Media Macaroni

Today my sweet little girl turns 5, marking the year she’ll be off to Kindergarten. Last year I started a new tradition, interviewing her about her favorite things on her birthday. Though she still likes some of last year’s favorites, it’s interesting to see what’s changed.

Favorite TV Show?

“Superfriends because it’s funny and all the monsters look weird.”

I created a monster when I introduced her to Superfriends. I don’t know if I can watch the Hydronoids episode one more time. This year also marked the obsession with Dinosaur Train and a love of Phineas and Ferb.

Favorite Website?

“Dinosaur Train because there’s a new game and that game is really fun. The one where you get to learn about dinosaurs, it doesn’t only have dinosaurs. It has frogs, turtles, and birds (because birds ARE dinosaurs). One of them has a dinosaur footprint pattern and I like making patterns.”

I just saw that the Dinosaur Train website won a nice award this week at Prix Jeunesse, a children’s TV festival in Germany. It’s good times from DT fans.

Favorite Toy?

“Bat girl because she is the toy I like to play with and the games I play with her are really funny.”

Hmm. Your guess is as good as mine on this one. 5-year-olds are weird.

Favorite Movie?

“Shrek because it’s funny and Shrek makes candles out of ear wax. I like all the Shreks, but I like Shrek 4 the best. My other favorite is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs because of the spaghetti tornado and the talking monkey.”

OK, I may have prompted her here after she answered Shrek, which is our most recent movie adventure. But it’s Cloudy that’s been watched no fewer than 50 times this year, with no end in sight.

Favorite Book?

“Shrek because the princess is so ugly!”

I can’t argue with this one.

Favorite Music?

“Recess Monkey because I like the space elevator one because it has a little talky part at the beginning and it’s funny.”

The Final Funktier is played every night before going to bed. Funny, they were her favorite band last year, too.

Favorite App?

“The dinosaur game because I like making puzzles and it’s match-up puzzle dinosaurs.”

She’d talking about a great little sliding puzzle called DinoMixer.

Favorite Museum?

“The helicopter museum because I like the color green and the helicopter in it is big and green. And it has a carousel with funny creatures in it, and I like watching the creatures go around.”

MOMA takes this category the second year in a row (named the “Helicopter Museum” for the helicopter hanging in the lobby). The carousel Olive’s talking about was part of this year’s mega show, the Tim Burton exhibit.

Favorite video game?

“Mario. I like the racing one because I sometimes win.”

She’s slowly entering into the world of Mario, with Mario Kart and Super Mario. Hooray!

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings! Happy Birthday, Olive!

Olive knows from drawing apps. She’s played with art tools aplenty online, and there are about 168 drawing apps on my iPhone. OK, maybe not quite that many, but you get the picture. Today I presented her with an exquisite blank canvas courtesy of Ze Frank, called Scribbler Too.

It’s not necessarily for kids-no bells and whistles and colorful, chunky buttons-but as a young doodler starts drawing on the canvas, marvelous things happen. It’s rather like drawing with spider webs.

Olive decided she wants to do this every day. She said, “More people should get this game because then every day people would be drawing with it.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I’m happy to be raising a little science girl, and I’ve previously talked about PBS playing a large role in that development. Now, PBS has a show for older science girls, aptly named SciGirls. Geared for ages 8-12, each show features the scientific discoveries of real life girls in the topics of science, technology, engineering and math. (If you’ve ever heard the term STEM, this is it.)

What’s remarkable about the show is that these aren’t just girls doing a project at school. The experiments are tied to the day-to-day need for science, and the girls are given access to experts, materials, and wildlife that make science seem extraordinary.

One of the most interesting episodes so far as been about the self-awareness of animals, using dolphins as a test subject. The goal was to see if dolphins could recognize themselves in a mirror. Apparently elephants can, as shown in footage on the show. Two girls recorded dolphin behavior in an ethogram, setting up different experiments and a control test. They even got to swim with the dolphins. I asked Olive if she could ever imagine swimming with dolphins and her reply was, “Phineas and Ferb swim with dolphins.” I said, “Yes, but they’re cartoons, and these are real girls. This is something you could actually do.” And I think that’s the magic in the show. Girls: this is all possible.

