The past decade has seen technology integrating into every aspect of our lives. From smartphones to even smarter home devices, technology has redesigned our lives and the way we live them. Where our parents used to go grocery shopping once a week or once every month, our smart refrigerators get the groceries delivered to us.
Although children growing up around these smart gadgets enjoy a sufficient amount of exposure to technology, it’s only fair that they would want Smart Gadgets for Kids of their own. As much as a self-ordering fridge enhances their quality of life, it does so behind the scenes without affecting them directly.
Following are some interesting devices you can get started with and surprise your kids on their next birthday or as a special treat for scoring the highest on that test.
Smart Assistant
When thinking of smart homes, one of the first things that come to mind is a smart speaker integrated with some sort of artificial assistant. You might think of the Amazon Echo that comes packed with trusty Alexa or Google Home that comes with the familiar voice of Google Assistant.
These smart speakers not only control our homes, but they can also become trusty companions for our kids. Thanks to the AI these speakers come retrofitted with, they can answer questions, have conversations and play music, making them an instant hit with kids.
They can also help kids with homework. For instance, kids can ask them about history or geography or get them to solve simple math questions that would normally require the use of a calculator.
Smart Night Lights
Who isn’t scared of the monster under their bed? Children have an active imagination, which is what makes them curious about everything and makes them ask questions that we’ve stopped asking. This active imagination, however, is also what gets them to be easily scared.
This is especially true at night when it’s time to go to bed and a shadow moves outside on the street or the leaves of a tree rustle nearby.
Night lights have been around for some time, but they have now become more efficient with their smarter cousin offering more functionality to help kids transition easily into their sleepy abodes. Smart night lights and bedside lamps come with bedtime alerts and calming sounds. Once the bedtime routine starts, they’ll dimly light up the room with soothing light patterns and shifting lights. They will also play music or nature sounds to help the little one fall asleep.
Smart watches and fitness trackers have become an essential gadget for kids. They let your kid interact with technology on a personal level, letting them ask questions and play games. Furthermore, they help keep your child safe.
Boys
Girls
How, you may ask, does a smart watch enhance your children’s security? Most smart watches come with GPS and are compatible with other smart home security devices. Once paired, they will create a geo-net around certain places that gets triggered every time your child enters or leaves a location, notifying you on your smart device. It will also alert you if the GPS signal wanders to any area that’s not in your whitelist, signifying a danger to your child.
Smart watches also come packed with fitness features that track your child’s daily steps. They can remind them to drink water or talk a walk if they’ve been sitting around for too long.
Smart Alarm Clock
It isn’t news that most children absolutely hate waking up early in the morning to go to school. They will often make lives difficult for their parents who have to get them ready and then run to work. Smart alarm clocks can be a great help in this regard.
Some of the smarter alarm clocks on the market, like the Philips Somneo, come with an intelligent wake-up mechanism. They will slowly light up and play a selection of nature sounds or music initially in low volume that will gradually rise to peak level, allowing your child to wake up naturally rather than abruptly.
These alarm clocks can be set to initiate their wake-up routines well before when your kids need to be out of bed so that they can work their way up to that inevitability. Kids who wake up with such alarm clocks wake up happier and fresher than kids that don’t.
Smart Duvet
Children are annoyingly picky when it comes to making their beds, and that’s understandable. Making your bed every morning does get annoying, even for adults. However, children need to learn its importance if they are to grow up to be tidy individuals, so why not make it fun?
Smart duvets are a recent addition to the smart family of gadgets. There are a lot of companies that have given the idea a go, but by far, the most successful is SmartDuvet that started off as a Kickstarter project.
They are intelligent systems that will work with the existing bedding to inflate or deflate at the touch of a button, causing the bed to make itself. This is an interesting way to get kids to make their bed without it being too much of a nuisance. Smart duvets also come with intelligent climate control and will regulate the temperature of the sheet covers to give your kid the perfect sleep.
