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I have a 3 year old, he likes my iPad, but I don't get the fascination of people with children that are "using one better than their parents". Are they using i

I have a 3 year old, he likes my iPad, but I don't get the fascination of people with children that are "using one better than their parents". Are they using it for anything useful? Are they reading emails? Are they browsing websites? Can they search YouTube for their favorite cartoons or songs? So what the hell are we talking about anyway? Moving stuff around the screen and opening their favorite game? I don't see how that's in any way fascinating. My son likes to draw on the iPad btw. But he's way more happy when we draw things pencil on paper. Just something to consider - being able to use a device, doesn't make it useful.

memracom 13y ago
My 6 year old daughter has an iPad 1 which she appropriated from mum. She has taught me gestures that I didn't know about, and that you can click the button twice to get a menu of running apps and shut down ones that are slowing things down. She figured out on her own, that the URLs announced on the kids TV channels can be typed into the browser and she works her way through these sites, saves high scores, wins prizes (pages to print and colour) and so on. Just yesterday something new came up on one channel and she grabbed her iPad to look up that channel's schedule page to see if it was a schedule change or just a short that they sometimes play between programs. And she draws all kinds of stuff in a kind of story mode, kind of like the way the Olympics opening ceremony unfolds a story. And she plays some games (only free ones and I decide what to install). These aren't drawings that she saves, because she is continually erasing and redrawing, but sometimes she does draw things and saves them into the gallery. I downloaded a selection of free drawing apps based on review sites that list stuff like X Great Apps for Kids. She sets up reminders for events in her life including school field trips. Personally I never use calendaring programs so she just figured this out on her own. And she worked her way through Settings experimenting and asking questions about anything that she did not understand.
- bad_user 13y ago
  What drawing apps have you installed that you can recommend? The one I found for my son is terrible - sluggish and shows an annoying top banner serving ads completely unrelated to kids or drawings.

memracom 13y ago

My 6 year old daughter has an iPad 1 which she appropriated from mum. She has taught me gestures that I didn't know about, and that you can click the button twice to get a menu of running apps and shut down ones that are slowing things down. She figured out on her own, that the URLs announced on the kids TV channels can be typed into the browser and she works her way through these sites, saves high scores, wins prizes (pages to print and colour) and so on. Just yesterday something new came up on one channel and she grabbed her iPad to look up that channel's schedule page to see if it was a schedule change or just a short that they sometimes play between programs. And she draws all kinds of stuff in a kind of story mode, kind of like the way the Olympics opening ceremony unfolds a story. And she plays some games (only free ones and I decide what to install). These aren't drawings that she saves, because she is continually erasing and redrawing, but sometimes she does draw things and saves them into the gallery. I downloaded a selection of free drawing apps based on review sites that list stuff like X Great Apps for Kids. She sets up reminders for events in her life including school field trips. Personally I never use calendaring programs so she just figured this out on her own. And she worked her way through Settings experimenting and asking questions about anything that she did not understand.

bad_user 13y ago
What drawing apps have you installed that you can recommend? The one I found for my son is terrible - sluggish and shows an annoying top banner serving ads completely unrelated to kids or drawings.