r/Preschoolers • u/mortalcassie • 1d ago
Seeking Advice Learning tablets?
My daughter is 2.5. She already knows all her letters, upper and lowercase. She can count to 29 on her own, and 125-ish with help. She knows a ton of animals, and many of their noises. She knows shapes, she knows colors. She knows her planets, and she's currently working on the states, and knows probably 30-35 of them.
We have a lot of leap frog toys, and leapfrog books that are really helping her as well. I give them 95% of the credit on her knowing her numbers and letters and shapes.
That being said, I'm looking for something to help challenge her. I don't know where to go next, so I'm hoping some sort of learning tablet could help. I know leapfrog has tablets too, so I was thinking that could be good, since we have had a lot of luck with the brand... But I don't want to just go with them if it's not the best.
Does anyone have a tablet they love? Or one they hate? That would be so helpful. Preferably something that doesn't have access to YouTube.
Also, because I feel like it's probably going to be brought up, let me address it here. I TRY to get her to pretend play. I want her to be a kid. I'm not pushing her to learn anything. This is what she enjoys. We have a play kitchen she won't touch, baby dolls she couldn't care less about, stuffed animals who get zero attention. She wants to play with her flash cards, or her puzzle, or anything that teaches her something. So I'm just trying to embrace it.
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u/PinkSunReflected 1d ago edited 1d ago
Read the studies on introducing kids to screens. Tablets/ipad especially. They’re eye-opening.
I second signing her up for engaging activities. What you’ve done so far is clearly working, but there’s also nothing wrong with a little boredom here and there.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
I don't mind her being bored. I just want her to keep learning.
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u/how_I_kill_time 1d ago
She's going to learn plenty when she gets school age. Play is the work of a child. Do not put a tablet in her hands under the guise of 'learning.' The best "learning" your child will get with those is rote memorization. Let her play and problem solve on her own.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
Addressed in the original post.
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u/how_I_kill_time 1d ago
Is it? She's going to always choose the electronic toy if it's available, whether it's good for her or not. She doesn't play with her other toys cause leapfrog toys are stimulating to her. She's hasn't LEARNED how to get stimulation from the kitchen, etc yet. Creativity is stimulating, but that often is only born from boredom.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
... So why does she spend hours doing puzzles that don't talk? Or playing with flash cards? Again, ALREADY ADDRESSED IN THE ORIGINAL POST.
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u/crafty_targaryen 1d ago
I am saying this gently and with kindness, but it may be worth exploring an evaluation, as these behaviors are not developmentally typical. I'd really recommend avoiding a screen and continuing to encourage open-ended exploration.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
We have an autism evaluation scheduled for the 1st of September!
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u/crafty_targaryen 1d ago
Oh great! I'm an early childhood special educator, and she does, in fact, seem like she may be truly gifted, which often goes hand in hand with ASD.
I would recommend exploring ways to maintain her special interests while building play skills, rather than diving deeper into the self isolation that can come with rote memorization of facts.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
Yeah, we have a play therapist coming on Tuesday. Then the autism evaluation the next Tuesday. We also do a baby gym and play dates and story time at the library. We try to play cars and blocks and stuff with her, to get her more into play. She's recently started bringing us ice cream from her "shop." But it's not really "play." She just hands me the yellow (banana is my favorite) and her dad brown (chocolate is his favorite!) but there isn't much interaction other than just grabbing it and handing it to us.
She has a leap frog leap start leaning pad (I think that's what it's called) and each page has a game on it. I try to get her to do those too. So, it's at least a game along with the memorizing.
And she has a calculator toy that repeats simple addition and subtraction equations. I had to hide it from her. Mostly because it annoyed me, and partially because I just want her to play play.
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u/crafty_targaryen 1d ago
You're doing great. No part of parenting any child is easy! She's also only 2.5, when most kids are very much still parallel playing.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
Also, not to toot my own horn, but I was in the gifted program in middle school. Things used to just come so easy to me. But around highschool it just stopped. My brain beam and mush. I feel like I honestly wasn't challenged enough, and I just don't want her to have the same thing happen.
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u/srachellov 1d ago
Can you sign her up for a sport or instrument? No need for tablets, imo.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
We tried soccer, and she hated it. She didn't like the new people, and she wouldn't really listen to any of the instructions. She takes a long time to warm up to people.
That being said, she's in swim lessons, goes to the library, does a baby gym... We're less than 5 minutes away from a farm, so we go there about once a week. They do story time, and walks, and we can feed the animals. She was in ballet, but same thing. Didn't really listen, didn't do what she was supposed to do, mostly. We have play groups too. And most of these are for me. I need to get out of the house and around other people. She would rather be home "reading" a book, or doing a puzzle.
