfamiliar words to have them read again.

Currently PicPocket Books has 18 books available at the Apple App Store, and they cost from $0.99 to $3.99 each. Titles range from Monster Trucks to Cucumber Soup. Notably, one of their new releases is Round is a Mooncake by Roseanne Thong and illustrated by Grace Lin, who just won a Newbery Honor Award for her book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

25 Best iPhone Apps for Kids (Babble)

The folks over at Babble (the magazine and community for a new generation of parents, dontcha know) have put together their 25 Best iPhone Apps for Kids. They’ve divided the list up into the Top 5 in each of five categories: stimulating development, learning math, learning to read, getting quiet time, and my favorite, road trip sing-alongs. While there are a couple of titles for older children, overall the list offers a selection of titles geared toward the younger crowd. And who can resist a country version of Five Little Monkeys as a road trip sing-along?

The Best iPhone Apps for Kids (New York Times)

The Gadgetwise blog over at the New York Times chimed in with their list of the Best iPhone Apps for Kids. They highlight such titles as Wheels on the Bus (electronic pop-up book), Scoops (catch the falling ice cream game) and even Oregon Trail (a remake of the 1980s classic educational software). They also include some of the time-filler apps like Koi Pond (your touch causes ripples on the pond) and Bubble Snap (a virtual sheet of shrink-wrap bubbles). I wonder if I’ll enjoy Oregon Trail as much as I did 20 years ago?

15 iPhone Apps to Tame the Kids (Mashable)

And last but not least, Mashable pulled together a list of 15 iPhone Apps to Tame the Kids. They’ve divided their list into three sections: Toddlers, Younger Kids and Older Kids. The goal of this list is to offer ways to keep your child occupied in the car, on the plane, or anywhere else they need an interesting diversion. Some of the apps on the list are free (or have free versions) while the others cost no more than $2.99. And really, what child would NOT love playing Balloonimals where they blow into the iPhone microphone to inflate a balloon and then shake the iPhone to turn it into an animal? Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m dying to try this one, too. Let me just click on over to the App Store…

UPDATE (January 27, 2010): With today’s big reveal of the Apple iPad, are the following iPhone apps facing obsolescence? Not according to Gizmodo.com (who was blogging live from the Apple iPad event):

The iPad can run “virtually every one of these apps, unmodified, right out of the box.” They can either run it very small, 1:1 pixel, in the center of the screen. Or they can “pixel double” it and run it full screen, in a low resolution mode.

UPDATE (February 19, 2010): Thanks to Roberto Greco – who can be found at www.grecolaborativo.com and @rogre on Twitter – for the pointer to the following list of kids’ iPhone apps. Thanks, Rob!

My Recommended Kid Games (A Whole Lotta Nothing blog)

Matt Haughey, creator of MetaFilter and the personal blog A Whole Lotta Nothing, recently wrote about kid-friendly apps for the iPhone. He first downloaded one of the apps to keep his two-year-old daughter occupied while waiting for a table in a restaurant. In the two years since, he’s added more apps that he thinks have withstood the test of time and that are worth a couple of bucks. He describes iPlayPhone – the first app that he downloaded for his daughter – as, “Mostly just a noisemaker for the youngest to mash on without messing up your phone.” Another app that I really want to try looks interesting is Fairy Trails, which works on an iPhone 3GS and is a type of augmented reality that uses the built-in camera to allow kids to click on fairies that appear on the iPhone screen as they pan it around the room.

Anyone else have a list of iPhone kid-friendly apps to share?

For the debut of our new Friday Find feature, we have selected NextInLearning.com, a blog by the people at Wizz-e.com, the award winning publisher of interactive eBooks for children. I learned of the NextInLearning.com blog when a Twitter post by Jeanette McLeod, one of the publishers at Wizz-e, caught my eye:

Children who blog, text, use social networking websites more confident writers: National Literacy Trust http://www.nextinlearning.com

Fascinating! I quickly retweeted and began following Jeanette on Twitter (who very promptly sent me a DM introducing herself) and from there explored her blog and her ebook site. According to the blog’s About Us section,

Next In Learning is a platform from where we will shine the light on what’s next in learning for our young ones. The blog is a product of Wizz-e.com, an online community which strives to instill the love of learning and reading by providing top quality eBooks for children.

But more important than who we are, is our mission to make learning accessible and fun for the new generation.

So, who should be paying close attention? Parents and Educators.

I agree, we should be paying attention. The intersection of technology and education is where it’s at (so to speak) for our children, and it’s people like Jeanette who will help us stay on top of things. Thank you!