FirstWords: Deluxe
Yesterday, I faced a two-hour drive with a four year and an almost two year old. The two year old had just had a nap. There was no hope of sleeping on the ride home. I know for years and years, parents entertained their children on car rides. They entertained kids on car rides much, much longer than two hours.
Yet, 22 months old boys are hard to entertain in the car. They don’t have the attention span to play with toys for long. Unlike Emma, a book cannot sustain his focus. Many cars have built in DVD players for the back seats just for this purpose. We don’t have a DVD player. Instead, I had two iPods touches in my pockets.
I handed Mathias my iPod touch set to First Words. For the next 45 minutes, I heard him placing letters into words in the App. I heard him create colors, animals and words from around the house. He repeated some of the letters as he touched them. It blew me away as I heard him put together the word “crescent.”
After 45 minutes, Mat lost interest in First Words. Though, honestly, I don’t know when he had ever sustained a single activity for that long. Emma helped him switch to Dora episodes. Now, instead of repeating letters, Mathias was speaking in Spanish and answering riddles in English. This was two hours that I couldn’t dedicate to interacting with my children in their learning. It was not two hours lost.
(On a side note, as Mat played First Words, Emma was too. Her reaction and depth of comprehension was very different within the same App. For example, she asked from the back of the car… “Mom, are baby bears called cubs?”)
On a normal day, my children would not have had two hours straight of access to activities and shows on the iPod. Yet….
Is this not learning? Is this not positive screen time?