Kids and Smartphones: Apps and Tips to Please Everyone
Man, are kids of today tech-savvy! And we are raising them that way. They take all their early cues from us, their parents, and they are going to pay the most attention to those items we spend the most time staring at. These days, if it’s not a computer, it’s a smartphone.
My kids, aged 4 and 18 months, are already both super fluent with touch screen technology—a skill I only mastered a little over a year ago. And though I have gotten to the place where I’m not sure how to use a phone with buttons, they will likely soon consider such an item a toy. Just like their actual toy phones that I occasionally pretend I really love, in the hopes that they will give me back my Droid.
There’s no denying that the smartphone is an invaluable tool for a virtually unlimited number of purposes. And just one of those is keeping your kids quiet and/or still for a certain amount of time. That’s survival, baby.
So I have done my own informal consumer testing of free Android apps for toddlers and preschoolers that I found on other lists of the so-called best. Several had problems that myself and my testers found insurmountable, such as advertisements that look a lot like buttons for game play. The short list that follows contains the games that appealed to the kids and parents alike. All are free on the Android market.
1. Toddler Memory Lite. This one gets top billing for the simple reason that, though free, it contains no ads. The standard memory game offers four options for board size, as well as four choices of picture themes. My kids love that the game applauds when they complete a board. The app runs in demo mode when it’s first opened, which is great for the really little kids, and there’s a lock button that’s a good idea…but most techie kids will easily defeat it. It’s okay, though, because the game itself won’t lead them to the Internet.
2. Talking Tom & Talking Pierre. These apps were a runaway hit with my kids. The gray tabby, “Tom,” can be punched and smacked in the face, and he’ll eventually fall down if you do it repeatedly. My boys love this, and though I have some motherly pangs about teaching them violence, at the moment I’m just glad they have a safe outlet for their impulses. You can also pet Tom gently for purrs and press a button to pour Tom a glass of milk. But the most fun thing about the app is that Tom listens to you and repeats what you say in a funny voice.
Now Talking Pierre, on the other hand, is a parrot who lives in Tom’s kitchen. Pierre also listens, but he doesn’t repeat it verbatim. He remembers everything you say, and parrots it back in a funny mishmash. Tom also makes an appearance in this game, but I won’t spoil the surprise. The only downside to these games is that they are very memory intensive (both require an additional download in order to have the best graphic experience). The pay version (to eliminate ads and include additional activities for the animals) is only 99 cents, so it could be worth it if you want to be able to step away from the kids momentarily while they’re playing. Peeing in peace…priceless.
3. Animal Sounds Quiz. The free version of this game has two levels of 10 questions. The first level shows pictures of two animals and makes a sound; the child gets rewarded with a smiley face if they match the animal sound to its picture (and a frowny face if not). The second level shows three animal pictures from which to choose. There is also a practice mode that shows all of the animal pictures; they can be touched to hear their individual sounds. You’ll want to get the game started for your child to avoid them having access to ads. Nicely, ads only appear on the home screen that gives you options for playing the game, practicing, and buying the upgrade (also .99).
Smartphone Survival Tip: Train ‘em young
Some days I feel like I’ve spent my entire day just moving my phone around from place to place in order to keep little hands off of it. But I finally realized that the kids are not going to suddenly lose interest in this toy. I sure haven’t. So my strategy is now to take some time whenever they want to use the phone to demonstrate safe handling. My four-year-old clearly understands that touching the ads takes him away from the game, so he’s careful not to. The eighteen-month-old isn’t quite there yet, but he does bring the phone back to me whenever he has accidentally gone off course.
If you’re careful to leave any important accounts password-protected, such as banking and email, and you don’t store credit card information in your phone, kids and adults should be able to equally enjoy the wonder that is your smartphone.
For more information and game options, this is a great site that reviews all kid-themed apps for Android, iPhone and iPad: http://www.bestkidsapps.com/.
What other kid-friendly apps do you like?
Fitness for Frazzled Moms
In the spirit of the “no money and no time” theme here at Making Bricks, we’re going to multi-task our way to better health.
I have actually almost always double-teamed my fitness routine with another essential activity, like making money. That’s why for many years I ran a little dog walking and pet sitting business. It was great when I lived in Northern California (Oakland, but it counts) and could hike some excellent seaside cliffs and forested mountain trails with a pack of crazy dogs, pretty much every day.
But now I have different responsibilities. Now I have kids and about ten different jobs. It’s your basic constant-running-on-no-sleep situation. A hell of a lot of it is driving, and a lot of it in front of a computer. Then there’s slumped-on-the-lid-of-a-training-potty while the kids are in the bath. In between, we try to have the meaningful experiences.