Some of the episodes have the girls working in groups of four, like an episode where girls work with mechanical engineers to build an animatronic May Day parade float. This is when you get into the interesting dynamics of what a group of four 8-12-year-old girls is like. The conflict and resolution is almost a science unto itself.

Each show is bookended with two characters, Izzie and Jack. Izzie asks Jack for help with a problem, and when he can’t help her she turns to the SciGirls for help. I understand the need for the bookends to unify the episodes, but honestly, this is my least favorite part of the show. Izzie always seems helpless, and Jack is a bit of a doofus. He also highlights how boys are left out of the equation completely, which, while the point of the show, is starting to get under my skin now that I’m going to be mom to a little boy. It’s a conundrum.

There’s also a great website that promotes some pretty cool science projects, and allows all the SciGirls out there to upload their own. As a kid, I remember not having any interesting ideas come science fair time (my lab partner gets all the credit for our hydroponics entry). It was always like, “Hmmm, I wonder what will happen to this plant if I pour Coke on it.” This site is a great resource for ideas that are both interesting and accessible.

SciGirls is great for science girls, both in the 8-12 range and for the younger ones alike. Because of their interesting topics, Olive stays focused through each episode. Go SciGirls!

While I love looking through the booths of the mom and pop toysellers at Toy Fair, it’s also interesting to see what the major players are doing. I’ve already given a rundown of what Hasbro is up to, and here are some interesting things coming from other big toy companies.

I’m most excited about Lego board games. Oh, yeah, you heard me. Lego. In the game aisle. This concept works out exactly as I hoped it would: build the board then play the game. Because Lego is master of open-ended play, each game comes with alternate rules and board set-ups to change up the games for different levels of play. There’s even Lego dice that get transformed during gameplay.

Lego and board games is such a natural match, I found myself marveling at the fact that this chocolate-and-peanut-butter combination hasn’t happened sooner. Hasbro is also playing with this idea, with board assemblages of some of their classic board games, but the Lego games (unsurprisingly) seem to have a better building component.

Two companies, VTech and Fisher-Price have come out with eReaders for kids. I haven’t had a chance to play with Fisher-Price’s iXL yet, but I got a hands-on demo of VTech’s Flip. The Flip is a well-designed piece of hardware for kids ages 3-7, with nice resolution on the touch-screen and a keyboard for different types of gameplay. The stories are animated and there are different story-related games to play.

The Flip itself is a reasonable $59.99, but each individual story cartridge is $19.99, which seems a hefty price to pay for a book with games. There will be cheaper downloadable content, which helps. In the past, though, I’ve enjoyed VTech hardware but not the software. If the eBook titles are good, they could warrant the price. If not, I fear there won’t be enough bang for the buck. The Flip titles at launch will include properties like Shrek and Olivia, and there’s only one classic book, The Little Engine that Could. I’ll be keeping my eye out for more of the classic books.

Until I get my hands on Fisher-Price’s iXL, here’s Gizmodo’s review.

VTech also introduced their handheld device, MobiGo. This too has a touch screen, and it also has a flip out qwerty keyboard, like a mini Sidekick. It has the same pricing structure as the Flip, and I carry to this device the same set of reservations as the Flip, though the Shrek game I saw looked pretty fun.

Ultimately, though, it seems like all of these touch-screen toys and readers are filling the time between now and when we can get a second or third-generation iPad into the hands of our kids. The versatility of a platform like that (even at the significantly higher price tag) has the power to blow these smaller toys out of the water. My iPhone remains Olive’s handheld device of choice for now.

Lastly, I previewed Disney’s The World of Cars Online, a virtual world based on a little animated film you might have heard of, Cars. The story in the virtual world picks up where the film left off. Lightning McQueen returns to Radiator Springs to teach other cars how to race. Players get to custom design and name their car avatar and enter the world of Radiator Springs.

