Hi friends. I took the weekend off. From everything. I read a book - beginning to end in one day while cuddled under a blanket. I planted carrots and zinnia and sunflowers and baby herb plants. I taught my 7 yr old - and my husband- how to play Clue. I avoided technology as much as possible.
Today I felt ready to tackle life again. One of things on my Tackle Life List has been to clean up my kids tablets and make them more education friendly. In the past, when life is busy, I have found apps that are highly recommended but the kids don't like or are buggy. They live in the app graveyard next to the calculator until the tablet yells at me to give them more storage and then they get deleted so my kids can add an app where they drive dune buggies over hills. Rinse, repeat...over and over. So over the last week, I had downloaded newer ones that were recommended (by people I actually knew) and I played with them, set up user accounts, and just generally tried them out. Today, I went through and cleaned up their home screens and deleted all the junk. Then I put everything they can't touch in a 'Mom' folder and all their apps in a 'Game' folder. Then all the apps that I think are brain-users I left on the main screen. I am going to try unlimited screen time on the main screen apps, with limited 'Game' action this week. One other road block that I ran into was that Kindles don't let you add a shortcut to a screen, so if I found something cool online and it didn't have an Amazon friendly app, I couldn't mark it for them easily. So I impulse bought a basic Android tablet that will be 'Mom's Tablet' that I can let them use for things like the Cincinnati Zoo live feeds and bookmarked websites.
In case anyone is interested, these are the things we have settled on for approved anytime right now...
Apps on their kindles...
Minecraft - bought it for them on Amazon appstore
Khan Kids - free on the Amazon appstore
Teach Your Monster to Read - I think it was $1 on Amazon appstore
Apps/Sites on my impulse buy tablet...
Cincinnati Zoo - FB Live daily
Todo Math - I bought a year subscription for $40 - includes both my kids
Epic Books - Free trial for 30 days (some schools have it free) and then $7/mth I think
Mo Willems Lunch Doodles - Live Daily at kennedy-center.org
Desktop...
typing.com - free typing classes
If anybody else has any great apps or sites they use, I would love to check them out and add them into our rotation when they get bored with a few of these ones!
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