Alexa/Echo dot for kids? What do I do with it?!

[Neverunderfed]

The kids (8 and 6) were given dots for Christmas. I'm just setting then up now.

What can they use them for? Apart from yelling at her to play little mix obviously. 😂

And is there any way of setting parental controls? I'd love to be able to disable them overnight to avoid temptation...but can't find anything?

Ask if she has hiccups! Made my girls laugh a lot.

No idea beyond that though, I had to give Nanna's back once I worked out how to set it up for her.

Mine like to ask the football scores or other random stuff. But mainly use it for music - usually the same song played at least 20 times.

My daughter has been asking ours 'how many sleeps till Christmas' most days since Christmas. 329 if you were wondering.

We mostly use ours for music but you can also use it as an alarm, set reminders etc. which probably isn't that exciting for 6 or 8 yr olds. You can play games with it, I think you have to go onto the app to enable certain skills.

If you look at Alexa Skills on amazon there are recommended children's ones - quizzes, sounds, games etc. Some you need to enable, others are already available. Ask the Tardis to take off if either are Dr Who fans.

The Google Assistant has parental controls as part of the app on my phone. You can set quiet hours etc. Although not Alexa, they must have something similar, a quick internet search finds lots of articles about it and various instructions.

There's probably quizzes, games, jokes, facts, stories. Check the internet for things to ask, that's how we found our stuff. DD says goodnight to her Google Assistant and it offers to play relaxing bedtime sounds and asks her when she wants to get up in the morning (and it sets an alarm). DS asks for something called Story Castle, it then reads him a short children's story.

There’s a Harry Potter quiz. We set alarms before getting ready to go out (which the kids respond to better than me asking them to get ready . They listen to guided meditation when going to sleep (linked by audible).

Ask her to tell you a story
Fart
Fart loudly
Play music
Alarm
Does she like Siri

Sure there is loads more we could do!

DD has ordered one with her Xmas money. Marking my place.

We do the Harry Potter quiz, question of the day, get Alexa to bark like a dog or howl like a wolf it winds up the puppy hilariously but mostly just for music or timers for baking

I have found a few articles about parental controls but only on the US ones...not sure they've made it over here yet.

There’s a few kids apps or skills you can pay for like time tables quizzes etc too.