Parenting young children is one of those things that is so draining that you
may feel as if you ran a marathon, when in fact you spent much of the day issuing directives from the fetal position.
So how to double-team fitness and parenting young children?
There are a lot of obvious solutions to the fitness problem, including just getting outside and playing with your kids. Walking to the store instead of driving. Playing ball, or Frisbee, or going swimming. But it can still be hard, especially in the dead of winter, to make this happen on a regular-enough basis. We are often managing hectic schedules that are plotted down to the last minute.
Following are just a few ways to get your “kicks” in fits and spurts throughout the day.
Challenge yourself & your kids.
Try saying this (or something else age appropriate) to your children: “Mommy is going to see if she can do sit-ups until you run to your room, pick out a clean shirt, and come back here.” Kids love a challenge, and wanting to see if you’re still doing sit-ups can help expedite their task. So go ahead and keep doing sit-ups until they report back or it becomes obvious that they are never going to.
Encourage their “know-it-all-ism.”
Kids think they know it all. As parents, we spend a lot of time praising them for learning new things, but also making sure they understand how much is left to learn. But when trying to incorporate fitness into a crammed schedule, why not just let them believe they are experts? My son saw me doing some impromptu aerobics one day and said, “I know all about exercise. I’m the best at it. Look, Mommy!” What followed was a highly silly routine devised by him, where each move got weirder and more convoluted. But I didn’t care. We both got our bodies moving and we laughed a lot, too.
Endorphins v. adrenaline
Whenever you get that rising rage that comes from being pushed just a bit too far by your kids, instead of screaming, work it out with say, 10-15 roundhouse kicks. I’ve found that it cuts the tension quite a bit and also resets the kids’ attention spans.
Fitness for Frazzled Moms probably won’t yield those rock-hard abs we envy in celebrities and the childless. But it can help keep us connected to our own bodies during those grueling years when nurturing our children’s health and development takes over everything else.
Rather than struggling to carve out time to exercise alone, adding 10 minutes of cardio or strength-building to a couple of activities you are already doing is a stress-free alternative.
I’ve found I have better energy and a slightly slimmer waist after a month of exercise multi-tasking. But I still have a long way to go in my overall mission for health, so I can’t wait to see what my son’s got planned for us next.
In Praise of Subtitles
My husband & I unwinding with some subtitled programming after a hard day. Yeah, right.
You may be wondering how I can suggest that using subtitles reaches the level of life improvement. Though they are a vital resource for the hearing impaired, those who do not need to use them may find them distracting.
But I think activating the English subtitles on any DVD elevates the video watching experience significantly.
My husband and I started using subtitles on movie rentals when our second son was born. Cooper’s crib is in our bedroom, where it will probably remain until he’s old enough to move into his brother’s room. Using subtitles allowed us to watch movies at a volume low enough to keep the baby sleeping comfortably.
As time went on, though, I started turning subtitles on every time we watched a DVD. I love that with the subtitles running, you don’t have to keep adjusting the volume as screeching action turns to murmured dialog. If you miss a line here or there, the subtitles fill in the missing pieces.
Subtitles are great for the kids, too. I haven’t done a formal study on this, but
matching written words to spoken ones can’t possibly hurt developing literacy in the younger kids, and maybe even improve spelling in the older ones. It’s probably not enough to say that watching television is good for kids, but I love anything that helps me justify my boys’ admittedly excessive media consumption!
Here are just a couple more reasons to praise subtitles:
They refer to sounds you never knew were even there. Subtitles may tell you that there is a faint bird call, or sound of hammering, or something else that helps set the scene but is nearly inaudible to the average person.
They’ll tell you the name of the song that’s playing, and in many cases, the lyrics, too. Obviously the soundtrack of any movie has been carefully chosen to add to the story. Subtitles save you from trying to decipher lyrics that may be difficult to understand, and make it easy to follow up on purchasing a song you really liked.
Subtitles make it easier to keep track of characters. If, like me, you watch your movies in fits and starts, sometimes you forget who’s who. When two people are speaking, the subtitle will usually indicate the speaking character’s name. This can help avoid more confusion when you and your husband watch movies separately: “What part did you get to?”
“Umm, that guy, y’know, the best friend. What’s his name? He was talking to the ex-girlfriend…”
Maybe I’m weird, but I’m bummed that closed captioning isn’t a feature we have on our television service plan. I’ve gotta see about getting that turned on.
Best place I’ve used subtitles: Flight of the Conchords DVDs. These guys are frickin hilarious, mostly in cleverly rhymed songs.