Smart Projector for Kids
The chances are that your house only has one TV in the living room that you want to wind down in front of at the end of a trying day, binging on your favorite TV show.
However, your kids need to be entertained too. Otherwise, they will be right there with you playing with the remote and changing the channel and ultimately, you won’t get any watching done.
You can now purchase portable smart projectors, like PIQO, designed to solve this very issue. A good projector will come with HD resolution and will be bright enough to project clear and sharp pictures on your kid’s wall. You can get wired ones or wireless ones that offer decent video and audio playtimes and also provide Wi-Fi and high-quality speakers.
These projectors can be paired with any smart device and made to project YouTube videos and other streaming content in stunning clarity. They will let your kid have their own tailor-made entertainment while you have yours outside in the living room.
eBook Reader
Every child must have a healthy habit to read as it nurtures their mind and develops a deeper understanding of the world. However, most children run away from the sight of books, which is probably because of the intense homework they are burdened with every day.
Getting your child a tablet or, better yet, an eBook reader like a Kindle reader will help develop an interest in reading. They will be more attracted to a smart gadget than they will be to a hardcopy. The more advanced eBook readers come with HD displays and offer more functionality than just reading books like playing games, watching YouTube videos, streaming cartoons, and even viewing pictures.
eBook readers are an excellent way to introduce your children to the pleasures of reading in a fun and interactive way that makes them feel in control and lets them have a ton of fun.
Hoverboard
This is a truly interesting one. If your kid is in high school, the chances are that they’d know of hoverboards. If they don’t already have one, they’d want one. Hoverboards are self-balancing scooters.
Although they’re not anywhere close to their namesake from the Back to the Future franchise, they do make wandering around a fun activity for children and even adults.
While hoverboards had kind of a bumpy start when they were initially introduced primarily because of several battery issues, they have become more in vogue now. The chances are that you’ll see at least one person gliding on a hoverboard on the sidewalk every day.
A good hoverboard will be UL2272 certified, which means it meets the required standards of electrical safety. Some advanced ones will even come with additional features like LED battery lights, built-in safety guards, and faster cruising speeds.
Writing Tablet
A writing tablet, unlike a regular tablet device, is fairly limited, but it has its uses, and it does the job it’s intended to do quite well. These LCD devices look like small chalkboards and work like notepads, essentially replacing conventional writing pads for kids.
Kids love to draw and doodle and let their creativity take the rein. That means hundreds and hundreds of papers end up in the dustbin eventually. Smart writing tablets give children the same amount of control over their creativity. They make things more fun for them as they get to experience something they probably wouldn’t have before while saving tons of paper.
Some newer writing tablets come with cloud connectivity. Hence, each piece of artwork that your kid comes up with will be uploaded to a cloud server before it’s removed from the device.
MP3 Player
You’re probably hesitant about giving your kid a mobile device at an early age and rightly so. It does have the potential to pose a greater security risk to your children than other devices in their possession.
A neat and equally fun alternative to mobile devices are MP3 players. These players have come a long way since the iPod Shuffle, which was basically a 2-inch device you could merely play/pause music on and skip tracks. Newer MP3 players come with large LCD or LED displays and almost the same functionality as a mobile phone with some restrictions.
Children can use them to listen to music, stream videos, browse the web, and play games, but they can’t call or message anyone or install communication apps. Such devices also often limit the type of websites that can be accessed. If you’re an overconcerned parent, you can add additional filtering options to keep your child extra safe when they’re browsing online.
Smart Gadgets for Kids : Conclusion
Smart gadgets not only enhance your children’s security and help with learning, but they also become constant companions that kids can rely on.
Getting your kids technological gadgets that directly affect them, like a smart speaker with AI that helps with schoolwork or a smart duvet that keeps them sleeping comfortably, will make you the coolest parent ever.
At present, Google and Amazon are the best when it comes to smart speaker ecosystems. Google has better natural-language query understanding and is built into all Android phones, while Amazon has a wide range of smart home products and offers more third-party skills.