Disney was incredibly smart to buy Club Penguin. It’s clear that all of the learning curve of Club Penguin has been applied here. You can find and chat with friends, explore the world, and play mini-games. Much of the content is free to play, but a $5.99/month subscription unlocks extra features. The unlocked car customization is extraordinarily elaborate – a whole game unto itself. I think Pixar fanboys (and girls) will be pleased with this world, doing justice to the story and characters created in the movie. The World of Cars will launch later this year, but if you’re itching to play a non-penguin Disney world right now, Pixie Hollow looks equally well-treated in its own beautiful fairy way.

OK, after this I promise only one or two more posts about Toy Fair. What can I say? I found a lot to talk about this year. There’s also my latest post at Z Recommends about hands-on building and creativity toys.

On our recent holiday road trip to the Midwest, Olive was alternately entertained with my iPod, my iPhone, our Nintendo DS, and her Leapster. Sure, we pulled out travel bingo, but that lasted about 10 minutes. It got me thinking about how much has changed for kids in the past decade.

At the dawn of the decade, I was working exclusively on CD-ROMs. It was the heyday of CD-ROMs for kids. Budgets were fat and we even got parties and t-shirts at the end of projects. CD-ROMs dominated little kids’ eyeballs while GameBoy was in the hands of older kids, but that was all about to change. Here’s a look at some big milestones in children’s media of the past decade.

2000

• Dora the Explorer premieres, taking over the torch of “interactive” television from Blues Clues, and launching our Latina friend into super-stardom.
• PS2 was new on the scene, but a lot of producers were too busy playing Grand Theft Auto to worry about how to use it effectively for kids.
• Tivo was just hitting the market, and over the course of a decade a generation of kids becomes confused in those rare moments of watching TV as it’s airing.

2001

• Nintendo gives us Game Cube, with terrific launch titles like Luigi’s Mansion. I remember that game really opening my eyes to different gameplay possibilities. It was but a teaser, though, to the Nintendo revolution to come.
• Nintendo also gives us GameBoy Advance, securing their status in the handheld market.
• Beginning in 2001, Leap Frog starts to dominate the kids’ interactive market when the Leap Pad becomes the best-selling toy. CD-ROM tanking sales follow, and those of us in the CD-ROM biz start looking for new media.
• Baby Einstein is sold to Disney, and the tidal wave of make-your-baby-smarter products follow.
• The first iPod is released. While not immediately part of the world of kids, new iPod releases (video! touch! cheap Shuffles!) follow.

2002

• They Might Be Giants releases their first family album, No!, bringing kids’ music into the consciousness of hipster parents everywhere.
• The surprise hit Scene It! puts interactive DVDs on the map. CD-ROM folks jump all over this wave, creating mediocre interactive products for a couple years. (Really, DVD players really suck as an interactive platform.)

2003

• Leap Frog enters the handheld market with the Leapster. Suddenly handheld games are accessible to littler kids.

2004

• Nintendo releases the superior Nintendo DS. To this day, I wish this could be the do-everything platform for kids. I’m still waiting for more educational games on DS, and it seems like they’re finally starting to trickle in.

2005

• The double-whammy: Webkinz and Club Penguin launch, creating in their wake a frenzy of imitation virtual worlds for kids. Even today you can’t shake a stick at the Internet without hitting a kids’ virtual world.
• Sweet, sweet YouTube. Where would we be without you? Ever since she was a baby on my lap, Olive has been watching clips on YouTube: classic Sesame Street, music videos, funny cats, skateboarding dogs, and rollerblading babies.

2006

• One word: Wii. With a single console, Nintendo gets two-year-olds playing video games with their grandparents. It also seems that finally a console maker is paying attention to women gamers. I love you, Nintendo.

2007

• Yo Gabba Gabba premieres. I should really talk about all of the excellent shows that have premiered over the past decade in the explosion of children’s televisions, but this one remains a favorite.
• Apple gives us the first iPhone. Initially, no one would have thought of this as a children’s platform, but as harried parents handed their phones to their kids to play with koi in a pond an endless stream of kids’ apps have followed.