Best Life Tip #1: Exploit Your Rich Friends
No seriously, exploit your rich friends. But in the nicest way possible. Here are a couple of examples to explain what I mean.
My sister has been nanny to a wonderful family for many years, and somewhere along the line, it became tradition for this family to gift her with theater tickets. So at every birthday and Christmas she gets a pair to some fabulous show she’s always wanted to see (or see again).
I sometimes get lucky enough to be her +1, and I’ve got to say, there’s nothing like an afternoon at the theater to lift your spirits and give you the strength to carry your burdens onward. Plus, theater today is perfect for the harried and undergroomed mom–formal attire is no longer required, and available subject matter runs the gamut from cheerleading to mental illness. There’s something for every taste.
Letting your more affluent friends know that you are really interested in the theater, or nice restaurants, or live concerts gives them easy go-to ideas for gifting occasions, and you the opportunity to soak up culture you might otherwise miss. Ask for experiences rather than things; they don’t depreciate in value, and can often be shared.
Obviously there’s a line between expressing your cultural interests and grubbing for gifts. But it never hurts to say out loud, “You know, I’ve always wanted to do [fill in the blank].” As long as there’s a mutual bond of affection between you that lasts all year long, your friends shouldn’t hear this as greed.
My second example has to do with grandparents that really want to do something for your kids, even if they don’t need any more stuff. My kids are lucky enough to spend one night a week with my moms, and during that time they often want to do something special. It can be as simple as a trip to the playground, or as extravagant as a trip to San Diego. But when I let the moms know that I struggled to keep up with the kids’ haircuts, they quietly took it on. Now every six weeks or so, I’m surprised when two gorgeously coiffed boys come home from Grandma Camp.
Two boys’ haircuts are a relatively small outlay for a couple who is otherwise financially stable, but it makes a huge difference to our bottom line. Every “one less thing” makes a difference when you’re working toward financial freedom.
In this same vein, go ahead and say “diapers” when someone asks what your one-year-old wants for her birthday.
When you give freely of your time and affection–those things that cannot be bought–and speak openly about both your dreams and your reality, you’ll find that the people who love you want to help you get closer to living your best life.
Couponing for Dummies, or “Wow, I Suck at This”
Clipping coupons: time well spent or too many headaches?
I recently decided that it is my moral obligation to take up couponing. First of all, my family needs every dollar I could possibly save. But beyond that, I like the idea of making these corporate food manufacturers follow up on their promises. (I love Box Tops for Education for the same reason.)
Couponing is a deliberately complex process, but savvy shoppers have made an art out of maximizing savings, to the point that many actually profit! Unfortunately for me, the art of couponing contains a lot of math. There must be a way to express couponing as an algorithm that takes into account the sales cycle of any given product x, along with the frequency of coupon release, coupon value and doubling policy, supply and demand in any given geographical area…I know there’s more.
And this is at the heart of why I suck at couponing. My mind is just way more literary than mathematical. I have never been able to do even relatively simple sums in my head, and at the heart of it, couponing is a numbers game.
To excel at it, you also have to be good at not only recognizing the coupon item, but staying within the purchasing restrictions. You have to maintain a stockpile of products in your home such that you never have on-the-spot needs and only buy what’s on sale. But I think the number one barrier to couponing for the average household shopper has got to be the prep time.
Last week I sat down and spent a good three hours poring over coupon circulars and signing up for multiple couponing sites on the web. By the time I felt prepared to shop, my office was a blizzard of discarded paper scraps and my brain was foggy from trying to memorize a whole new shopping list.
When I got to the store, I found that the best deals were already gone. Otherwise, I wandered up and down aisles, flipping through slips of paper and squinting at the shelves, ultimately filling my cart with about 75% coupon items. Some things we just needed.
Bottom line: my receipt said I saved $70, but I also spent $100 out of pocket. While I would say that we got more food overall this week than usual, some of it will be wasted just because we tried it for the first time. For example, I had a gag reflex when I got a taste of the “meat” included in a can of ravioli, so I won’t be serving the remaining cans.
Obviously couponing is a skill that takes time to develop. I’m going to keep going, but I realize that I must start very small and build slowly to avoid burnout as well as unintended overspending. So how can one coupon the “Making Bricks” way?
If you do nothing else, I’d recommend visiting your regular grocery store’s website and registering your preferred shopper card. In my case, King Soopers offers a ton of e-coupons that can be loaded on to your card and will deduct automatically at the register. Plus, you can look at the weekly circular online and avoid having yet more paper in your home.
