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You may be thinking of taking advantage of Amazon's great Cyber Monday deals to get your child a Kindle for Christmas. We'll be talking all month on this blog about using the Kindle for Homeschool.
First of all, what advantages does the Kindle have for children? If you get the Kids Edition Kindle Fire (above), you get a kid-proof case, a 2-year worry-free guarantee, and a free year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. You may also opt for the 8GB Kindle Fire (below) that is only $33.33 for Cyber Monday, but I would definitely recommend also getting a case to go with it.
The big advantage with using either Kindle with kids is the great PARENTAL CONTROLS. Once you get a Kindle, whether it's a regular one or one with a kids' case, you can set up a kid's profile within your own profile. I love this option. When you set up your child's profile, you choose which games, books, etc to include on your child's profile. You can set limits on the time your child can play each day, and you can set individual limits for any-game-play, educational game play, or reading only. I have mine set up so that my 11-yo son's Kindle comes on at 7:30 am and turns off at 9:30 pm. During the day, he can read the books I have approved at any time, as long as he wants to. He has one hour of game play per day, but he has to read for 30 minutes before it will allow him to play the games. I could also set it up that he had to do a certain amount of educational app time before he could play other games. I have videos and the web browser turned off, but you can turn them on and limit their time as well. There is no email available for the child profile, and you can't get "in-app purchases" on the child's profile. That is good as far as not letting your child purchase things while using an app, but it has frustrated me a few times as well. For instance, I purchased a math-practice game that came with addition and subtraction practice, and there was an upgrade you could purchase to practice multiplication and division. I purchased the game and the upgrade, but only the addition and subtraction will work in the child profile, not the multiplication and division.
All in all, this is a great tool to use for homeschool.
There are lots of free and low-cost books and apps for the Kindle, so you can start loading them now to have it all ready for your child at Christmas. (Disclaimer: While some free books are wonderful, there are other times you "get what you pay for;" i.e. spelling and grammar may not have been edited as they would be in a regular, published book. I will be alerting my readers to Freebies all month, but the only ones I have edited or checked for editing are those by Knowledge Box Central, the company for which I work.)
Here is a freebie to get you started:
Stay tuned to this blog all through December for Freebies, Giveaways, and information about Homeschooling with Kindle!
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