At least once a week, we find ourselves in a situation where one or both kids must sit somewhere boring and wait quietly. Sometimes it’s for an appointment, sometimes it’s while we take one to gymnastics or the other to her therapy session, and the other kid has to tag along because the other parent is occupied. Books work in many situations, but for longer waits or long car trips, we often like to pull out electronic media to provide additional reward for waiting patiently.
My phone and my iPad have a few apps on them specifically for the kids, although both get bored with games fairly quickly. I have different video viewers on my devices, but I also know I’m not always right there to make sure one of the girls doesn’t finish one video and then accidentally jump to another video that may not be appropriate for kids. So I either have to hover to make sure the video is appropriate, or block video apps from their allowed list.
To further complicate things, we’re planning to cut cable soon. The final straw was when the cable company announced they were raising our rates again (3rd time in a year), and were also removing some of our favorite channels from the now-higher-priced package we pay for. While I’ll be glad to save money, I know Cordy and Mira will still want to watch TV, especially when we’re making dinner or when they’re cashing in for some free time.
I recently had the chance to try out Kidoodle.TV for our family. Kidoodle.TV is a video-on-demand streaming service specifically targeted to kids 12 and under. It also has robust parental controls to give you the ability to customize what’s available for each child in your house and set viewing time limits.
Signing up was a breeze, and it allowed me to create a profile for each child. (You can create up to 5 profiles per account.) Each profile can then have different customizations applied. You can select appropriate age ranges for videos, so your four year old isn’t watching Transformers Beast Wars, or your older kid isn’t watching preschool programming.
Beyond that, you can then look through the list of all shows available, and further customize, turning off shows you don’t want to make available, and turning on others that your child might like, even if it doesn’t fall in the recommended age range.
Once you’ve got the profiles set up, you can navigate to the website on your computer or launch the Kidoodle.TV app for iOS or Android, select the profile, and hand the control over to your child.
When you’re in a profile, your child can choose from any available video and watch it immediately. You then set up a passcode so that changes can’t be made to a child’s profile without the parental passcode. I also like that you can lock a profile to prevent that child from switching to another kid’s profile. (Mira, who loves to see what her sister is up to, doesn’t need to be watching all of the video options available to Cordy, for example.)
No changes made without permission.
The video controls are bright and easy to use, too. Mira had no trouble learning how to pause a video, start it again, and control the options available to her. There are a lot of different shows available on Kidoodle.TV, too. Some of the cartoons I grew up with are there–like GI Joe, Inspector Gadget and Jem–and there’s plenty of educational programming, including National Geographic, Zoo Babies, and In Space. I’m excited to introduce our kids to shows that we grew up watching, and we’re enjoying watching new ones together. But when I can’t watch with them, it’s nice to know they won’t wander into anything inappropriate.
This point is completely unrelated to the kids, but Kidoodle.TV is also useful for parent TV time. Give the kids your computer or mobile device for Kidoodle.TV while you watch the TV shows you want to watch!
So far we’re really happy with the Kidoodle.TV service. The selection of kid programming is good, and they plan to add even more great content in the future. We’ve found the iOS app is superbly stable for a video player without the frequent buffering slowdowns of other players. Kidoodle.TV provides a free trial, and then it’s $4.99 a month afterward. BUT…I’ve got a coupon code you can use for 25% off a 1 year subscription to Kidoodle.TV. Just enter this code on the payment page: BLOGHER25. This coupon code expires June 30, 2014.
Not only can you use that coupon code for a big savings on Kidoodle.TV, but they’re also giving away $100 Visa gift card to one lucky reader!
To enter, leave a comment below to these questions: what devices do you kids use? Do they have their own or share with the whole family? You can also visit here to enter for a chance to win 1 of 3 iPad Minis in March and in April!
You can find out more about Kidoodle.TV on their website, Facebook page, Twitter, and Pinterest!
Sweepstakes Rules:
No duplicate comments.
You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
This giveaway is open to US or Canada (excluding Quebec) Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. The notification email will come directly from BlogHer via the sweeps@blogher email address. You will have 72 hours to respond; otherwise a new winner will be selected.
The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from 3/17-4/18.
Be sure to visit the Kidoodle.TV brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers posts!
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