To use e-coupons effortlessly, only load those that are for products you already buy, or that you know you need (say, garbage bags). One thing to remember is that they will supercede any paper coupon for the same product, so if you have paper of greater value, use it before even adding a similar e-coupon to your card.
In the meantime, go ahead and start saving any paper coupons you can find on products you already buy and take them to the store with you every week. You don’t have to flip through them incessantly as you shop, but a quick review at the checkout stand should yield some savings.
To go a little farther and start getting into the spirit of the game, try to identify the best deals in your store each week. These will be items that are already on sale and have a valid coupon associated. The King Soopers circular even notes the sale items that have additional e-savings available. They may not always be on items you need, but when it’s toilet paper, you can’t go wrong. Netting one big score a week is a great shot in the arm for beginners with little free time.
I’d like to recommend the website www.bargainblessings.com for any novice. It contains great “Couponing 101” tips, as well as a database of coupons that lets you search for a particular brand or item.
Fewer Tears at Bathtime
For us, bathtime for the kids is always something of a mixed bag. The boys love splashing around and playing in the water, but actually being soaped and rinsed…not so much.
The baby is too young to understand that tipping one’s head back is the best defense against soap-in-the-eye, so some spluttering and whining is always to be expected. And the four-year-old is just so nervous about the whole process that he can’t sit still. We usually give him a washcloth to cover his eyes with, but with all the wiggling and shrieking, the cloth itself ends up wet and soapy.
One day I happened upon a solution that has made bathtime a lot easier.
It's all fun and games until they see me coming with the soap.
I was pondering the fact that baby shampoo and soap are often the same thing, when my eye wandered to one of those mini shower puffs that we had gotten in some gift basket or another but never used. Could a mini-puff be used to wash hair? I wondered. The answer is yes!
If you put a little soap on the puff and then dip it in the water, it can be used to wash your child’s hair without pre-wetting it. Because you are using much less water overall, there are no drips and it is way easier to control where the soap goes.
Now, I have boys and their hair is short, but I imagine the same process could be used on long hair if you spread one palm out under the hair and wash it in long strokes that go only one direction.
Rinsing can still be a bit of a problem, but I’ve found that the puff, once clean of soap, can hold enough water to rinse out the bulk of the shampoo. When it’s time for a final clean water rinse, there’s very little soap left to sting sensitive eyes.
If you don’t have a small shower puff or two kicking around your home, they can be purchased for about $1 apiece at the grocery store. You could also try getting your kids excited about their next bathtime by letting them choose their own puff.
Easy Ways To Shoot Great Vacation Footage
Watching the "dailies" together can be fun, too.
Shooting home video while on vacation is a valuable investment in preserving your precious memories, one that will only increase in value as time marches on. But raw footage alone is not very accessible to other viewers, especially if it is not sufficient to tell the whole story. The following tips will help you be aware of future editing needs while you are enjoying those special moments that will never happen again.
Get your establishing shots right away.
The condo or hotel room is never going to look as nice as when you first get there. Take a little tour with your camera before bringing in luggage. Taking your camera along as you first explore the immediate surroundings is helpful, too. You’ll want to take a look at everything, and you won’t be on your way to an activity yet.
Set up a stage.
You can make one corner of your lodging your “confessional” area by arranging lighting, playing with camera angles, and keeping it clear of clutter. Take a little time every day to have all the members of your party sit and talk about the day’s highlights. The consistent, clean background will make editing easier and your final movie more polished.
Make sure everyone has equal camera time.
That means you, Mr. or Ms. Videographer. You don’t want it to seem later like only your disembodied voice participated in the vacation. If you feel the urge to narrate, hand the camera over to someone else and get in the shot.
Keep the shot dynamic, short and tight.
Your footage will be more interesting if you zoom in and out as the action changes. Wide, establishing shots are good, but close-ups are more personal and help viewers feel the mood. Don’t get hung up on keeping whole bodies in the frame, as you’ll lose the nuances of facial expression. Cut after any noteworthy moment so that those gems don’t get buried in the middle of long stretches of footage.
Think about the set-up
Any television show has to set up the action before it happens, right? So take the time to film members of your party on the phone, arranging a tour or outing. Or film the “getting out the door” stuff, with periodic checks on a clock. Capturing the work behind the play sets the scene and keeps viewers interested in what comes next.
Embrace the bloopers
Candid moments are great not only for capping individual scenes in your movie, but a “blooper reel” running beside the credits of your movie, or as a separate bonus feature, is a really fun touch for viewers.
Prerequisite: Video camera. Most digital cameras shoot video, too.
Making Bricks 