In the past few years, everyone has been innovating on these platforms, and we can expect more innovation in the decade to come (Apple tablet?). If it comes as quickly, the future will be mind-boggling.

Help me out. What am I missing? What has changed your child’s life in the past decade?

A couple weeks ago I attended a lovely event about online safety sponsored by Leap Frog. When I first got the invitation, I rolled my eyes ever so slightly as I thought about not going. I tend to hate discussions of online safety for the overblown fear-mongering typical in such discussions. What? You let your child on the INTERNET?! But there might be PREDATORS! Here’s a product for you to police your home…

I decided to go anyway, and found it to be an informative discussion with helpful tips about safety considerations that really matter. The speaker at the event was About.com’s Christy Matte, their Family Computing Guide. Finally someone who speaks the same language about online safety. Right off the bat Christy let the parents in the room know that the predator threat is overrated, and that kids who are at risk of getting into trouble like that online are statistically kids who are at risk in the home life as well.

For younger kids (like mine), there’s really not too much to worry about yet. Instead of filtering out the bad, some kid browsers, such as Kidzui are helpful for “whitelisting” content – setting up a series of sites and links that are all parent-approved. Also, for all kids, it’s a good idea to have them work at a centrally-located computer to have a sense of what they’re doing in their online lives.

For older kids, though, there’s a lot to think about. I kind of dread the day when I have to have these conversations with Olive, but these are lessons that you should impart to your socially-connected child (especially tweens and teens):

• Think about the persona that you’re putting out into the world. Make sure it’s something you’d be willing to have your parent or your teacher or your grandma to see, because anything on the web has the potential to become public, and posted items can stay up there for a really, really long time (thank you, WayBack Machine)
• Young friends don’t always stay friends forever. Posted items can be disseminated by friends. An ill-thought-out comment or photo on Facebook can be downloaded and emailed to anyone.
• Cyberbullying does happen. It’s more rare than its real-life counterpart, but the psychological ramifications can be as bad. Encourage your child to come to you with any concerns.
• Keep passwords personal. See bullet #2 – trust can be a fleeting thing among kids, and passwords should stay private.

During the discussion, I thought a lot about childproofing your home when your baby starts to walk. What I tell new parents is not to go too crazy with buying all that childproofing gear until you see how much your kid gets into things. Similarly, the lengths to protect your kids online can depend on your kids. Most important is to create a trusting relationship with your child – that’s what can really keep them safe.

Christy also brought up an interesting warning to parents, especially those of us blogging and social media types who post personal details in public forums, and that’s to think about the aggregate of information that we’re putting out into the world. A detail here and a detail here can add up to provide more information than you’d really like to share about yourself and your children. She also did a finger shake at parents who post embarrassing videos of their kids on YouTube. Guilty as charged on that one, I’m afraid.

The event ended talking about the summer 2010 launch of Leap World, Leap Frog’s upcoming virtual world for kids ages 4-8. There are so many virtual worlds for kids now that it’s really hard to get excited about one, but I’m excited about this one. For one thing, it starts with a Leapster cartridge, which is good for two reasons. One, there’s both online and offline play. Two, you buy the cartridge and that’s it – no additional subscription fees. Lovely.

In Leap World, as with other virtual worlds, there are avatars and homes to customize. Canned chat is available to interact with others in Leap World. There are lots of core curriculum games to discover, along with what they’re calling “conceptual games” that include more sandbox-style play. In one weather game with an emphasis on scientific inquiry, kids can change the temperature and humidity of a town to control the weather. The games feel quite like the bygone days of CD-ROMs, ironic since in my mind Leap Frog’s products were the final nails in the CD-ROM coffin.

I’ll be looking forward to having Olive try this one out next summer. If I continue to allow her on the scary internet, that is.

eBooks have been buzzing wildly around the kids’ media business of late. It’s one of those things that seems to be on everyone’s radar. Will we start to see picture books on the Kindle? The iPhone? How about on Barnes and Noble’s lovely new Nook? It’s not a huge surprise that the first to enter this arena in a big way is Disney, with Disney Digital Books. The fine folks at Disney invited me to an event a couple weeks ago to showcase this new product.

