How to Enjoy Holiday Family Traditions with Digital Festivities

This post was sponsored by Amazon as part of an Ambassador Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.

We all have holiday family traditions we enjoyed as children and now find ourselves passing on to the next generation. But in the modern Tech Age, how do we keep traditions authentically fun and interactive? How do we make the most of the technology kids love this season and still keep the Holiday cheer alive? 

Why We Have Updated Holiday Family Traditions with Fire HD 8 Kids Edition

We love to craft, cook, take walks and play board games… just like generations before us. But we also love TV, video games, apps, and music. It’s OK to like both, they can work together. Our daughter Elsie has been tech savvy for some time and this year we have also introduced the Twins to some of digital Holiday magic with the Amazon Fire HD Kids Edition.

The Twins have had so much fun and I’ve been so impressed with how family friendly and educational it is. Fire Kids Edition tablets are the #1 kids’ tablets in the U.S. They come with a kid-proof case and a two-year worry-free guarantee. That means if it breaks, we simply return it and Amazon will send a replacement for free, no questions asked. Perfect!

Sharing Holiday Activities with Siblings

We have a pretty big age gap between Elsie and the Twins (almost 6yrs). But they have all been having fun with ‘Christmas Hair Salon‘ which allows them to style Santa’s beard or give a snowman a colorful mowhawk. Pango Christmas has also been a hit… Elsie reads the instructions and all three take it in turns to do the activities. It’s a 50/50 book/game and they love it! 

We can still craft our own Santa’s and snowmen out of paper and cotton balls, but there is also space for some digital games. They have their own kind of Holiday charm and the Kids enjoyed playing with each other and Mom too. A tablet does not need to be a lone activity.

Holiday Books Galore on Fire HD 8 Kids Edition

It’s not Christmas without festive PJs and books to read together, am I right?

We try to limit the number of books we buy and are big supporters of our local library. The trouble is, anything holiday related is always snapped up quickly, and we’re always disappointed to find no Christmas books for the season. I’m sure people are already putting Easter books on hold, but really, who are these super organized parents?

Luckily I don’t need to be organized with the Fire HD 8 Kids Edition tablet, because it comes with a one-year subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. This provides instant access to over 20,000 books, videos, Audible books, educational apps, and games. You can be sure you’ll find plenty of Christmas books to enjoy together as a family!

The content in Amazon FreeTime Unlimited is age-appropriate and curated by the Amazon FreeTime team. This means when you set your child’s profile with their age, it makes it easy to find educational and entertaining content your kids will love.

Parental Controls to Make the Most of Family Traditions

I know from my experience with Elsie that although games and videos can be educational, it’s easy to lose track of time spent on a tablet. We don’t want all our Holiday family traditions to be overwhelmed by tech… we still want to crack out a retro board game with a mince pie!

This is where the Parental Control settings in FreeTime come into play. Parents can set time limits, adjust age filters, and enable/disable web browser access. The simplicity of the child profiles and Parental Control settings are one of my favorite features of all the Fire Kids Edition tablets:

• Set hours content can be accessed for weekdays and weekends.
• Total screen time limits and caps for categories. Eg: Uncapped books, limited apps.
• Daily goals for educational content. Eg: a child must read a digital book for 15mins before being able to access games.
• Age filters to make sure the content kids are viewing is age-appropriate.
• Add titles from your own content library to your child’s profile, or choose to remove unwanted FreeTime Unlimited content.
• Enable/disable the kid-friendly web browser and access to more websites if desired.

Parents can also use the Parent Dashboard (a mobile-optimized website) to review the digital content their kids are using and determine how to manage time limits and educational goals. Parental peace of mind!

Our Language Tradition Revamped by Tech

When we lived in England, and Elsie was about the same age as the Twins, we used to take a French book every week from the library. Since moving to the US, she is more focused on Spanish, yet because we as parents don’t feel confident reading Spanish, our weekly language book has stopped happening. 

With the Amazon FreeTime, we have access to over 1,000 age-appropriate, Spanish language books, videos, educational apps, games, and Audible books. The audible books, in particular, will be great for revamping our reading tradition with some Holiday titles… I may even pick up a little Spanish myself!

Holiday Trips Made Easy with Offline Mode

If your Holiday family tradition involves traveling across the Country, you’ll want to keep those littles entertained. Kids can download FreeTime Unlimited content for viewing offline, by simply long-pressing the titles they want downloaded while connected to Wi-Fi.

Stock up with the Christmas books and videos and take a load off during the journey!

Whether you choose the Fire 7 Kids Edition, the Fire HD 8 Kids Edition, or the Fire HD 10 Kids Edition… All three tablets come with a kid-safe bumper in blue, pink, or yellow, one year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, and two-year worry-free guarantee. 

Keep those Holiday Family traditions alive but enjoy the technology available… win win!