It’s finally happened. That moment when you turn to your kid and ask them to help you with a gadget. ShaiAnne has come to my rescue and her brothers are not far behind; they love technology. I definitely have to keep tabs on it, but I encourage it.
When ShaiAnne has a question about something I can’t answer, I have her do some research on the internet and then we discuss her findings. She and Deric like sites love coolmath-games.com, right now it’s their fave. Even Jesse (my two year old) knows how to play Angry Birds on Daddy’s phone. The video games are the ones I keep on the shortest leash. Set that timer!
We surf YouTube together pretty routinely for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. I’ll introduce them to my old school cartoons, funny baby clips, or just other randomness. I see where they want to go with the session.
Yesterday, we karaoke’d to a batch of Disney movie songs. I find the clips with lyrics are a neat way to encourage literacy. Deric (my 5 year old) is on a roll; 20 site words – yay! Of course, we had to dig out The Little Mermaid DVD after, we had the itch to watch it. Much to my chagrin, it was scratched and would not play -grrrr!
There’s even a school in Toronto, Canada (The Beverly School) that’s using ipads to help autistic children. According to the University of Toronto, more than half of the students at the school have shown increased communication with the technology; used by students to match objects and puzzles among other exercises.
While I don’t think the gadgets should completely replace a good book, a fun craft or fresh air running after a softball outside, a nice combo of both worlds is where I like to live. The technology isn’t going anywhere, might as well go along for the ride too – in the driver’s seat (with a little a help on occasion from my kid co-pilots).
Photo (c) Apple
