Of all places, I was sitting in a Beijing Kids Editorial Board meeting last month when the educational value of a certain new technological gadget was lauded in passing by one of our illustrious members. I had played with one of the phone versions of said product and can agree that Word Warp is an application that every human being should be familiar with, but I didn’t see how Reina would benefit from Word Warp until she could at least spell. Could there be other uses for this groovy new tablet device? This same self-proclaimed tech geek proceeded to list off a slew of apps that she uses with her two children, from math programs and spelling games to stories read nightly by professional storytellers. It seemed like a good idea to me, so I ever so tactfully mentioned it to Savvy, my intelligent, stunning and loving wife of many moons.
I should mention that since Savvy works for Microsoft (the greatest company in the world), in our household we do not discuss products made by a certain fruit-based-logo manufacturer in California. Let’s just say the fruit in question has a similar appearance to a pear. We do not flaunt said company’s trendy logo, cool styling or smart products and we certainly do not talk about the two iMacs that sit prominently on my desk in our home office. Note: if you ever visit our home, please do not mention the small music players that you might notice about the place unless it is our Zune. Uh, I’ll explain what a Zune is another time.
Where was I?
Ah yes, during the October holiday, while hanging out in Beijing on a splendid blue sky day (we will get more, right?) Savvy surprised me by concurring that we should get one of these new marvelous devices from the fruit company to further Reina’s education.
Let that sink in for a moment. We decided our toddler needed one. In fact, I briefly toyed with the idea of just letting her home school with it.
“Okay Reina, here are your apps for the day. Don’t disturb Baba for the next four hours because he needs to go back to sleep.”
It was a fleeting notion. Still, Reina took to the tablet gadget like a fish takes to water. She navigates to the applications that she wants and can usually figure out how to use the programs faster than I can. I am slowly introducing Excel (Microsoft’s terrific spreadsheet program) to her so she can take over our accounting. Best of all, she shares her shiny new marvel with Mama and Baba too.
In future posts, I’ll highlight some of our favorite apps, but for now, I’ve got a six-letter word to unscramble in Word Warp; must beat Savvy’s high score!
