It’s no secret my kids use the iPad. We actually pose pretty strict time limits, but when we limit too much, the kids end up watching more television which is not the desired result.
One of the problems we have with the iPad is the kids can easily switch from games to shows. We prefer them to play games, but don’t want to delete the show options entirely (they do come in handy sometimes) so we try to hide YouTube and the Disney app in the back of weird overcrowded folders. That never works— the kids are too smart for our lame attempts at technology subterfuge.
The solution seems to be to find great games that will engage the kids enough, so they won’t want to switch over to passive viewing. (Especially passive viewing that includes that Disney Collector lady!)
In my quest to find engaging games, I have downloaded lots of educational apps starring TV characters. This works for Mazzy but are usually too advanced for Harlow. She can only play for only so long before she gets frustrated.
Both Mazzy and Harlow love princess stuff but every princess app seems to be about putting on dresses and jewelry. In addition to offering no educational value whatsoever, the apps also restrict the good dresses and jewelry for parents who are willing to shell out small fortunes for virtual wardrobes.
When Mazzy uses one of the princess games, she is constantly begging to amp up her princess experience— Can I get the ballroom pack? Can I get the tiara collection? I want the pink earrings with the lock on them! THEY ARE SOOOOOOOO PRETTY!!!!!!
The conversation is always the same.
“The tiara collection costs $5.99. That is too much money.”
“BUT I REALLY WANT THE TIARA COLLECTION!!!!”
“Sorry, Mazzy. I am not going to buy it. You can buy three new apps for that price!”
“WAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!”
“If you can’t keep it together, I am not going to let you play with the iPad at all.”
“Okay, fine.”
When Harlow uses a princess app, she falls into a purchasing wormhole every five seconds. Only she doesn’t know what is going on, only that she can’t get anything to work.
“It’s not working! It’s not working! It’s not working!” Harlow screams until I click the cancel button, touch five different arrows and finally get her back to home base.
“Why don’t you play this game instead?”
“NO! PINCESS!!!!”
I hate the princess apps, can you tell? I don’t even know why I downloaded them in the first place. A moment of desperation, I am sure.
Anyway. Recently, Sago Mini emailed me about their new Fairy Tales exploration app, appropriate for ages 2-4 years old. (My parenting sweet spot!) Sago said the app “lets kids pull back the curtain on an enchanted forest filled with hidden surprises, wonderful delights and engaging characters.”
My kids like hidden surprises.
“Fairy Tales puts kids in full control, providing a rich and playful world that leaves plenty of room for imagination and creative storytelling.”
My kids like storytelling.
“Kids can explore the magical world alongside their friend, Jinja the cat.”
Harlow loves cats! She even pretends to be a cat half the time!
But do you know what really sold me?
“As with all the Sago Mini apps, Fairy Tales has no in-app purchases or third-party advertising whatsoever, so kids are free to play without interruption.”
Hallelujah.
I actually already owned Sago Mini Doodlecast (which I highly recommend) so I decided to let my kids give Fairy Tales a try.
THEY LOVED IT.
There is no game play— it’s just a magical world in which your child can move Jinja the cat up into the sky, through the trees, under a waterfall, back down to land, while interacting with many different characters along the way.
Every time Jinja approaches an interactive part of the world, a gold starburst appears. Your child moves Jinja over the burst and then something surprising happens. And the same spot might behave differently the second time you come across it.
For instance, the first time Jinga runs into a unicorn (located high up in the trees), the unicorn smiles and gives Jinga a hug. The second time Jinga interacts with the unicorn, Jinga offers him a cupcake, the unicorn eats it and then the unicorn farts. The unicorn farts! That’s enough reason to buy this app alone.
Jinja runs into garden gnomes, monsters and other familiar Sago Mini friends that appear in their other apps, like Robin Hood, Rosie the Witch, Prince Jack and Harvey “starring as” Rapunzel. Rapunzel’s long blonde hair turns into an Afro when Jinga eats the coin, which made Harlow laugh out loud.
Almost every detail of the world— from the acorns in the trees to the clouds in the sky to the fireflies Jinja collects along the way, demonstrate an interesting cause and effect. For a toddler who is just learning how touch technology works, Fairy Tales is the perfect introduction.
I thought the app was a little simple for Mazzy, but she loved it anyway, particularly the magical dress-up chest that Jinja can jump in, emerging as either a princess or a knight.