It’s hard not to get sucked in by the marketing razzle-dazzle. Disney is the world’s largest children’s publisher, and they own their own content so they’re in the perfect position to deliver 500 books to your digital doorstep. They chose online instead of a device because it is ubiquitous – they wanted the most children possible to have access, not to mention the superior picture quality (for now).

And then there are the features. Besides tons of titles featuring the television and movie characters (including Pixar), there are also Disney classics that you probably remember from your childhood. Books are categorized by character and by reading level. There are Look and Listen books that are read to you, but you can click on any word in any book and have it read to you (and you can even look it up with the dictionary function). There are trivia challenges that ask questions about the story text, and a space where you can build books featuring your favorite characters in a mad-libs-style way.

Sounds pretty good, huh? And yet, I wasn’t wowed when I got to spend some quality time with the site. There are a few strikes against it that make it a no for my house. For one, there aren’t quite enough Look and Listen books to make it worthwhile for my pre-reader. Another reason is a personal bias – it’s rare that I meet a media tie-in book that I like, and here’s a whole site of them (the TV tie-in books are particularly painful, with stills of the shows and snippets of dialog). Would I be more excited if it was full of Sendak and Scieszka and Seibold? Probably. The last strike I have is a personal bugaboo I have about digital page turns, as if to say “Look, see? We’re JUST LIKE a book.” Except it’s digital. Embrace it, I say!

But I didn’t want to dismiss the site because it does have a lot going for it, so I wondered if it was for someone older. Someone, say, who’s a huge fan of all things Disney. For this I turned to my 8-year-old Disney aficionado niece, Elizabeth. Her verdict? “It’s not for me,” she said. It’s somewhat heartening to know that she, like many of us old folks, prefer the tactile experience of a book. She couldn’t get a view of the book that made it easy for her to read. And, not realizing that you could turn it off, she was really distracted by the trivia questions that popped up throughout.

My sister thought she might stick with it through the Disney Fairy books, until I shared with her the jaw-dropping subscription price of $8.95/month. For a reluctant reader that digs the site this might not be too bad, but for the occasional user, this is far too much for those of us who already have cable and Netflix and mobile plans and Gamefly, etc.

So my question to you is this: is this something that you’d like for your family? If not this, are you open to the idea of eBooks for kids? How would you want that content delivered? On your reader? On your phone?

For book-based media, I think we’ll stick with our Tag for a while. Oh, and we’ll continue to curl up with our old-timey paper books as well.

It’s time again for the Parents’ Choice Small Screen Awards. All of the winners can be viewed on the Parents’ Choice Foundation website, and here are the reviews that I contributed for video games and websites worth checking out:

DreamBox Learning K-2 Math

The Dreambox Learning math activities are more than elementary questions and answers. Different math tools guide the child to thoroughly explore the concept and figure out the answer – a far cry form simple rote memorization. The minimal visual design of the math manipulative screens keeps maximum focus on the math tool at hand. [Read full review...]

PBS KIDS Island

PBS KIDS Island is designed for reading practice, from letter recognition to reading words. The island is an amusement park filled with reading games, in which players work on reading skills to earn tickets to get prizes to decorate their tree house and to unlock new rides and games. [Read full review...]

Disney Fairies

Disney Fairies is a delightful collection of early math games for the Leap Frog Leapster. In the games, players are helping Tinkerbell and her fairy friends with various tasks, each of which addresses a different skill. Along the way “lost parts” are found which can be used to repair toys in Tinkerbell’s workshop – a well-conceived motivation for young players. [Read full review...]

Kidzclix.net

Visitors work to build a tower from shaving cream and straws, trying to make it as tall as possible. When young builders believe their structure is sound, they can turn on gravity with a press of the button to see how it holds up. If not, go back and try it again. Some of these activities are hilariously “gross”, like the Household Germ Hunt, where players swab different parts of an absolutely disgusting house to find the places harboring the most germs. [Read full review...]

