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If you’re considering a tablet, like an Amazon Fire, for your preschooler and are researching pros and cons or want to know the best educational apps to download, look no further! Discover why we chose the Amazon Fire tablet for our active preschooler and which apps we love to entertain and provide some educational content.
After years without having any sort of access to phones or tablets, we Santa gifted our daughter a 7” Amazon Fire last Christmas when she was 4.5. She does NOT use it often. We use it as a reward for good behavior after Hailey goes to bed. We have yet to bring it out of the house, besides when we traveled to Disney, so she really sees it as a treat and not an everyday accessory.
In case you’re on the fence about one of these tablets, here is my pros and cons list to the Amazon Fire and our favorite apps for preschoolers that include an educational aspect:
Pros:
- Price – At the time of purchasing ours, the Fire was only $99! But I’ve recently also seen deals involving the purchase of 2 where you get $50 off.
- 2 year warranty with kid friendly case. – As they say on the website “if they break it, we’ll replace it. No questions asked.” Seriously, with kids, this is an awesome guarantee!
- Access to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited for a designated term – This is their service for all their apps, games and activities. I swear when we bought it, the term was 2 years but it might also be shown as 1 year. After that it’s only $2.99 a month which is not bad at all!
- 8 hours of battery life – great for long trips where you don’t have access to a plug!
- Download content for non Wi-Fi times – You can add digital movies to it which is great for a plane ride!
- Age Filters – You can choose the age range so things that are too young to too old are not available to your child. We currently have ours set for 2 -5 but will need to up it soon!
- Screen time limits – While we haven’t had to use this yet, you can set it so the tablet can only be used at certain times of the day, you can see educational goals (example: they can’t play a game until they read a book for X amount of minutes) or total screen allotted for a day. I can see this being useful for older children or those who have issues letting go. Personally we give lots of warnings before letting her know that her time is up and she’s been good about putting it away upon notice.
Favorite Educational Apps on Amazon Fire for Preschoolers:
- Bridges – This is probably my favorite on the list! This is a great puzzle game where you need to connect colored dots together within a grid. 2 colors can use a bridge/tunnel system so it’s a matter of figuring out which needs to use it. The grid sizes can change as they get better and better at this problem solving activity. Brielle plays the smaller grids and occasionally asks for help but usually figures out a grid on her own. As she completed them, she can get more challenges with bigger boards and more colors. Honestly I see this as a great problem solving game that even an adult would love!
- Disney Puzzle packs – This game includes several activities with different levels of difficulty and different characters featured. Some kids might prefer Frozen while others are into Monster’s Inc or Cars. Try a matching game , Find me, Virtual puzzle, Spot the Difference, Word Jumble, or Word Search.
- Connect the Dots – A big explanation isn’t needed but I like that it includes the options of upper case letters, lowercase letters and numbers as it helps to reiterate all three sequences.
- Elsa Puzzle Game – Elsa guides you on different challenges where you need to build things to get Sven across to get to his pile of carrots, balance items or complete other problem solving tasks.
- Super Why Phonics Fair – We’re already big fans of this PBS show so having a word game at her fingertips has been fun. There are different activities that focus on word sounds and spelling with interactive games and activities.
- Kids Sight Words – This one requires sound as the frog character speaks different tasks for you, all of which use sight words. She’s not yet reading words but can sound out some of the games so I can see this one being big next year when she starts kindergarten and is more into sight word activities.
Other favorite Amazon Fire apps:
- Shopkins – She has no idea what Shopkins are but likes this race game. You’re basically running through this town as a first person perspective and need to jump, move left and right and dive under obstacles. No educational content here but just a fun game to play occasionally.
- Netflix – When we were flying to Disney we downloaded a few of her favorite shows from Netflix to the Amazon Fire that she and her sister were able to watch on the plane or winding down before bed. We have the 16 GB version are not concerned over running out of space.
Have any must download apps you love for your preschooler? Leave a comment and let me know!
Her Amazon Fire was part of this Favorite products for a 4 year old post I just shared a few days before. Check out this full collection of other screen free ideas!
Tiffany says
My 4 year old daughter LOVES the NickJr. App on hers. She also has one by Pink Fong that plays wheels on the bus in different languages and it’s so funny to hear try to sing along but she has gotten pretty good!
Spot of Tea Designs says
I will have to check this one out, Tiffany! Thanks for the suggestion!