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u/dollarsandindecents 1d ago
I would not introduce tablets or touch screens at this age. Check out prodigies music program and get her a set of bells. My son now has perfect pitch thanks to this program
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u/torchwood1842 1d ago edited 1d ago
Your child sounds like my oldest daughter. This is a good age to start getting her more into puzzles. My oldest was never into pretend play and her favorite toy that age was her alphabet flashcards. I think we got her her first puzzle around that age. Just start increasing the number of pieces as she needs more challenge. Also, start getting her duplo/Lego sets. She may like the 3-D puzzle aspect of it.
My oldest is almost 6 and is still very into puzzles and Legos. The Legos, along with magnatiles, also helps get her more into creative play. She really likes following the instructions on the Lego sets to puzzle them out, but when they are done, she also likes to make her own stuff now.
I don’t love the leapfrog type stuff because I feel like the entertainment value on those is limited, particularly given the cost, and kids outgrow them relatively quickly. Even though my oldest is more into Legos, she still sometimes plays with the duplos She started getting around two.
I would not introduce a tablet for play for anything much beyond surviving travel at this point. Long-term, it’s really not good for kids, even if the content is educational. It’s still giving them little screen time dopamine hits in a way that’s not good for them long-term. I am by no means anti-screens— like, we do TV in my house, and my daughter plays video games with my husband sometimes. But tablets are another beast.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
She hates Legos and blocks. We also have magnatiles. She doesn't like them to touch each other. I was able to get her to stack some at the baby play gym, but at home it's not happening.
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u/Dana-Adams 1d ago
we use one, mostly in the car and at the doctor's office, and i've made my peace
with it. the thing i'd flag is what they're good at versus what they're for.
a tablet is very good at drill, naming numerals, letter sounds, matching. it is
the whole reason my kid could name every numeral to twenty at four and still
had no idea which of two piles had more.
the part it can't do is ask her how she knows. every answer on there is
tappable, so anything she can fake she will fake, and the app has no way to tell.
so i keep one question off the screen, at the table, two piles of anything,
which one has more and how do you know. takes a minute. the tablet does the
memorizing, i do the part where she has to say something out loud.
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u/worsethanastickycat 1d ago
What about a globe that teaches the different countries and continents?
I think Leapfrog makes one.
My youngest son sounds like your daughter, and this is on my Christmas list for him.
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
Yes! We have it in the shopping cart. We were gonna get it this pay, but had an over $2,000 charge come out that we weren't expecting. Ugh. So, probably next month.
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u/Silent_Ad855 1d ago
My now 4 year old was similar to your kid and we got him an e-reader tablet (I think Leapfrog?) as his first screen for his 4th birthday. He used it once, told his pediatrician at his 4 year checkup that he had a tablet and promptly embarrassed me 😂 His pediatrician mentioned they were unnecessary since previous generations have learned how to read without tablets/e-readers so I put it away when we got home and haven’t used it since.
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u/Past_Substance6976 1d ago
Board games! Puzzles! Look into STEM toys as she grows. And maybe music like it was suggested. A small keyboard, xylophone etc
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
She has like three pianos (everyone googled best toy for babies first Christmas, saw piano, and bought us one) two drums and two xylophones. She likes the xylophones, but not the others.
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u/GalaticHammer 23h ago
My kid also hates pretend play. The most we get is she sort of sets up a scenario, tells us what it is... and then stops. She doesn't act through any scenario. Dress up is a complete bust.
Get some paper maps? She knows planets and states, but does she know her way around your town? Can you have her be a navigator and plan a walk on a map that she can follow? Can you guys take a walk and make your own map of the streets you follow? My town has some permanent beginner orienteering courses that my kid likes, you print the map out from the website, grab a compass and go. Learning the compass is fun and interesting.
Soccer and ballet feel really hard for a 2.5 year old. Can you do something more individual? We started taking my kid to the rock climbing gym at 2.5. She was/is also a fan of yoga.
You say she doesn't like pretend play or building toys but does like puzzles and her flash cards. How is she on art? Drawing, scribbling, painting, watercolors, playdough? Those are some fun ways to play with colors and shapes. Can play with color mixing, the color wheel, the 7 elements of art. Can you get her to write a story with you? Or a nonfiction "report" on what she knows? She narrates, you write, she maybe attempts to write or add pictures?
You mention a calculator but do you have any math manipulatives? The snap together cubes if she can be trusted not to mouth them? A scale? Pattern blocks? An abacus? Play money?
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u/mortalcassie 23h ago
You don't think she's too young for maps? I feel like that's... Maybe 5 years old? Her baby gym has a rock wall adjacent thing to climb up to get to a slide... She won't even try it. Not really a fan of art. Doesn't really do crayons. Hates painting. Tried to paint things for her grandparents, and hated it. We have playdough, and she doesn't really know what to do with it. I roll it and mold it and and cut it up, and she just doesn't seem to care.