Star Wars: Jedi Reading

This fun game captures the essence of the original Star Wars trilogy. Perhaps the best example is the game “Asteroid Attack,” where players fly the Millenium Falcon through the asteroid belt, where players blast letters to match sounds and spell words, destroying TIE fighters and asteroids along the way. [Read full review...]

Cozi

Cozi is a free, easy-to-use set of tools to organize your household. One of the main features is a family calendar, which can be color coded for all of the members of your family. The appearance is clean, appointments are easy to set, and there are a variety of printing options. [Read full review...]

Disney/Pixar’s Up

The first thing that you’ll notice about Disney Pixar’s Up for the Leap Frog Leapster is that it’s gorgeous. And if you’ve seen the film, you’ll see that “the look” of the Leapster games has been transformed to a more vintage Disney. [Read full review...]

Ni Hao, Kai-Lan: Beach Day

The most successful of the three activities is “Beach Photos.” Hoho wants to take home a large pail full of objects for the beach, but Kai-lan encourages him to take pictures of the things instead. To take pictures, the player must decide which of the things is not like the others, a standard but sweet sorting game. [Read full review...]

Please go and check out all of the worthy small screen winners.

Today I welcome one of my favorite collaborators, Russell Ginns, as a guest blogger. Russell is a writer, designer, and producer of kids media and creator of things that do not yet exist. Most recently he and I worked on Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read together.  

My girls are scared of many things. Okay… everything. They get nervous if it starts raining on Dragon Tales. And we don’t go to baseball games, because of those giant president mascots that run out during the seventh inning stretch.  

I have been fairly successful at shielding them from grizzly, ghoulish imagery.  Yet we are bombarded continuously. (I pity the family who has to sit at a bus stop, surrounded by a 13-foot 3D poster for the movie Beowulf, featuring a gory half-burnt monster face, replete with fangs and bloody eyeballs.)

Meanwhile, zombies are on the rise in our pop culture. In 2009, they seem to have edged out pirates at the great all-purpose avatar.

Face it.  If we’re going to be able to go outside at all, my girls need toughening.  They need zombie tempering. 

Enter the great and wonderful Plants vs. Zombies. 

This is a fun and funny downloadable game where you must stop an endless wave of zombies from entering your house by arranging plants in your backyard. It’s addictive, well-designed and, above all, hi-larious. 

…And it’s a great, gentle introduction to the zombie zeitgeist. As all games end with the inevitable crunching sound of brains being devoured, I was delighted to find my girls laughing—as opposed to running to the other end of the house. 

This is not a puzzle game.  This is a vital parenting tool.  Urban imagery inoculation.

So the girl walked in the other day and caught me Mad Men-ing myself. (Listen, I know I’m busy, but can’t I succumb to a narcissistic time-waster every once in a while?) Here I am as the boss lady at Sterling Cooper. 

In case you live under a rock (or merely don’t have AMC in your cable line-up) Mad Men is the fantastic show about advertising in New York in the middle of the last century. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it dates to a time when the desirable women had kickin’ curves. 

Anyway, Olive immediately climbed into my lap and wanted to make one of herself. First, she chose a pink for her skin “because it looks like my skin. This is going to be me.” Then she chose a body type from the three choices and said, “I pick the skinny one because I’m skinny.” 

I didn’t make a big deal out of it but WHAT DID I JUST HEAR COME OUT OF MY 4-YEAR-OLD’S MOUTH?!! The good news is that she seemed to say it completely without value judgement, and from her nightly bouts of streaking we know her to have a wonderful body image. But my heart breaks that this vocabulary is already starting to develop. I thought we had at least until the Hannah Montana/iCarly years to start thinking about these things. 

She ended on the accessory page by turning down a martini, a cup of coffee, and a cigarette and going straight for the donut, the healthiest of the choices. (I know. I’m an awesome mom for letting her do this.)

So tell me, is it me and my own body image hang-ups, or are kids getting wind of societal expectations too early? This post today from Miz Fit makes me think that it’s not just me.