I bought the Kid a 16GB Kindle Fire HD 7 for $139 (the 8GB is $119). It’s a limited time offer — the Fire was $159 when I added it to my cart two week ago — and with the sudden price drop, I didn’t want to wait.
So the Kid is getting his Christmas present a month early, and he’s super excited. To be honest, I’m getting a little excited myself. It’s great to see him so enthused. (Games he’s dying for: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 [$2.99]; Stupid Zombies 2 [free]; SAS: Zombie Assault 3 [free]; Zombies Ate My Friends [free];
I have to play them all now to check out whether they’re appropriate or not. Ah, the hardship that is my life 😛 )
I plan on using Kindle FreeTime (which comes pre-installed) to force him to do his half hour of daily reading before he can play any of the games of movies.
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About Kindle FreeTime: blog posts of interest —
How to Setup a Kindle Fire for Kids with Kindle FreeTime — http://www.lovemyfire.com/kindle-freetime.html.
How-To Geek: How to Turn Your Kindle Fire Into a Totally Kid-Friendly Tablet — http://www.howtogeek.com/178303/how-to-turn-your-kindle-fire-into-a-totally-kid-friendly-tablet-with-freetime/.
Kindle FreeTime: Parental controls and kid-friendly content — http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2014/0108/Kindle-FreeTime-Parental-controls-and-kid-friendly-content.
Amazon Kindle Freetime review — http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/reviews/amazon-kindle-freetime-review-469809.
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Basically, FreeTime comes with the Kindle and you can add different profiles for multiple kids on a single device. You can decide what your kid is allowed to use and how long they can use it for. (Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is a different thing that you pay for, so don’t be confused.)
The Kid is too old for some of the controls, but at the same time I don’t trust him not to go app crazy and download a bunch of stuff or in-app purchase a bunch of stuff that will appear on my card. He gets a little too into his games, and sometimes he doesn’t think about consequences or much of anything else when he wants to play something. Plus I have a lot of content I don’t want him to have access to, yet he’s too young to have his own Amazon account.
So I’ll be sharing some of my apps, games, and books with him, and I won’t have to worry that he’s spending his college fund on some silly game or other. Very nice deal.
