Shoppylist

What is Shoppylist app?

Shoppylist is an app for making shopping lists. You might be asking the question, what is such an app is doing on an educational app site? We'd answer that not every app with teaching and learning potential needs to sit in the educational genre.

What we love about Shoppylist.

Shoppylist makes creating a shopping list extremely easy and convenient which makes it ideal for use with kids. It has helpful features like autocomplete as you begin to type item names, and you can add custom words to the app's dictionary for those not already present.

• Kids can learn to consider others by adding items they have used up to the family shopping list.

• Kids can help with the shopping if they are old enough by fetching it, or if not, by accompanying parents to the store and then taking responsibility for a selection of items.

What skills does it improve?

For most people, Shoppylist will be an organisational tool. Shopping lists held in this app aren't easy to lose, are accessible by multiple family members, and are easy to update.

Parents who feel that their children are ready to take on more household responsibilities can use the app to structure this for their kids. Estimating costs is also a part of planning for shopping, so it will help kids apply their mental arithmetic skills to a real-world activity too.

What age is it appropriate for?

Shoppylist is designed for those who do the shopping, usually adults, but it is easy enough for kids to use.

Is Shoppylist easy to use?

Shoppylist is extremely easy to use. It uses the device's standard methods of navigation and interaction, so you'll feel right at home with it from the start. Some of the app's features need you to grant them permission, such as to iCloud so that the app can synchronise lists across devices. It guides you through this process.

How will students benefit?

Chore apps exist for kids and can work well to guide them towards being more responsible. Some kids, though, might not like the child-targeted designs of these apps and reason that if they take on adult responsibilities, they should be using grown-up apps.

Shoppylist is readily usable for kids but also unmistakably not an app designed specifically for kids.

How will teachers benefit?

It would be possible to build a maths lesson around shopping using Shoppylist. Estimating, working with money, budgeting, and other real-world topics could be covered in a role-playing lesson style. The free version of the app would work well for this.

How will parents benefit?

Eventually, all parents want their kids to learn more about life's practicalities and contribute to family life. Being organised is important when you do this as kids are easily distracted. It is better if a child's first levelling up in responsibility does not lead to disappointment, and using an app to do this could help.

Introducing the app to the whole family is also a good way to start the process of raising your kids' level of responsibility. If you all get used to using the app together, it won't feel like an artificial exercise you're imposing on kids.

What can Shoppylist improve on?

It isn't easy to think of any areas in which Shoppylist needs work. A larger dictionary of shopping items would be useful, but however big it grows, it will never cover the items wanted by all users.

As we're an educational site, we could suggest some educational features such as a reward tracker to record the contributions kids have made or a means of changing the app's aesthetics to appeal more to kids. But, during this review, we've covered the benefits of the app not being a kid-targeted app, so it would feel unfair to consider their omission as a negative.

How much does Shoppylist cost?

Shoppylist is surprisingly functional in its free version, and you can make lists and access the built-in catalogue.

What is included with the free version vs. paid?

The extra features enabled by a single in-app purchase make working with Shoppylist easier as you can do more with your lists, such as back them up, duplicate them and transfer items between them. The most significant feature you gain from the in-app purchase is allowing you to share your list with other family members through iCloud.

Is Shoppylist safe to use?

There is no inappropriate content in Shoppylist, and even the free version does not contain any ads. If you choose to give your children responsibility for shopping with this app, you'll also have to think about personal safety issues for visiting the shops and carrying money.

Overall rating of the app.

Shoppylist is a great shopping list app. Even if you don't want to use it for educational purposes, you'll find it an organisational boon. With a bit of thought, it can become educational too. Shoppylist is a five-star app for ease of use, quality, and usefulness—its rating as an educational app will depend on how you use it.