The day after I first showed Harlow the app, she asked for the iPad so she could play with the cat. Then she sat still for a solid amount of time, quietly engaged, except when a new character would present itself.
“A monster!” she yelled.
“He’s a funny monster,” she clarified, just in case I was worried.
And I sat beside them both on the couch, without lifting a finger to get Harlow out of a purchasing wormhole or fighting with Mazzy about virtual earrings.
That, my friends, is worth $2.99. (You can download it here.)
GIVEAWAY
Today, I am giving away a Sago Mini Plush Toy ($24.99) and a $20 iTunes Gift Card, so you can download Sago Mini Fairy Tales, obviously (among other things).
To enter, you must be a Mommy Shorts subscriber. If you are not one already, you can subscribe to daily or weekly emails here.
Then, leave a comment below telling me the most annoying thing your kid does with your iPad. Ask for princess app upgrades, mistakingly delete your email inbox, that kind of thing.
Winner will be chosen randomly and announced on February 13th. Just promise me you won’t spend your $20 on virtual tiaras.
Good luck!
UPDATE: Congratulations to Anna Dhody! You have won a Sago Mini Plush Toy and $20 iTunes Gift Card. Please contact abby@mommyshorts.com to claim your prize.
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This post was sponsored by Sago Mini, but all thoughts, opinions and love of unicorn farts are my own.
My 18 month old posts pictures on Instagram and I don’t realize it until data later!
My son has the amazing ability to know one of “his” apps has been deleted within seconds on turning it on. There’s no sneaking an annoying app away from him unnoticed. 🙂
My kids either watch endless Justin Time or play Talking Gina, which gets REALLY old – fast. I’d love something more interactive out of their screen time instead of them zoning out or hearing terribly annoying apps.
I have a Kindle. The single most annoying thing my kid does is BEG and PLEAD for an app, then I get it, and he plays with it for ten minutes and then announces it is “awful”. He’s almost three. This app sounds perfect for him.
We love Sago Mini! The most annoying thing Addie does on the iPad is opens an app (that has a very annoying tune that plays on the home screen) and then leaves the iPad at highest volume, sitting somewhere, without turning it off. I then have the tune in my head for the rest of the day. Haha.
My oldest can find his way to youtube and keep choosing the “recommended” song list for anything and everything Katy Perry and One Direction. My youngest, who doesn’t know how to unlock the iPad, will take hundreds of black pictures and set the alarm, which of course we don’t know about until it goes off. At 2:00 am.
The most annoying thing my son does is send emails. And, since he’s only two, they are giberish and usually to some extremely large distribution list.
We don’t have an ipad in our house, and my daughter has only had my smart phone once- but that time my daughter liked to look at herself in the selfie mode. It was good free way to entertain her when stuck in traffic!
The most annoying part of the iPad is while my daughter plays the finger drums there is an ad for candy crush that she always touches then disrupts her music.
Mine re-names folders. I can’t ever find anything because rarely do I think to check the “JKDNFIENWIOEN” folder
Always holds the phone with her finger over the screen and then doesn’t understand why she can’t use her other finger to make things work!
turning off the wifi every single time and just plain touching it with her grubby snotty hands.
She randomly finds Spanish talking YouTube videos and watches them over and over and over…very loudly.
She just chucks it on the ground!
Every time we turn on the Fisher Price apps for my son he presses the home button and then gets mad because his puppy went away. This sometimes involves him throwing the iPad onto us to get our IMMEDIATE attention!
My son turns off the wifi on the iPad and then looses his MIND when he can’t get YouTube to work. Ugh!
Since we had to hide the controller after our son purchased a $60 game from Xbox, Xander became more interested in our tablets. He never manages to stay in a game we put on for him so we installed this toddler lock game that only we can close. This, of course, was unsatisfactory so what he does with the tablets now is toss them somewhere we can’t find them. I guess that’s his way of saying if he can’t use it, neither can we!
she deletes apps!
My son doesn’t quite have the motor skills to fast forward a video yet but whenever Frozen is on (always) he finds me where ever I am hiding (usually with a sharp knife or hot dish in my hand while cooking dinner) and grunts at me to fast forward to something else. Son e he isn’t quite communicating with words yet it is an extremely exhausfing exercise in guessing because as you try to describe which song you are fast forwarding or rewinding to he says “yeh” like its the best idea ever then shoves the iPad back into your thigh of that wasn’t the right choice.
