The Nodlings are just as excited about my new purchase as I am. Of course, part of that is simple novelty. However, it has borne some interesting fruit. Because it is so portable, yet large enough for more than one person to look at, the kids are clustering about like fruit flies.
We have done morning prayer via Universalis a couple of times with the Nodlings each taking turns reading one of the psalms aloud.
We tested out our chosen GPS application, MotionX GPS Drive HD, v4.1, by navigating to Grandma's house for brunch today and then "detouring" for gas in order to simulate our upcoming trip to my sister's out of state wedding. It gives directions just fine, but the voice directions only seems to know about major road names. Figuring out how to detour in the middle of a navigation was also tricky. Should work out fine.
Of course the Nodlings want to play the games on the iPad, so I downloaded some free apps: checkers, touch hockey, BrainPOP, tic-tac-toe, Let's Do Math, and Animal Fun. My littlest, Nib, loves the animal one. It just shows real pictures of animals and plays the sound that animal makes, says its name, and spells it. Nib squeals with delight for each and every animal and pushes the button to go to the next one. The interface is so simple a two year old can use it (most of the time). She ran around the house yelling "Ice pack! Ice Pack!". I had to laugh, "No baby, it's called iPad."
Tonight the Nodlings and I curled up on the couch and watched an educational clip on BrainPOP about Hellen Keller, took the quiz at the end, and finished up with a couple of levels of the Isaac Newton's Gravity game, where we had to figure out various puzzles based on gravity.
Even Grandma, who is not into tech toys, saw it and got excited. She can read books, look up recipes, flip through pictures of the kids, and get her email on one little simple device.Anything that draws us together has to be a good thing, right?
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