Kid dreaming about his first laptop

Image via Gelaskins. 

We are preparing to go back to school this week. Even though we are still on holidays treasuring every single moment of it my son and I are starting to mentally prepare for another year of work and "growing up". It's probably going to be even more exciting than the last one as Dawid will become faster and faster in reading, discovering his own stories. My friend and I are starting to plan a monthly coding club for local kids too, my boyfriend has kindly offered presenting me with a new Raspberry Pie and once I am stable with my book writing habit I will go back to learning Scratch too so I suspect we will focus on coding this year at home too. It's funny (and feels good too!) to see that my son associates understanding technology with growing up too. When I explained to him that he is now moving to sizes of "bog boy shoes", he was chuffed. But when I calculated that he has less than his own age to go to have his own laptop THAT did the trick. He was so happy!

Even though I am sure the days of his own laptop are not here yet, I started dreaming about his own device! Wouldn't it be great to see this young man building his own applications on a laptop with a lovely skin like the one above? 

iPad apps for kids

If you ask me, iPad is a device designed for kids (and if for grown ups then just because we ARE big kids in disguise). So when we talk about safe, but effective and in dept Internet usage for children Ipad apps become an increasingly important topic. I have found two interesting blogs dedicated to iPad apps for kids, iPadforkids and apps4kids. Over at Online Classes there is a good list of learning apps for kids. TechRadar in the UK posted the best 10. Mashable includes kids apps in their usual updates, like this one on books re-designed for iPad. Now, I will obviously have my own opinions about various apps my 5 year old is using, so let me start with just a few we really like, and maybe one or two we had to delete.

First of all, Angry Birds - classing game for all ages. It's brilliant, it's funny, and it gives my son great feeling of success. Simple thing, but the fact that he can go back to all previous levels helps every time he gets stuck with the highest one.

NASA app - great solution to the issue of YouTube browsing (which cannot really be controlled). Here, everything happens within the app, so parents can be sure that the child accesses only kids friendly content.

Kid Art for iPad - great tool for kids creativity with few nice pre-defined themes and options to save creations easily.

Drawing Pad - even better than Kid Art for iPad. Dawid loves the stickers idea and endless options for tools and colours.

Intro to Math and Intro to Letters gave us a good start to accept the notion of learning on iPad. When faced with the choice of various action games, kids might think learning is boring. Those two little apps are very simple, visually friendly and engaging.

Simon's Cat iPad app - now, we love this one simply because we love Simon's Cat.

Lego Ninjago - we love it, because we love lego;)

Dinopedia by National Geographic - great app for dino lovers!

And now we are getting more and more interested in apps related to books, but the only one we like so far is Peekaboo Forest.

That's all from me - let me know, what YOU like, so we can test it too!;)