This post was sponsored by Amazon as part of an Ambassador Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.
Getting our youngest in the spirit of reading can be a challenge. One that I as a booklover just never will understand completely. Elliot is beyond busy with school, his friends, sports and of course being online. Even at just nine, this kid knows his way around the worldwide web better than his mom. We found that the Echo Dot Kids Edition was just what we needed to bring the storybook spark back to life.
We introduced him to the Echo Dot Kids Edition around the holiday season and he was immediately smitten with all the capabilities and ways he could communicate with Alexa. With Amazon FreeTime on Alexa he gained access to over 1,000 Audible books, ad-free radio stations and kid-friendly playlists! All the things we wanted him to have in one easy device that we knew to also be what we parents call safe online activity. Which as I am sure all parents know is so important in this day and age.
Amazon voice devices including the Echo Dot Kids Edition and Echo Show, both encourage all of our children to read more books on their own and get more involved with family activities like cooking with mom. Not only is Elliot able to have a story read to him at bedtime but we also actively looks up new recipes and even indulges in mind boggling math problems. It seems Alexa can be a bit smarter than mom in this area.
While their friendship began with a discussion about Santa and holiday cookies, Alexa and Elliot are off on imaginative story adventures, danceathons and one on one chats that never cease to amaze me!
As a mom, I weighed the benefits of the Echo Dot Kids Edition with Alexa voice service before making the decision to incorporate it into our daily lives. After research and good ole fashioned time, we feel safe with Amazon’s world-class parental controls in the Parental Dashboard. They allow us, the parents to select which services and skills our kids can use, turn off voice purchasing, block song lyrics which we deem not okay for young ears and so much more. The safe, kid-friendly fun is never ending and honestly, we are excited to still be learning what more we can achieve!
In fact, we now place his and our family’s entire schedule into a series of reminders through household communications for announcements. This includes his favorite alarm for morning with a pleasant good morning from Alexa herself, brush your teeth with two minute timer reminder which has worked wonders in his daily routine departments, and reminders for making sure his things are ready for school the next day and his homework complete. While it may seem weird to have a device help handle these things. I will tell you that his demeanor is much more friendly when having a sweet chime from Alexa tell him get ready for bed than mom. Perhaps it is because he hasn’t realized just yet that it has the came result in the end. Either way, I will take an excited Elliot over a grumpy one any day!
With the excitement of using Echo Dot Kids Edition is still in full force, I will take the advancement win as a good sign that our children will continue to use Amazon devices as a source for information, indulge in new stories and assistance in keeping a positive routine in their daily lives. We plan to add more devices to our teenagers bedrooms soon to help them keep on task as they enter high school later this year.
Enter to win One (1) of 10 Echo Dots below.
Entry period: March 13 – April 3. I-C will randomly select winners from all program entries and Amazon will facilitate fulfillment of the winning prizes of 10 Winners.
Yes, I feel like I know it so much better and now I want my husband to get me one for Mother’s Day!
Yeah, this technology really is a convenience.
I did not even know they had a Kid’s edition of Alexa! That is so cool. I wish this contest was open to Canada, too!
I have never paid attention to what these do now I know and I want one