Traveling with the New Amazon Fire Kids Edition Tablet

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post on behalf of Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

We are heading out on a road trip this week. We’ll be spending a total of 24 hours in the car with 4 kids in a 4 day period. A few months later we’ll be spending 8 hours on a plan followed by weeks on and off of trains… We may sound crazy, but as a family, we love traveling. Travel is something I have always loved and when I started my family, I was determined to continue traveling and to make it something special for the kids. Over the years, after many hours of travel and many “travel fails” along the way, I have come to learn what works, what’s the best use of space when packing and how to adjust what you bring based on the trip and travel time. Our travel time is our family time, so whatever I can do to make it go smoother is worth it.

One thing that’s pretty key for our travels with kids are tablets. We have tried quite a few and our new favorite is the Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet. It’s super lightweight, comes in a protective cover and is really easy to use. Plus, I order all of our books from Amazon so having the online versions right at their fingertips is so easy. There are two versions:  the Fire HD 8 Kids Edition tablet which has an 8” HD Display, 32 GB of storage and a kid-proof case and the Fire 7 Kids Edition tablet which has a 7” display, 16 GB of storage and kid-proof case. Both are awesome (we have the smaller one).

I don’t use tablets for restaurants or for entertaining in the car (except for music). Restaurants are for face to face time and in the car 3 out of 4 get car sick… so why are tablets key for us for travel? More family time.

Here are 5 reasons I bring the Amazon Kids Edition tablet with us for family travel:

1. Photos! I take thousands of photos when we travel. My kids want to “be like mom” and after tons of “kids cameras” I realized the easiest way to let kids take photos and video while traveling is on the Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet. They want to take photos easily and then be able to see them all back at the hotel at night. The Amazon Kids Edition tablet has a great camera and is so easy for kids to use. I am actually quite impressed with the photos my 6 and 8 year old take while traveling and we use them to print and make photo albums.

2. Reading! My kids love books, which is great, but it’s not easy to pack up all of their favorite books when we travel. Packing for a a family of 6 for a flight is tough enough, adding the weight of books for 4 kids is honestly not possible. I used to make them each pick 1 book, but when they are used to reading several every night at bedtime, that one book gets pretty old after 7+ nights of travel. With the Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet we can take a library with us! Then we can still have our special family time reading at night and enjoying several books.

3. Great Apps! The Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet has so many easy to use, fun apps for kids. There are quite a few that my kids can play together and a fun one we are using as a family right now is “How to Learn Italian”

4. Discussion Cards! Since we are very liberal with screen time when traveling the Discussion Cards within the Amazon Parent Dashboard are really important.  They are provided to help parents better understand the content their child is viewing, reading or playing on the tablet and gives great questions to prompt discussion. Here’s an example: Say your child was reading a National Geographic book about cats and dogs, the Discussion Card might prompt the parent to ask “which pet do you like best and why?”. I think it’s such a cool way to keep parents involved with the kids tablet use, remind the kids that the parents know what they are doing on the tablet and the importance of conversation. Find the feature on the Parent Dashboard.

5. Family Movie Night While Traveling! When I was a kid, when I watched TV, I had to watch one of the 10 channels and whatever was on at that time. I had to have my show interrupted by commercials and watch my favorite show once a week… kids today have no idea what that was like! While I’d love to give them a taste of the “good old days” I have to admit it is pretty nice to just “click on the movie” you’d like to watch. When we are traveling, we have active days and head back to the hotel or house pretty early so the toddlers can go to bed. My husband and I like to have “movie nights” with the big kids and having a few family movies on the Kids Edition tablet makes this much easier. There’s rarely something on the few hotel channels for us to watch as a family, so we appreciate having a few to click and watch on the tablet.

Summer travel is around the corner. I hope these fun ideas for how to effectively add tablet time to family travel is helpful! Click here for more info on the Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet and wherever your family travels take you this summer, have fun!