Moving/hiding apps. I couldn’t figure out where the heck my mail app had gone (knowing it was impossible to delete and I could still find it by searching).
My sweet little toddler is crazy on the ipad. Constantly showering youtube for the most obnoxious videos and playing them repeatedly until mommy wants to pull her hair out
My 2.5 year old tries to enter passwords into in game purchases. Screwing up the entire system, locking us out of the entire iPad. That and occasionally attempts to FaceTime people when he gets bored with his all!
when my toddler closes and opens and closes and opens a game just because he likes to click the home button and then gets mad the game disappears (we have an oooold ipad1)
My son does NOT like yo see any apps on the desktop. He is constantly moving apps to random folders. We can never find anything. You would think he was a neat person, but he is not. He hates to clean anything else up!
We don’t have a tablet, so it’s our iPhones that are used by our 2 year old. The most frustrating thing is the all out war we go through when someone calls or text during her play time. I always win the battle, but end up not being able to hear whoever has called because of the shrieking sobs in the background.
Definitely when she tosses the iPad over the couch out of frustration when said princess app won’t work!:(
Emmett (21 months) loves to watch Buzz Lightyear on the iPad. There’s this AWESOME feature at the bottom right that lets you change the language or caption settings. Now I realize there’s a small part of TS3 where Buzz speaks Spanish, but dude has got skills because my toddler can get him to speak French WITH Chinese subtitles. Every. Time.
My 2 yr old sneezed a big mouthful of cookie all over the screen last night, it was really gross. She also likes to open up all her games and go from one to the other rapidly. She also smeared snot over the screen when she tried to kiss the characters she was playing with.
My biggest pet peeve along with you is my daughter trying to play a game and gets stuck with the in app purchases. I just recently discovered your blog from instragram and I am loving following you.
By far the Disney Collector lady on YouTube! She could watch that for hours if we let her!!
He loves the home button. We’ll be FaceTiming Grandma and Grandpa and then I hear my Mom….hey where’d you guys go?
Drive me crazy when apps are deleted or put in odd folders!
The most annoying thing my son does with the ipad is drop it! We have it in a giant rubber supposedly kid-proof case, which is the only reason it hasn’t shattered into a million pieces (yet), but we did have to get it repaired once after he dropped it, and everytime I am terrified.
My 3 year old gets easily bored with her princess apps because like you, I refuse to unlock the magic. So she then hacks my apps and can’t seem to do anything necessary to actually play so every 5 seconds it’s,”Mama, can you do this?” “No Zoe, that’s my game, play your own!” “But mama, I don’t like my games!!!”
Harper (almost 2) takes countless “burst” photos on my phone. She manages to circumvent the key code on my phone and not only take selfies of her fingers but also set the stopwatch and switches the phone into airplane mode too often. Sneaky babies!
My daughter moves everything around on my iPad. Every time I go to use it I can’t find anything!
My son is constantly watching utunr
Oops! Youtube videos about football cards… Darn iphone!
We have Amazon prime so can watch lots of free shows on the iPad – of course my son always wants to watch the shows that aren’t free and doesn’t understand why he can’t watch them, grrr.
Every time I open my photo album I can see all the selfies my kids leave for me. Kind of cute but after the 20th picture, its like enough already.
My daughter always manages to find the finger family collection. OMG its so annoying! I have to change it immediately and two minutes later she somehow finds it again!
The coloring app where the sections of the pictures to touch and color are so small that even her tiny fingers can’t manage to hit them. What?!? How is that possible or even close to a good idea?
my boys will either accidentally hit those in-ad banners or get too frustrated and move onto Nick JR. Or open Mommy’s games…lives lost!
When my two year old gets stuck with the upgrade popups, he gets mad and THROWS the iPad. Arghhhhh!
My son loves to open ALL THE APPS. Then he gets upset when he can’t work something or the video he pulled up on netflix does the ” are you still there? ” thing. He’s 2 & 1/2. It’s also extreme meltdown when I tell him iPad (or as he says ‘hipad’) time is over. Also, already bought this app! I think he’s going to love it.
My girls (2 &4) get frustrated when they get stuck in an app that won’t let them go very far without collecting/buying more accessories, worlds etc. My 4 y.o. recently learned the work lame and just starts yelling it at the ipad. Hysterical really 🙂 Thanks for inroducing this app, we definietly try it out.
