14 DAY TRIAL // Lots of children and parents might be having fun on Kindle Fire slates, but Amazon wants to make sure tablet family time won’t be replaced by anything else, anytime soon.
Today the tech giant announced a revamped version of the Kindle Free Time app for Kindle Fire tablets. The enhancement brings new educational features which include fresh books, apps, games and videos.
The update will be delivered automatically for all Kindle Fire users that have FreeTime installed, just in time for the holiday season.
Amazon Kindle VP Peter Larsen said that the “Kindle Fire is already the best tablet for kids and families – and now we’re making it even better.”
“We know kids spend a lot of time every day looking at screens, and we're excited to add new tools that help parents make this time more educational. Parents can use features like ‘Learn First’ to ensure study comes before play and set daily educational goals for reading and learning.
“If you subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited, your kids will enjoy thousands of new educational books, apps, games and videos.”
It appears Amazon wants to turn the Kindle Fire into some sort of a kiddie slate here and that's not a bad idea after all, considering how popular child tablets have been as of late.
From now on, parents can set up Educational Goals for their kids. For example, mom or dad can set up a daily reading goal of at least 30 minutes per day in FreeTime. More than that, access to cartoons and other entertainment options can be allowed after a child has reached its daily goals.
Educational apps like Team Umizoomi Math, Super Why!, Stack the States or Kids Learn to Read have been added, on top of more than 2,000 educational TV Shows and Movies.
Amazon wants your child to become a polyglot too, so it has added some videos for learning basic Spanish, French or Chinese.
There's certainly plenty to choose from here, so should other child-friendly tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Kids feel threatened?