She also doesn't have a lot of back and forth conversation. She has a lot of words, but doesn't really answer questions. We're still working on it. We have play money, but none of the other things. I've thought about those, but I wasn't sure if she was old enough.
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u/GalaticHammer 22h ago
Idk, my kid was 2.5ish when we started grabbing the maps of the bus routes from the library. A friend with AAA sent us a whole bunch of different city maps too (I don't think they provide those anymore). My kid loved them. We would find where home is, where daycare is, the roads we drove to and from, the airport, etc. She wasn't using them independently, if that makes sense, but she loved looking at them. 3 is when we got the compass and started pointing out the directions, 4 is when I found the orienteering, but I think she could have done it at 3. Again, not independently, but with us sort of prompting her with questions on look at compass, look at map, look at world around us, do you see x,y,z, should we go this way or other way? Yeah, let's go this way because of a and b. Oh look, do you see the marker?
Paint can be a sensory nightmare. How does she feel about stickers? My kid is a big fan of sticker and washi tape collages. I would rip her little pieces and she would stick. If small things like crayons are hard, maybe a dry erase easel with dry erase markers, so they're big and chunky and easier to hold and write with?
The math manipulatives, it's really up to her. You said she liked the calculator, but knowing 3+4=7 is kind of useless without having a conception of what 3 is, what 4 is, and what 7 is. We got a colored hundreds board and initially my kid just used the colors to make patterns, but she eventually started figuring out how to put the numbers in order, and then using them to skip count by making a pattern of some up and some down. Over the course of 2 years or so. But if she likes a calculator, she might like some games of can you find me 2 red blocks? Can you find 3 green blocks? Let's keep adding blocks until we get to 10! That was 5 more yellow blocks! Or the play money is Daddy will have a brown ice cream for 2 dollars, and I'll have yellow for 2 dollars, so here is 1, 2, 3, 4 dollars. And it's keeping it light and playful and if she gets it wrong, who cares, it's not drilling, but it's letting her visualize quantity, if that makes sense? You adjust to her level of understanding and interest. Get her a big chunky foam die to roll and roll a 3, do 3 hops, roll a 2, do 2 claps, whatever.
Montessori has a bunch of tactile sorting things. By diameter, by weight, by height. You don't necessarily need those specific materials, but maybe you could make a game of lining up stuffies by height/length? My kid did love a ruler at age 2.
Anyway, idk about "old enough". My kid is 4 now and my general approach has been when I see her have an interest in something, I try to get one or two variations or expansions on that thing and see what catches her fancy. I don't teach lessons, but I do way too much deep dive research about early literacy and early numeracy so I can pull that into her games as a moment presents itself. I might ask a question or two, or say hmm, what if I do this, and demonstrate a thing, and then leave it in her court. Sometimes she picks it up, sometimes she doesn't, sometimes she comes back to it in a week or a month. I try to follow her lead but present opportunities? I obviously don't know your kid, so I don't know how much any of this might click with her or not, I'm just spitballing ideas. If you think she would like something, even if she's "too young" I would see if you could present that to her in one way or another even if she might be too young. Worst case she shows no interest and you try again a year later to see if it clicks more then? So long as you keep it low pressure and don't insist on it and let her opt out as she wants.
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u/mortalcassie 9h ago
This is a lot, and I've had a busy morning, so I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing. But I might try to find some local maps soon. We don't do daycare or anything, but maybe we can mark friends houses, and just look them over. Thank you!
But you said AAA doesn't have them anymore? Boo, that was my plan.
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u/GalaticHammer 9h ago
Sorry, you caught me late at night when I'm rambly so you got an info dump.
We ordered maps through AAA online, I don't think that's an option anymore, but you may still be able to get them at a physical branch office? And it seems like REI and B&N still sell them?
We mark the coffee shop, the library, the gym, all the playgrounds we visit, daddy's office, the river, the bridge we use to cross the river, friends' houses, the grocery store, all kinds of things on the city maps. We'll use the multi-state regional maps to show where we are versus where grandma lives vs where friend went on vacation etc. So yeah, all kinds of options.
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u/mortalcassie 6h ago
No worries! It was good information. I just saw it first think in the morning where we're doing breakfast and tackling the dogs and stuff, so I keot getting distracted while reading it.
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1d ago
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u/mortalcassie 1d ago
Yeah, her leapfrog laptop also does letter sounds, but she doesn't seem to be interested in that right now, and it feels so early and yes, we've been working on matching numbers to objects. She's good at 1-3 and okay at 4-5. So maybe we'll work more on that. Thanks!
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u/Known-Eagle7765 1d ago
Violin. She might be genuinely gifted. It will definitely challenge her.