My girls get frustrated when they get sruck in apps that only go so far without collecting/buying more stuff. My 4 y.o. will yell LAME at the top of her lungs and just toss the ipad down. Very funny actually. Thanks for introducing this app, we will definitely try it out.
I like letting our kids play on our Kindle Fire instead of my iPhone. I can put the Fire in “Kindle Free Time” mode: you can set up profiles for multiple kids, you can specify which apps are allowable, set time limits, and links for in-app purchases and links to external websites are blocked.
Ugh, when an app takes too long to load, she hits the home button. Then gets mad that the app is closed. Then it starts all over again. Fun times. Also she always manages to change languages on apps and I have a hell of a time changing back to English!
He tries to “play” apps that are not games. I wish the iPad had seperate log-ins…
YouTube has taken over iPad time! Oh I miss the days of educational games and endless reader. Along with YouTube comes “the annoying orange”!!! It is so awful and of course the boy loves it.
My daughter started buying things on my ipad. She bought lots of wonderful games that she played for all of 5 minutes. I didn’t catch on to this for about a week. It was fabulous.
Fighting! Children fighting over the iPad is the most annoying part of the iPad!
My son got into my Facebook and started deleting people… 9 months later and I’m still trying to fix the damage!
My 4-year-old plays these games that allow you to take a screen shot. My photo stream is full of pictures of Mr. Potato Head – in drag, as a clown, as a cowboy. That, plus the usual forehead selfies kids take.
My 6 month old hasn’t figured out apps yet. But she has figured out that mommy’s phone is fun to play with and usually ends up hitting it and closing what I’m doing. Or if I let her hold it she manages to unlock it. I guess I’ll need to password protect it soon.
My daughters get frustrated when they reach the end of an app and can’t move forward without us “unlocking” it with more coins ha.
Getting ready for a move from South Florida to Virginia and dreading the drive. This app sounds perfect for my just-turned two year old! She doesn’t get to do much on the iPad beyond selfies and Sesame Street videos, but the most annoying thing, by far, is how she has completely chewed up and picked apart the iPad case. She just can’t leave it alone!!!
Not sure if this counts, but okay. My little brother (he’s four but acts like he’s still a terrible two) will go through my mom’s phone and will access the internet. One time, he accidentally typed in a certain letter combination and stumbled across some VERY inappropriate videos. Mom didn’t realize until that night when Dad asked to borrow her phone and the video came up, complete with the moaning and grunting. Dad wasn’t very happy! Neither was Mom. Poor Calvin was in SOOO much trouble.
He Facetimes and calls people in the A section of the phone book!
I know this will most likely get lost in the comments, but it seems a lot of parents are struggling with kids getting into other apps. I mentioned this to an apple lady at the shop once, and she showed me how to set it up so you can ‘lock’ a kid into one app. Settings < General < accessibility < guided access. To use : Press the home button 3 times to lock, and 3 times again to get out of it, plus an access code. It saves me on long car rides because my daughter loves to press the home button, and gets frustrated because she can't find her way back to toco pet doctor…
My phone has a Kids Mode so usually they can’t do much damage. But we’re going on a plan trip in a couple of weeks, so some new material to occupy them would be fantastic!!
This sounds stupid, I know, but I get so annoyed when my son watches my Snapchats before I can see them. They’re just pics of my sister’s cats or my mom sending photos of her dinner, but it drives me crazy.
I am with you on the purchasing wormhole! My daughter gets so frustrated when she clicks on something and it wants her to buy it so she can play. She doesn’t know how to get out of it!
I’m super sad that this awesome app is not available to Android platforms…
My daughter loves to watch super annoying videos on YouTube. The surprise egg ones drive me bonkers. She even leaves them playing while she is off doing other stuff so I can hear the loud crackling noises as they unwrap the eggs. Plus the various versions of the daddy finger song are another favorite of hers which get stuck in my head and I can see those cartoon fingers dancing around in my head when I am trying to fall asleep at night.
My 2 year old yells for “YouTube” while out shopping! We even try to “hide” the app in a folder but he always finds it! And he somehow manages to look up Disney Collector.
There is a really simple way to childproof your apple devices. Here’s the tutorial- http://prettyprovidence.com/iphone-parent-mode-i-love-you/ Hope this helps!
XOX,
Caroline
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