The power of play
I really wanted to share this with all my fellow moms.
Both of my children own Amazon Fire Tablets The kids editions.
In at just £99.99 for the 7 edition and £129.99 for the 8 and available here
I remember whilst studying Humanities at college having to analyse early 90's children's programs for subliminal messaging and adult content and our findings were shocking.
Postman Pat for example, made several racist remarks and regularly aimed content at adult watchers and made sexual references. More recently Peppa Pig was placed under scrutiny for publishing an episode sending out the message that Spiders aren't dangerous, which was aired in Australia and resulted in a child coming to some harm.
Everything's changing and being monitored now, educational physiologists sign off kids tv shows to ensure that nobody get sued.
Times are changing, we have to embrace that.
The first iPhone was released around a decade ago and look how far we've come since the Nokia 5110 release in 1998, self driving cars have already been invented; We've been enjoying air travel since 1914 and we're in the process of offering tourism flights into space, I think it's time to embrace technology and accept the fact that a good understanding of these tools and how best to use them will only help our children progress through the ever rapid growth of Technology.
Getting slightly deeper and a tad off subject now, notice how many new inventions are popping up to make our day to day lives easier?
- Pay at pump petrol stations, in the US they're mostly completely un-manned.
- Self service hot food 'hole in the wall' counters at train stations.
- Supermarket home delivery.
- Online clothes shopping and the soon to be virtual clothes shopping revolution.
Think how much technology is changing our current world and what our children's worlds will be like in the future. Chances are customer service jobs for humans will be pretty much non-existent by the time our children come of working age, being able to operate tablets, machines and technology is going to be extremely beneficial.
Ever get the grandparents comment on how children should constantly be outside? Making comments like "we never had anything like that in our day, we were in the garden making mud pies" .. Sorry Grandma, our kids do too! But they have the added benefit of technology now, and I want to share this post with the Fire 8's in mind because I've found them to be amazingly educational.
Development wise, take my Harley for example. Aged 1 and a half he was fully conversational, his acquired fine motor skills allowed him to exceed the expected milestones, he was eating unaided at 7 months old and has a far greater understanding of the world around him compared to Toddler videos of myself at his age. I'm in no way saying this is purely down to technology, of course its not, helped along by constant conversation and parental encouragement as well as the help of having an older sibling to chat to and copy. But I want to stress the benefits of allowing some 'screen time', and it really does need to be kept to the minimum and shouldn't replace indoor/outdoor play.
It's advised that children aged 2 to 5 spend no more than 1 hour per day with blue light, i.e. tablets, computer screens and tv. We try to limit tablet time so that I can sit with the children and play educational games with them, Harley for example has several games on his tablet, which is specially designed for children and has content options dependant on age. There are the obvious games like painting by numbers and characterised puzzles.
But I was seriously shocked to find that the 1 year free unlimited fire kids subscription gives you access to over 5,000 videos, apps, games and educational content.
The best part about these is that unlike similar tablets, they offer complete easy parental control options and age appropriate content options, making them easy to monitor than others.
They come with a kid-proof case available in Blue, Yellow and Pink and bonus a 2 year worry-free guarantee, meaning that the entire tablet including the screen can be replaced for Free.
So I'm going to post a screen by screen edit
of just the Fire Kids App here to show just
how versatile they really are. Off this app
there's so much this tablet has to offer too!
My favourite part about these tablets though, has to be the cooking app's.
I'd tried to include my youngest in our family baking sessions since he was around 1 year old, and he found it boring and frustrating. It wasn't until he started playing the making apps on his Fire that he started showing an interest in experimenting with food and baking. Although neither of my children have ever been fussy with food, (I'll share that secret in a later post!) it was great to see that he was recognising foods from his game in the supermarket and asking to take them home and help cook them, great way to introduce aubergine and courgette into a 2 year olds diet!
Now aged 3 (43 months) he knows the alphabet from start to finish, can count to 20 unaided, spells his own name and recognises words already as he continues on his reading journey. Again, obviously I'm not giving tablets credit for that but I can't deny that a little screen play from time to time doesn't do any harm and we've found it to be really beneficial.
Over my next few posts I'm going to explore some Pinterest inspired home activities, crafts, our homemade outdoor mud kitchen and of course the secret to exploring food with your little ones along with some banging recipes, stay tuned mommas!
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